Many male friends have told me how lucky I am to have a wife who understands and enjoys hunting. Judge my "luck" for yourself.

If a whitetail buck has grown to maturity in a hunted pasture, I think he deserves the title of "trophy" regardless of the size of his antlers.

As this hunting season unfolds, hunters with a little imagination can amuse themselves on slow days by mentally cataloging the variety of antler shapes, sizes and variations of whitetail bucks.

That's what certain Indian tribes called the annual rutting period of the local whitetails. It's not a bad description, actually, of the three or four week peak mating season of our most plentiful native deer.

Last week we mentioned a few mysteries about whitetails' reproductive rituals. Now we'll examine some things we do know. We know that the timing of the rut varies with latitude. For example, the annual mating festivities in the South Texas Brush Country begin about one month later than in the Hill Country.

In my library are more than 100 books on hunting whitetail deer, including all the most significant volumes back to the very first one in 1881, the classic "The Still Hunter" by Van Dyke. Many of these are good reading, if only to observe how American hunters' understanding of deer behavior has evolved during these 125 years.

For 22 years, through Y2K, my wife and I owned Los Cuernos Ranch down on the border near Laredo in Webb County. A lot of interesting critters lived there, the most fascinating of which was a whitetail buck named (naturally) Bucky.

There is solid archeological evidence that deer antlers have always fascinated humans. Even tens of thousands of years ago, back in Paleolithic times, antler material was used not only for tools but also as the medium for artistic engravings and carvings, some of which probably had religious significance in that culture.

Last week we spoke of aging whitetail deer on the hoof. This week we find out how to tell whether we were right last week.

Most of my hunting friends and I regard any old buck as a trophy buck, regardless of antler size. The reason is that any buck that has survived four or more hunting seasons has obviously developed all the hunter-evasion skills and is just as hard to get a shot at as one with a Boone & Crockett rack. Taking him in fair chase, then, is just as challenging and worthy of pride and admiration as collecting 200-point head.