The other feature to scout for is travel corridors. With only small wooded areas, deer moving between patches are limited in their options. Their movements will be restricted to places that offer some type of cover as they move from one to another. Keying on these whitetail highways is an excellent strategy for finding a buck on the move.

Not only can excellent hunting be found in urban areas, but there is also a decent chance at a trophy buck. With no rifle hunting in most areas and fewer hunters hounding the bucks, many of the animals have a better than average chance to live a few years longer and grow a big rack.

Myles Montgomery is a veteran suburban deer hunter who sets up on travel corridors. "With subdivisions all around, this limits the travel routes that these deer use. It takes patience in knowing that sooner or later a big buck will come through," he advised.

Late last season Montgomery knew that a big buck was around one suburban tract, because he had some trail camera photos and had even seen the buck once at dusk.

"A nice 6-pointer stepped out first, but I decide to let him go. Ten minutes later the 10-pointer came out," Montgomery recounted.

Montgomery used an Excalibur crossbow to harvest the whitetail, which featured a 140-class rack with a 20-inch inside spread. In fact, his father-in-law Roy Heard had bagged a 120-class 9-pointer from the same suburban stretch of woods just a month earlier!

Opportunity to hunt can be great in some areas. In most states, archery seasons span most of the hunting months. Also, since many of us already live in the suburban areas, scheduling a quick hunt before or after work hours is a possibility. Sitting on a deer stand for the last hour of the day can be one of the most productive ways of unwinding and bagging a deer. For the bowhunter who has a woodlot to hunt near house, this provides a golden opportunity to arrow a whitetail without driving for hours or being away from home the whole weekend.

Not only is there ample time, but most archery seasons also allow either-sex hunting, so any deer coming by your stand will represent an opportunity for harvesting some venison. Game departments almost universally want hunters to take does in order to control the herd; in urban areas, this is an even more important imperative.

While these city deer are accustomed to people and are used to hearing cars, kids, and dogs, don't think that they're total cinches to shoot. They're still wild, and by nature very cautious. The mature bucks travel mainly at night, and being positioned upwind of an urban whitetail's nose will still result in a white flag bounding away.

But by hunting food sources and narrow travel corridors between human habitats, the city archer stands a good chance of seeing and getting a shot at an urbanized deer if he puts his time in.