In addition to the reasons listed in my first post, hunting whitetail can extremely fun to hunt because of the many different methods and weapons.

You can standhunt, stillhunt, drive them, use dogs(not very sporting in my opinion), call or rattle them in, extreme long range, such as beanfields or across canyons.

Where I come from, Pennsylvania, there is this small group of derranged hunters that shoot from 600 to 1000 yds regularly across canyons, using very specialized rifles costing a small fortune and weigh as much as a small car(only joking), but 32" barrels are the norm and the gun will top the scales at 25+ lbs, firing such exotics as .30/.378, .338/378, and various .338 wildcats based on the 50BMG case. They use old navy range finders on tripods to determine the exact distance and have their Leupolds jacked up to 48X and 60X on a regular basis.

The opposite are friends of mine, who hunt with primitive weapons, such as the longbow with wooden arrows and shoot their deer inside 15 yds consisently.

So you can hunt whitetails with a handgun, shotgun, rifle, muzzleloader, latest cammed bow with carbon fibre arrows, longbow, recurve, or crossbow, and still never be "undergunned" in the field. Not many animals will give that range of hunting variety or experiences.

The terrain is just a extreme, the swamps of Florida, the deserts of Texas and Arizona, the Carolina beanfields, the canyons of Pennsylvania, the cold and bitter wilds of Upstate New York and Maine, to the flat lake country of Michigan and Minnesota.

And while you can collect a few does or spikes relatively easy for the freezer, collecting a record class buck is one of the most difficult trophies you will ever try for. Many people have hunted a lifetime to just collect the exalted 8 point, I did not have one on my wall yet.

The whitetail is a very worthy trophy to pursue.

Lynn Miller