Jeff Phillips is the curator of the Star City Whitetails website (starcitywhitetails.com) which provides Virginia whitetail hunters with information on hunting whitetails in the state. (Photo courtesy of Jeff Phillips)
December 08, 2018
By Mark Fike
Jeff Phillips, an outdoor writer who focuses on featuring Virginia hunters in his stories, is a well-known name in Virginia hunting households and clubs. Phillips is the curator of the Star City Whitetails website and Star City Whitetails Facebook page . These pages provide Virginia white-tailed deer hunters with detailed, up-to-date and relevant information.
Phillips has been an avid whitetail fanatic since his first hunt at age 12 with his grandfather. Since then, he lives for the times he can get afield in search of a mature buck. He hunts turkey and fishes a little, but his focus is on white-tailed deer hunting and sharing his passion and knowledge with others.
Although Phillips has a day job, he spends many hours updating his site, making videos of his personal hunts, keeping the Star City Whitetails Facebook page on the cutting edge and, of course, hunting every chance he gets.
Phillips says he’s truly inspired by the stories of others and their incredible hunts and he does not look at the tasks of running two sites as a burden at all.
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He lives to hunt and he likes to talk about it, share stories and posts videos of his hunts. He says his wife is his biggest supporter.
Additionally, his popular Big Buck Photo Contest has been running for seven years. Any Virginia hunter can enter by submitting a photo of a harvested Virginia whitetail buck. He does not want photos of deer hanging off a tailgate, deer with Uncle Joe hovering in the background or those of bucks lying or hanging in the garage or shed.
Photos for his contest need to be respectful and in a natural environment to be in the running for a prize. This season, he had $8,000 in prizes donated and offered for the contest, including deer hunts, guided spring gobbler hunts and taxidermy offers.
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What does Phillips get for his efforts to share his knowledge and information he gleans from other hunters?
He has made some tremendous friends, met great people and they all have the same passion for white-tailed deer.
Additionally, Phillips finds that listening to the stories and then relaying them to followers of his page and site is motivating. He lives vicariously through these stories of dream bucks like the ones he hopes to someday see in front of himself in the woods.
Star City Whitetails has an organic following; Phillips does not ask people to “like” his page or site. People find the site or page and share it on their own. The site is named after Roanoke, his hometown, which is known as the Star City of the South.
Probably one of the biggest compliments he receives is that people acknowledge not only what a great site he has and how useful and full of knowledge it is, but they also note that they can see he puts a lot of constant effort and time into it to maintain its greatness. He keeps tabs on submissions and posts and puts them up quickly. The other observation is that his site and page is family friendly meaning your teenager can enjoy it without running into foul content.
