WAITSBURG - The Henze hunting party got its first deer of the season Monday morning.

The five men from Waitsburg and Aberdeen flushed out the 4-point white tail buck by spreading out around the brush on privately owned wheat lands north of town after walking the fields for more than a mile from the nearest road.

It was a cool dewy morning, the sun barely up to illuminate the gently sloping landscape around them. It didn't take them long to spot the buck, to make sure it was large enough to harvest and to get it in the crosshairs of their Remington rifles.

The grain-fed animal was about four years old and weighed some 150 pounds.

Neil Henze, his brother Dan, Dan's son Dane, and Dan's friends Mike Lentz and Steve Nelson from the Grays Harbor area, plan to butcher the deer themselves for venison steaks, then have the rest made into pepperoni and sausage.

For the men, who span two generations, this has been a fall tradition for decades, passed down from their fathers who passed it down from theirs all the way back to the time of the first settlers of the Touchet River Valley.

Saturday marked the beginning of hunting season for deer, bringing hundreds of hunters to the rolling fields and foothills of the Blue Mountains, following in the footsteps of their ancestors and their own tracks from many previous years.

All indications point to a season that should be at least as good as last year's.

"Overall, hunters had a decent season for elk and deer last fall," said Dave Ware, game manager for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. "That should be the case this year as well."

On Friday night, traveling hunters from throughout the Northwest began rolling into the towns behind the wheel of trucks pulling camper trailers, wearing the required orange vests over camouflage, filling restaurants and, in some cases, the homes of local relatives, preparing and anticipating an annual ritual that will last for weeks.

"We've been doing it so long," said Neil Henze, who was barely a teenager when he started hunting with his dad and brothers four decades ago. "We always look forward to the fall."

Hunting season in this part of southeast Washington draws hunters from far and wide because its terrain is accessible and game is relatively abundant.

Neil Henze's nephew, Dan Henze's son Dane, who just moved to Waitsburg from Aberdeen, has been hunting with his dad and uncle since he was 14. Dane likes to come to Touchet Valley because of his family roots, but also because tracking and finding deer isn't nearly as challenging as it is in the more densely wooded lands west of the Cascades.

Here, he might see dozens of deer on a good day. There, he's lucky to spot two or three, he said.

Regional Fish and Wildlife Biologist Paul Wik said there "should be excellent opportunity for white tails" in some areas of southeast Washington, despite an overall population decline in recent years.

"The foothills of the Blue Mountains and river bottoms hold the largest concentrations of white tail deer," he said. But much of that land is in private ownership so hunters need to seek permission from landowners, Wik observed.

That's exactly what the Henzes and their friends did. A wheat grower some 10 miles north of Waitsburg gave them permission to hunt on his land.

It's the best option these years for hunters, who find more and more lands in the mountains posted as timber companies sell off their lands to individual owners, Lentz said.

One hunting option more hunters are taking advantage of is the program offered by wind farm owners Puget Sound Energy and PacifiCorp.

Anne Walsh, senior environmental/ communications manager for PSE's Hopkins Ridge wind farm, said her company started its hunting program on the lands it leases for the wind turbines in 2006.

About 850 people each year register to hunt on the wind turbines land, whose boundary is a mere 20 minutes from Dayton, Walsh said.

To register for wind farm hunting permits, hunters can go to PSE and PacifiCorp websites for the application and rules. The permit must be picked up from the Last Resort store on the upper Tucannon River.

There wasn't much access to lands for hunting in that area before the utility companies' program and camp store owner Jim MacArthur said he's glad to see it open to sportsmen.

"I really hate to see lands closed off," he said. "My hat goes off to these companies. They really went out of their way to make it happen."

The wind farm companies hire private security teams to make sure all hunters gave a permit and follow the rules. But there haven't been many issues with enforcement. Hunters often report poachers and other offenders.

"They keep the bad (hunters) from giving it a bad reputation," Walsh said.

To some degree, the reputation of hunters is on the Henze party's minds.

Some hunters who get around in the back country on quads plow up the fields as they cover long distances to track game, discouraging some landowners from opening their property to the sport.

It's one of the reasons why the Henzes and their friends cover their terrain on foot.

"We work pretty hard at it," Dan Henze said, estimating the group walks as many as four hours at a time in pursuit of game.

But there's another reason why the party isn't as interested in motorizing their hunt. To them, the activity isn't about setting records or filling the freezer. They're happy getting just a few animals for the season, getting exercise and hanging out.

"It's about camaraderie," Dan Henze said. "We like to spend time with each other."