Former Soil Conservation Service employee and longtime writer Mat Taylor offers his outdoors column for Dispatch Record readers. He can be contacted at (254) 518-2262 or via e-mail at mntaylor@agristar.net. It has been a wet October, and I have received almost 11 inches of rain for the month.

During September and October, more than 16 inches has fallen on our ranch in east Lampasas County. That is onehalf the yearly average. It already has rained more than the yearly average of 32 inches, and two months remain in the year.

The first seven months of 2009 were hot and dry. I started feeding my cattle and the deer in early summer. There has been a marked increased in vegetation, however, as the countryside is now wet and green due to the rains. The acorn crop this fall was one of the best I have seen.

How will this affect the general deer season that opens Saturday 30 minutes before sunrise? I recently talked by phone to Mike Krueger, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's district leader for the Edwards Plateau (Hill Country) Ecological Region, and Derrick Wolters, TPWD wildlife biologist for Lampasas, Coryell and Bell counties.

They both commented on the large acorn crop and said it will affect the number of deer coming to corn feeders.

Krueger said in his travels across the region, it seems that every live oak tree produced an acorn crop, and under many of the trees there were deer eating the acorns. Wolters also said the ground was covered with acorns under most oaks trees in his three-county area.

The biologists said with the recent rains, there also is a plentiful supply of native forbs and other plants for deer to eat, and that will affect the number of deer coming to feeders.

On our ranch before the rains, there were as many as 16 deer coming to the feeder in front of my house. After the rains, only two or three deer now come to the corn, and on some days none show up.

In Texas, it is legal to bait deer with corn, and most hunters will sit in a blind near a corn feeder and wait for a legal buck to come get a bite. This year with all the native vegetation, hunters may have a long wait.

If we have an early frost, however, many plants will go dormant, and with fewer acorns I expect hunting to improve later in the season.

Krueger and Wolters both said they expect an average deer season in the number of deer harvested and buck antler size.

With good forage available, the deer should be in excellent body condition, they added. Even with an average deer season in Texas -- which has the largest deer herd in the nation -- hunting still will be very good.

Every year TPWD conducts several spotlight deer surveys in Lampasas and adjoining counties. Wolters said this year's survey indicated about the same number of deer as last year. On the plus side, he noted the fawn survival rate this year was much higher than in the previous several years.

On our family ranch, I have observed a number of smaller bucks, but I also have seen several bucks with above-average antler development. I think this can be attributed to the antler restrictions that allow younger bucks to mature.

I recently visited with my friend Jed Dunning, who owns a local taxidermy and deer processing firm.

Dunning thinks that despite the early dry conditions and wet fall, it will be a good deer season. He bases this on the fact that he received a larger number of deer than normal during the archery season. He also has received more deer this year from Managed Land Deer Permit ranches. The largest deer scored over 170 points and came from a MLD ranch in nearby Mills County.

The special youth-only deer season was held this past weekend, but I haven't heard any reports on it yet.

Therefore, despite the wet weather, I think it will be a good deer season. Whether you kill a good buck or not, it is always enjoyable to spend quality time in the outdoors, especially with family and friends. The only downside may be that if the rain continues, it may become difficult for some hunters to get to their blinds.