Last year was pretty good to me. On opening day in central Wyoming, I took the best mule deer I've had a chance at in about 20 years. Then, in early December, from a deer stand in Georgia, I shot my best whitetail in a decade.

The two areas couldn't have been more different. In Wyoming I was hunting in high sagebrush hills cut by fingers of aspen; in Georgia I was in dead-flat ground in the middle of a pine forest. On both hunts I carried the same rifle: A .264 Winchester Magnum, 26-inch barrel, laminated stock, built by Serengeti Rifles in Kalispell, Montana. Interestingly, the shots were somewhat similar, the whitetail at 200 yards and the mule deer at about 235.

Back when I was a young and aspiring writer, a story idea that was sure to sell was a piece on mule deer rifles or "western" deer rifles. In those days there were a lot more mule deer in the West, but the whitetail population explosion was just beginning. So another standard story back then was something along the lines of "eastern deer rifles."

We "all-knowing" gun writers did our best to keep the rifles and cartridges for each situation completely separate. In those days, recommended western deer rifles were generally scoped bolt actions chambered to flat-shooting cartridges. Eastern deer rifles were lever actions from Winchester and Marlin or perhaps pump guns and semiautos from Remington.

Today, of course, a scoped .270 bolt action is a very standard eastern deer rig, and the line between western deer rifle and eastern deer rifle has blurred considerably as whitetail hunting has changed. In many parts of their range, whitetails have moved out of thick cover to agricultural areas, where a bit more reach is often desirable. Not to mention the fact that whitetails have expanded their range into regions of the West where once only mulies were found.

Changes in mule deer hunting have been subtler. Then and now, the mule deer is a creature of open country, so the same flat shooting, scoped rifles touted in the 1970s remain fine choices today. One big change, however, is that there are fewer mule deer today, and a whole lot fewer big bucks. This means that an opportunity on a trophy-class mulie is truly more precious, so it's ever more important to have the right equipment so as to best capitalize on a chance when it comes along.

I suppose there are specialized circumstances for hunting mule deer where a fast, hard-hitting close-cover rifle might be the best choice. Honestly, though, I'm just not aware of any. Blacktails in the rain forests of the Pacific Northwest are different, but with mule deer I have never seen hunting situations where one can count on a really close shot.

I also don't know of any hunting situation where a long shot is an absolute certainty. So while a proper mule deer rifle needs a bit of reach, I wouldn't want one that was too heavy to maneuver or that had a scope with so high a minimum magnification that I couldn't take a close shot if one came along. (Interestingly, I think this pretty much describes the average whitetail rifle today.)

In my own battery, I can't say that I have any "whitetail rifles," unless you count the mandatory .30-30. I do have quite a few "deer rifles." Naturally, being a serious fan of the great old .30-06, I have more than a few rifles so chambered, but if I were going on a serious mule deer hunt, I wouldn't pick any of 'em.