As many have already said, whitetail aren't particularly hard to kill so many bullet and caliber combinations work. It's more about desired results that narrow your choices. I design bullets as a profession and hunt as a passionate life style all over the world. So I get a lot of feed back from hunters using our bullets and personal field observations as well as data from controlled terminal ballistic studies.
If my objective is to drop whitetail deer on the spot without excessive loss of venison, or resorting to central nervous system shot placement, I would choose a highly frangible bullet impacting at high velocity and behind the shoulder shot placement.
I use a 30-378 Weatherby most often and with a 215 grain Berger hybrid target bullet at 3150 fps muzzle velocity for my main hunting rifle. This is ridiculously over powered for a whitetail deer unless the range is 600 to 1200 yards and then it is about right.
However, if I were only hunting whitetail deer and only hunting at traditional ranges then I would choose a smaller diameter bullet but stick with the highly frangible design and behind the shoulder shot placement. A 25-06 Remington or .257 Weatherby with a 115 grain Berger VLD will, with high certainty drop them in their tracks.
The mechanism at work here is the rapid deceleration from the bullet fragmenting and loosing mass. This rapid deceleration results in a very wide wound as the hydraulic force radiates away from the wound channel which in turn causes a wide area of electrical force to also radiate away from the wound channel. This effect is often referred to as hydrostatic shock.
If the electrical field is sufficient to over power the solar plexus nerve bundle located between the heart and spinal column, the deer will collapse. This is because the signals from the solar plexus overwhelm the brain and cause it to go into shock. The animal dies quickly because of the loss of oxygen supply to the brain due to the disruption of the cardiovascular functions.
If the hunting conditions were such that I could not control precise shot placement then I would choose a bullet that could penetrate the entire length of the animal. When shooting driven game in Europe I use a 9.3x62 with a 286 grain Nosler Partition at 2400 fps muzzle velocity. In this situation I don't know if I'll be shooting a 70 lb roe deer or a 500 pound red stag or wild boar next, and at typical ranges of 20-75 yards this combination simply hammers them. Still, if shot placement isn't right, there is some tracking to be done.
I have also used my 9.3x62 on whitetail and they will typically run a short distance if the behind the shoulder shot placement is used.
But they are usually easy to recover and loss of venison is negligible due to the low impact velocity.
So it really is up to what matters most to you, conservation of venison, zero flight distance, long range capability, certainty of shot placement, and many other factors should be considered.