LEAH, Ga. - There were no deer in Columbia County when John Eubank learned to hunt.

In fact, there were few deer anywhere in Georgia.

"I was a bird hunter, basically," said Eubank, who turned 90 on Nov. 3. "It was all cotton and corn up here - and we hunted quail and doves."

The Ridge Road native's first encounter with a whitetail came about quite by chance in 1940.

"They had brought in a few deer from somewhere, and let 'em loose up there above Atlanta," he recalled. "After about 10 years they had enough where they allotted a limited number of hunters."

Eubank and two friends applied and were drawn for what became Georgia's first public hunt on a state wildlife management area.

"What I remember about it was, it rained for the first two days and my friends got tired of it, and they went back home," he said. "I stayed and hunted the third day."

His reward: a nine-pointer which, according to state historical records, was among just 22 deer taken in what later was known as Blue Ridge Game Management Area.

"In those days a lot of people had never seen a deer, much less killed one," Eubank recalled. "I wanted to have this one mounted, and nobody around here knew how to mount one."

Eventually, he found an apprentice taxidermist in Atlanta who was willing to give it a try.

"At the time, it cost me $4 to mount that deer," he smiled. "It seemed like a lot back then."

The old buck has adorned Eubank's gameroom for many decades.

During the same period, Georgia's whitetail herd has expanded to include more than 1.2 million animals, requiring an annual harvest of about 400,000 just to keep their population in check. But it didn't happen overnight.

Unregulated hunting and trapping of deer led to their decline in Georgia, and by 1920 they had vanished entirely except for small pockets of whitetails in dense coastal swamps.

The first efforts at restoring deer were devised by state wildlife ranger Arthur Woody, who helped establish Chattahoochee National Forest in the 1920s.

In 1928, Woody bought six deer with his own funds and released them in what later would become the Blue Ridge Wildlife Management Area. The Forest Service followed suit with three more stockings - totaling about 50 deer - and private sportsman groups released deer, too.

By 1940, Georgia was able to hold its first public hunt, the one attended by Eubank and his friends.

The efforts continued as more and more deer were brought in from Wisconsin, Texas, North Carolina and the isolated barrier islands along Georgia's coastline. During World War II, deer were trapped in Kentucky and released in north Georgia.

According to records maintained by Georgia's Wildlife Resources Division, 168 separate stockings of whitetails occurred in subsequent decades as efforts to restore the animals to all Georgia counties gained speed.

Most operations were small, involving four to maybe two dozen deer. But in 1959, at the urging of hunters and outdoorsmen who wanted funding to expand the program, the stockings mushroomed.

According to state records, more than 1,679 deer were imported and released in dozens of locations during the next six years.

Generally, 1965 is considered the end of the era of restocking deer in Georgia.

After that, with the protection offered by regulated hunting seasons and bag limits, the deer did fine by themselves.

Eubank, meanwhile, still enjoys hunting the deer that thrive among the now-timbered forests that once comprised his family farm.

"I go every chance I get," he smiled.

Reach Rob Pavey at 868-1222, ext. 119 or rob.pavey@augustachronicle.com.