Alabama has deer like Brigham Young had locusts. They swarm like moths in headlights, occasioning interesting late-night tree identification for automobile drivers who try to avoid them. They browse through crops like a combine. They are pests. The season is two months long and you can kill a deer a day, more if you have the right permits and place. They are pests.

Glorious pests, sometimes bucks with antlers to tremble the hallowed bones of Messrs. Boone and Crockett.

The biggest of those bucks are called herd bulls. They're the ones who instantly make you think of Mike Tyson. When the bucks and does are in a field playing procreative tag and the herd bull appears, the other bucks suddenly get busy doing something else (running away, studying flowers, looking at birds, sweating nervously).

Herd bulls are the ones whose antlers shine white in the scope. But not very often. I was sitting in a tree stand overlooking a clearing in the deep woods of south Alabama. I was after the herd bull. It was the last afternoon of a three-day hunt and despite Alabama's legendary deer herd, I had not seen anything with forked antlers. Three days, from before dawn to dark, flashlight in, flashlight out.

I was gritty tired. When you come to Alabama to hunt deer, you hunt deer. Skinny Hallmark, my hunting buddy, picked me up at the Montgomery airport and we drove 45 miles to Cedar Creek Lodge. I got out of Skinny's truck and Ed McMillan said, "Y'all get yuah boots on--we goin' huntin'." Within half an hour, suffering from jet lag, sleeplessness, and cultural disorientation, I was nestled in a tree stand, looking at winter wheat.

Just before dark, three does came into the field and frolicked 25 yards away. I centered each in turn in the scope. But who wants to shoot a doe on the first afternoon?

A SPIKE BUCK ENTERED from stage right and smelled the forbidden fruit. The does treated him like high school girls treat a little brother. At dark, I climbed out of the tree, hiked a half-mile to a dirt road and waited for my chauffeured limo, a battered pickup that rode like a hay wagon.

That's the way it went for three days--lots of does and kid bucks; nothing to titillate the tape measure of a Boone and Crockett scorer.

Cedar Creek Lodge is a nice neighborhood for a herd bull. It is Ed McMillan's expensive hobby. Ed is a lanky Jimmy Stewart clone who talks Deep Southern, so slowly and softly that Yankees need an interpreter. He has the slightly hunched intensity of a high school basketball shooting forward, the kind who never met a shot he didn't like. But he didn't play basketball. Maybe it's all those years of hunching over a scoped deer rifle.

Ed manages the lodge business, which is financed largely by his father, Mr. Ed Lee McMillan. Mr. Ed Lee is six-four, 250 pounds, with a voice that rattles crockery for miles around. Mr. Ed Lee (which is what everyone calls him) has the handshake of a hammermill. The McMillans don't have all the money in the world, but they have much of what Ross Perot doesn't. McMillan timber lands stretch all over south Alabama. T.R. Miller, Mr. Ed Lee's grandpa, founded a timber empire that became one of the nation's largest and the money has continued to accumulate.

But not at Cedar Creek Lodge. "They made $18,000 in four seasons on this place," Mr. Ed Lee says, "and that ain't exactly a good livin'. But you gotta have something to do with your money. That's what it's for."

The McMillans love deer hunting and the more impressive the deer, the better. Cedar Creek Lodge's 12,000 acres is a perfect playground for a genetic tinkerer who has the money to do it. So, Ed Third (there is a toddling Ed Fourth in the wings) is trying to upgrade buck antler size.

YOU CAN'T SHOOT LITTLE BUCKS at Cedar Creek. If it isn't a wall hanger, let it go. There are 200 doe permits for the Lodge, so anyone can shoot a deer if that's what's important. Ed plans to limit buck harvest for at least three years, maybe more. There's never been a Boone and Crockett typical rack from the property, but it's only a matter of time. Some racks have scored close to the 170-point minimum. The soil and diet are good and there are some genetic powerhouses roaming the woods and fields.

Chances are Cedar Creek will be limited to high roller trophy hunters. It may become tougher to get into than the Beverly Hills Country Club. For its first five years, all you needed was enough money to pay for the hunt. Ed had fines for hunters who shot little bucks, but never tried to collect. "Hell, he's just too softhearted," says one of his guides. So, Ed just cut back on the number of hunters (and his income).

The McMillans own about 2,500 acres and lease the rest for $5-10/acre/year. It's a mixture of croplands, pine thickets, bottomland hardwoods, trails, and food plots. There are nearly 150 treestands scattered over it, as well as several "condo" shooting houses and portable covered stands for bad weather use. Some overlook winter wheat fields or corn strips; others are at trail intersections or look down muddy field roads.

THE PLACE IS BISECTED by the stream that gives it its name. On this last day of my hunt, it was midafternoon in late January, last week of the long Alabama deer season. Where other states opt for a couple of weeks of intensive hunting, Alabama believes that hunter pressure equalizes over a more than two-month season.

But after two months-plus of being hunted, big bucks have learned the fine art of invisibility. You see them by where they've been, not where they are. You're unlikely to see one step into the middle of a green field and pose, like the Hartford stag.

But, on the other hand, to err is "Cervidaen." It was hard to believe it was January. It had been 15 degrees in St. Louis; it was 55 in Montgomery and they were grumbling about the cold. "Coldest day we've had all winter." A mild breeze ruffled the Spanish moss that clings to everything, God's cobwebs. The pines soughed and sighed uneasily, perhaps fearing I was a logger with a speculative eye.

Skinny Hallmark is a tribute to Southern cooking, 300 pounds and holding. We shared a room. "Do you snore?" he asked.

"I don't know," I said. "I'm always asleep."

Skinny dropped instantly into raucous sleep. It sounded as if prey were stalking through the lion house at the zoo. The nights were short and interrupted either by the blaring cacophony of Skinny at rest or by visions of the herd bull, neck swollen, eyes suspicious, lingering at the fringe of my killing field. The last morning, I woke bleary-eyed, trying to muster enthusiasm for a final hunt. There was no moon and the night was as dark as the Devil's coal bin. Ed McMillan dumped us at the mouth of a trail. "When you come to a fork, you go right, Skinny goes left. The stand is about 300 yards. You can't miss it." Sure, and the IRS will forgive my income tax debt, too.

I couldn't find the reflective trail markers and finally sat under a tree to wait for daylight. The woods came alive. It was just below freezing and my breath eddied white in the pale wash of dawn. I heard a turkey yelp and caught the motion of it as it flew off the roost. Then another and a third. One gobbled, perhaps feeling the season's first insistent whisper in his gonads. But there were no deer.

I got up and prowled the trail, looking for the stand. Then I saw a strip of reflective ribbon on the ground. It was the crucial first marker, invisible in the night.

I FOLLOWED THE RIBBON TRAIL through the woods and came on Skinny...in my stand. He hadn't been able to find his stand either, stumbled on mine and since there was no one in it, claimed squatter's rights.

I sat in the tree the rest of the morning, finally glimpsed a doe skulking through the woods to my right. I raised the rifle and steadied the crosshairs on her shoulder but didn't touch the trigger, lest I be tempted. Plenty of time. And Daniel said, "Lord, please deliver me from this cathouse."

Naturally, I would like to reduce the herd bull to bag, but I also would like to shoot a doe for its tender backstraps and roasts. There already was one in the freezer, but another would be insurance against Clintonomics gone awry.

Besides, everything has to be somewhere and since this was supposed to be the herd bull's home range, there was at least a chance that he would cross within gun range.

The herd bull didn't appear.

I LEFT THE WOODS NEAR LUNCH TIME. I saw a cedar tree with a diameter of four inches savaged as if by a brush hog. There were tracks that looked like those of a small elk. The herd bull had been there. I sighed and went to get something to eat. It would be brunch in effete Yankee circles, but down in sorghum land, it is a late breakfast. Biscuits and gravy, sausage and bacon. The gravy is made with thick milk, bacon drippings, copious infusion of sausage. It is a cardiologist's nightmare (or, if his bank account is low, a sweet fantasy). And it is the fuel by which Alabama deer hunters survive long hours perched in a tree.

During the midday break, Skinny beat me twice at eight ball, even though I'm a far better pool shooter than he is (such misplaced confidence still leads me to believe that I should have started at guard for the Keytesville High School Tigers, 40 years after the fact).

I went back to a stand overlooking a green field on the last afternoon. It was warm and I draped my jacket over the front of the stand, concealing me from the shoulders down. I laid the Remington rifle across my knees. The thing scares me--you have to take it off safe to operate the bolt which means that when you seat a round, you're a micropound away from torching one off into God-knows-where. I prefer my long guns to be safe-on-safe.

One of the hunters had told of firing a bullet through his best friend's car door, from the inside out while jacking a lever-action rifle. Everyone laughed but me. I wondered what in hell a hunter was doing with a loaded gun in a vehicle.

I looked at the big, mean-looking 7 mm magnum cartridge. Tiny bullet backed up by a case with Schwarzenegger biceps. Ought to punch a hole in a deer like a dart through a newspaper. I remembered the explosive "SNAP!" of .30 caliber bullets going through a paper target when I worked the pits in the Army and shuddered.

The shadows were long; sun slanting through the pines to my left. There were spots of shadow and sun in the field. A spike buck appeared like so much smoke at the far end of the field and I put the binoculars on him--long spikes, like antelope horns, but no forks, certainly no trophy rack.

NOT THE HERD BULL. Hunt winding down. Three days of little sleep, Southern fried everything. My stomach gave a little lurch and I belched sourly.

Then my eye caught a flicker of motion at the edge of the woods to the right. Probably another doe...but you never know. I crouched a bit behind the screen of my draped jacket and put my hand on the gun. Maybe this would be the herd bull. I know he's out there. I've seen the bare spots where he scraped and postured, spicing the woods for his lovelies. I've seen his big heart-shaped prints, like so many Valentines, seen his battered cedar rubbing post. He's left his business cards.

All he has to do is show up and we can consummate the deal. And then, into full view, stepped a magnificent turkey gobbler. The sun speared him, turning his dark back to a shimmer of iridescent color. His beard was full and round, nearly a foot long. His head was high, his step stately.

He wasn't my deer herd bull, but he was the bull of his herd. He marched to the middle of the field and stopped, head swiveling. I knew he was just checking for danger, but it seemed that he was conducting an inspection of the kingdom and was finding it good. Suddenly, I didn't care if I shot the herd bull or not. It was enough to know he was somewhere around and it was more than enough to pay homage to his peers.

The gobbler and I shared the last few moments of the day until the sun fell below the trees, and then we went our different ways.