How long the state's good hunting for trophy-class bucks will last depends on different factors. "To say we won't begin experiencing overpopulation in some areas is to ignore 100 years of history," Fox said. It will happen; it's just a matter of when and how many deer it will take to exceed the carrying capacity of a given area."

Don't consider that gloom and doom, however. Fox noted that Kansas hunters took as many as 99,000 deer in a season, back in 2000. There have been recent years when permits were sold in such a way that a hunter could legally harvest up to eight Sunflower State deer.

It's not like that now, but "Fox and Company" can bring that kind of population-reduction management back if necessary. That's not likely to happen any time soon, though.

For now, hunters around the state have good numbers of deer and even better numbers of mature bucks -- certainly in comparison to the situation several years ago.

One of the most interesting aspects of the search for trophy whitetails is the varying terrain in the units Fox noted. Unit 10, in the very northeast along the Missouri River bluffs, is wonderful timber that resembles acreage you'd expect to find in Pennsylvania, New York or Michigan.

Unit 14 offers a mix of small woodlots, rolling hills with pockets of cover near agriculture and, on its western edge, the tallgrass prairie of the Flint Hills. Unit 16 is more wide open, with prairie and river-based timber habitat.

NEBRASKA
Imagine a hunting area with a deer density that some might think is approaching high, but with an age structure that clearly shows the opportunity to encounter mature bucks on a regular basis.

If you like whitetails, you'll find just such a place in Nebraska' Blue Southeast Unit. Figures from state biologist Kit Hams are pretty amazing.

"In general, the eastern areas of the state have higher deer densities that in the west," Hams noted. "Some places in eastern Nebraska can be as high as 15 to 20 deer per square mile."

Blue Southeast isn't necessarily that high, but it's also a lot higher than parts of western Nebraska, where density is as low as 1 deer per square mile. That said, data collected by Hams reveal that 60 percent of the bucks taken last season from Blue Southeast were at least 2 years old. The Wahoo and Elkhorn Units had percentages of 2-year-old-plus deer of 43 and 51, respectively. Those are outstanding numbers, and they suggest an age structure that favors hunters' chances of encountering a mature back.

When it comes to mule deer, you should look at the Frenchman Unit in the southwest, where 61 percent of the bucks were 2-plus years old. In the Sandhills Unit, where two-thirds of the deer are mulies, 76 percent of the bucks were 2-plus years old. And in the Pine Ridge, where it's a 60-40 mulie-whitetail split, 64 percent of the bucks were 2-plus years old.

"In the Sandhills, the whitetail population, which is only about one-third of all the deer, boasted 82 percent of the bucks at 2-plus years old," Hams said. "When it comes to the age structure of our deer herd overall, the percentages of older bucks are higher than they've ever been."