No. 2 on our list of critical elements is nutrition. Feed them and they will thrive. In this regard, Illinois is a virtual petri dish for growing trophy whitetails. From cornfields to suburban landscaping, the shelves are amply stocked with groceries, and no critter within our borders goes hungry. Even the concrete-encrusted population center of Cook County has produced at least one trophy-racked deer in every classification from 125 inches through 200 inches.

That brings us to our third critical element -- age. Dreams aside, fawns and yearlings do not carry bragging rights on their brows. Antler development takes time. We have a dynamic impact upon whether that time is granted through herd-management strategies, hunting standards and harvest pressure.

How these factors translate to trophy quality can be visualized to some degree by comparing harvest success in each scoring category.

The largest slice of the pie is the category comprised of bucks scoring in the 140-inch range. Despite their best intentions when going afield, few hunters can simply watch as a 140-inch rack meanders past their stand. In fact, over the life of the program, a full 52 percent of all bucks registered were under the 150-inch mark.

From this point upward as scores increase, the frequency for harvest drops exponentially. The reason is clear. If the largest percentages of deer are killed before reaching the 150-inch mark, fewer and fewer mature bucks remain to reach higher trophy status. Thirteen percent of big bucks are taken in the 160-class, half as many at 170, and so on. They can't get big if they don't grow old.

However, an interesting trend is establishing itself. Over the last five years, the harvest trends have moved toward taking fewer small bucks, and the results have had impressive consequences for trophy hunters.

Historically, the 150-inch mark basically cut the records in half, with slightly more falling below that line. Over the last half-decade, deer above that line have comprised a full 64 percent of the records. While we still see the exponentially smaller piece of pie as rack size increases, the individual slices are much healthier.

As a percentage of the total, deer in the 190-inch range have increased by half, and those above 200 have doubled. On the other end of the scale, deer falling below the mark of 150 fell from 52 percent of all registered bucks to only 36 percent.

Simply put, let them grow older and they will get bigger racks.

Age is obviously a key component of top trophy quality in Illinois, and fairly recent changes in our approach to hunting have helped tip the scales. Deer numbers have continued to climb. That, in and of itself, increases the odds of the individual deer living through any given fall season.

On top of that, we have modified our hunting practices to better address doe populations. Through the killing of more females, there is a direct correlation on buck-to-doe relationships. With more deer afield and a higher percentage of those deer being bucks, the odds begin to mount that the individual buck will have additional years added to its life.

Finally, the hunter's perspective is changing, and the numbers support this conclusion. When that 140-class buck walks by, and the hunter suppresses the urge to take him, the deer's potential for making 150 and above has been realized.

Healthy bucks with monster racks are indicative of a healthy deer herd and the numbers promise a very bright future.