Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles If you were only going to hunt deer.................?

Either a Remington model seven stainless or model 700 mountain rifle stainless in 7mm-08 with 140 grain Partitions or 308 with 165 Partitions

^^^This would be my first choice^^^

My second choice would be my favorite of all the rifles I own. It's a early 1980's Winchester XTR Model 70 Featherweight in 7x57. Mine has the rare Factory Sights and wears a 2.5x8 Leupold VXII. Out of all my hunting rifles, it's usually my go to gun for 90% of my hunting needs.

And in staying with the thread theme, for deer hunting only, and if I hunted in TX, only, my 3rd choice would be one of my heavy barreled AR15's in .223 with a 60 gr Partition. TX Deer have small bodies and are easy to kill, in general. I use it quite a bit for culling does at the Ranch.

I would use my standard Ruger Mark II 06'.
No reason to change with what I am accustomed to, and have learned to shoot pretty well.
Also huge supply of ammo available wherever I go, if I'm not using my own reloads.

If it isn't broke.....

:-)

A custom Remington Model 7 in 260 Remington would be my pick.

Yep.

I have a 20" T3 lite .308 and it seems to do a good job on the typical mule deer and elk around here. They keep tipping over, and my wife keeps sticking the pieces in the crock pot.

The only deer around were I live are white tail,so about any center fire would do.My major requirement is a dependable scope..In the past few years I've used a250-3000 in a 99,and found it to be a pretty sencible whitetail cartridge for my style of hunting,which is open fields.If I were more of a thick woods hunter,I would probably want something a little heavier,not because I think heavy bullets wade brush,but because they provide a little better margin of error

Moosemike: Considering Mule Deer and Antelope I would go with a heavy barrel Remington 700 in 270 Winchester topped with a higher powered variable scope like a 4.5x14 Leupold.
And I would definitely use the wonderful 130 grain Nosler Ballistic Tip bullets!
I just recently killed a trophy 12 point (6x6!) Whitetailed Buck with my 270 Sendero, Leupold 6.5x20 variable and the above mentioned Nosler bullets.
Which brings me to the "difficult" part of your inquiry.
I have Hunted Blacktailed Deer (a lot!) AND Whitetailed Deer (a pretty fair amount) and those two species "normally" would be better suited with a different Rifle. The 270 caliber is wonderful for these two species but the scope and heavy, longer barrel is not normally the better choice.
In normal Whitetail Deer terrain/cover (NOT where I now Hunt them!) and for Blacktails in their normal terrain/cover I think I would opt for the 308 Winchester caliber with a top quality 165 grain bullet (I use the Nosler Partitions).
I have a nifty old Winchester Model 88 (lever action) with a Leupold 3x9 compact variable scope on it that I have used on these Deer in typical thicker cover and their more rolling broken terrain.
Sorry I just could NOT stretch my answer DOWN to just ONE Rifle.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy