In planetary bow shocks, binary particle collisions cannot mediate the conversion of upstream bulk flow energy into downstream thermal energy, and wave-particle interactions in part assume this role. Understanding the contribution of waves to shock heating requires knowledge of the modes that propagate in different classes of shocks; we describe the growth patterns of whistler waves within the Venusian bow shock. Waves with frequencies $f \lesssim 0.1 f_{ce}$, where $f_{ce}$ is the electron cyclotron frequency, preferentially grow at local minima in the background magnetic field $|B_0|$. Quasi-parallel propagating whistlers with frequencies between $0.1 f_{ce}$ and $0.3 f_{ce}$ are strongest at the downstream ramps of these $|B_0|$ minima. Immediately downstream of the shock, whistlers with frequencies $f < 0.1 f_{ce}$ propagate more than 80$^\circ{}$ oblique from $\vec{B}_0$ and have elliptically polarized $\vec{B}$ fields. A prediction from kinetic theory of the orientation of these waves’ $\vec{B}$ ellipses is confirmed to high accuracy.