the general deer tags can be used for either whitetail or mule deer in most units while the whitetail tags have some extra seasons and allow a lot more doe hunting, so if you were to buy a general tag the seasons for unit 1 for example, you could hunt with a rifle from oct 10-31 for whitetail bucks only, november 1-dec 1 for bucks of either species and a doe whitetail could be killed anytime from oct 10-dec 31, whereas with a whitetail tag you could only shoot whitetail bucks and does from oct 10-dec 31, kinda a bad example since the seasons run together but you get the point hopefully.