Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters General Purpose Rifle, your recipe and why

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Agree! I love my 270 Win. If Alaska is included then it would have to be my 7.5 lb (with scope) Rem XCR II in 375 Weatherby. It's light, shoots flat and hits hard enough for the big bears and has the TriNyte very weather resistant treatment over stainless steel.

Mine is my 7 Mashburn Super.

P64 70 action, Trijicon 3-18, McM handle..



Works decent for what I want.

I can’t tell for certain whether this is intended to be a hunting-only thread. If so, disregard the below.

If “do it all” involves hunting and also self-defense, I apologize in advance for not being old-school, but this would be mine for “a do it all rifle”:





My .308 DPMS GII Hunter with the 20” bbl is the most accurate semi rifle I ever have shot. I can get 0.3” – 0.4” groups with Nosler-loaded 168gr ABLR bullets when I do my part. It never has failed to fire or cycle properly.

With one shot in the right place, it will kill just about anything on the planet. And it can fire 21 rounds in seconds.

Weighs 7-lbs 12-oz before scoping.

This guy found similar accuracy:

“The GII Hunter I tested blew me away with its accuracy. I was primarily testing that rifle for our sister publication American Hunter and didn’t even plan to include it in this article, but the performance is too impressive to ignore. American Hunter uses three, three-shots groups with three different loads as a test protocol. With the Black Hills 168-gr. load, the first group measured 0.30”. That was the best, but the average of three groups was 0.47”. The average for all nine groups was 0.80”. From an out-of-the-box AR-L shooting factory ammunition, that is very impressive accuracy.”
https://www.americanrifleman.org/articles/2020/2/6/review-dpms-gii-ar-308

Very similar. J C Higgins Model 50 in 30-06 with Timney trigger, side swing safety, treated with Birdsong’s Black-T coating, in a B&C Medalist stock with a Burris 3-9x40 scope in steel Talley rings. I figure the Mauser action and features I described make it about as versatile and disaster proof as is possible. Or I could easily put one of my fixed power scopes on it, and may do that. I’ve a Leupold 6x42 with heavy duplex reticle that is a candidate.

For quite a few years now it has been a Win model 70 classic in 7 mag.

Pac nor bbl, Mcmillan stock and lately a Burris fullfield 3X9. I have other choices but for some reason I seem to grab this one most times.

I'm also not a fan..

The caliber may have a lot of overlap, but how the rifle is set up for the conditions can be drastically different. My woods rifles used for still hunting, drives and stands feature mid-bores, shorter barrels with lower power variables. My open country rigs have longer barrels, higher MV cartridges and higher magnification optics. Neither is optimum outside of the conditions they're set up for.

Or in golf terms, I don't drive with a wedge.

Looks like it worked well.

But. . . you CAN play a challenging round of golf with a 3-iron or a 5-iron,

Many favor the ubiquitous 30-06 or 270. To each his/her own. When I started hunting big game + small critters, a 12ga was most practical where I hunted. Then a borrowed .303 Brit, a borrowed 30-30, etc, until I could afford something of my own: a 12ga bolt-action with a full choke. I didn't know anything about chokes re slugs, but it was a great bird gun. Later, I got a used military converted to a .30-06 - which I handloaded, then a real used .30-06 in M70 PF. Handloaded mostly 165s at ~2800 fps. Good deer rifle. BUT, being a "gun nut" (didn't know it until then), I wanted to try something different: 7 BAR, .300 Win 70 XTR, .338 WM in a Sako FS Carbine, etc, untill I hit gold dust in mediums and big bores.

Bob
www.bigbores.ca

Since I (like most) am not sure exactly what is meant by "General Purpose Rifle", I'll allow that this rifle seems to be the most frequently used tool in my toolbox these days. It'll work adequately on nearly anything I run into, so it gets carried around for general purposes like chores and such. It'll also work in a defensive role, a varmint role, or a practice/plinking role. Kills deer and hogs just fine when it happens to be in hand.

18" SS-barreled rifle-gassed AR15 with a can and whatever flavor of scope I might be trying out. Generally shooting 77TMK or 65SGKBT.

Already have that rifle and it is the core keeper rifle during a current, ruthless purge/downsizing.

Remington 700 stainless SPS sporter in 30-06. 24" bbl topped with a Leupold 2.5-8 with a spare Leupold M8 4x in cool QD Weaver rings. Stock is an old beater Brown Precision. Have a good batch each of 180gr NPs and 180gr Speer Grand Slams.

For me it is a Winchester M70 Extreme Weather in 300WSM with a Leupold VX3 3.5-10x. I can load down 150gr bullets for smaller game like Texas Hill Country deer, pigs and coyotes, 165gr for larger KS deer or maybe caribou, and full tilt 180gr for elk and bear.

There is a lot of truth in that. Most of the posters here know their rifles and ballistics and the anatomy of their game well enough that the outcome is typically one shot kills but it has more to do with who is pulling the trigger than anything else.

This poster hits on an overlooked concept in hunting rifles. Make the one you have as versatile as it can be. Sticking with one bullet and load for everything is fine, but your gun is far more capable than that. Rifle manufacturers would prefer you buy another rifle for every conceivable purpose, but it's certainly not necessary.

You can load everything from 22 magnum ballistics on up to your rifles maximum with creative thinking and handloading. And if you're determined enough to persevere, you can regulate your loads to shoot the same poi, or at least some semblance of usable poi, so you never touch the scope settings while having all the variation of loads at your fingertips. I am fairly new at this concept but so far have found great satisfaction in it!

Now when walking the woods I can switch from bear to small game hunting just by reaching in my pocket and pulling out a different load.

For the same reason that some hunters find combo guns useful, loading your rifle to varying intensities makes it far more useful. And having multiple loads available for your hunting rifle means you're not limited to one shot as with a combo gun. You can flame away with your repeating rifle and small game loads just as you would with your big game loads on your elk hunt.

Loading in this way is really an eye opener and is extremely satisfying.

In my youth, the 50’s, one man one rifle was the norm, then was pre 64 Winchester model 70 30/06, today it is kimber Montana model 84l 30/06.

Not a gun writer here but an interesting question. Purely for the hunting I currently do and the ability to reload, it would be a bolt gun in 338Fed, Rem700 with a 21” Sporter barrel, McMillan Game Scout edge with a Swarovski or Zeiss scope. If I can only use factory ammo then make it a 308.

If the scenario is only for survival in a collapse, I would want a 223Rem, 7 Twist, with the same stock and brand of scope above.

For the same reason that some hunters find combo guns useful, loading your rifle to varying intensities makes it far more useful. And having multiple loads available for your hunting rifle means you're not limited to one shot as with a combo gun. You can flame away with your repeating rifle and small game loads just as you would with your big game loads on your elk hunt.

Loading in this way is really an eye opener and is extremely satisfying.[/quote]



This……I used to shoot quite a few cast bullets @ around 1500 mv in my hunt’n rifle. Great for small game, and plinking….also works for coyotes, but ya gotta get them pretty close. memtb

Same/same for me.

Longer bolt action rifles with higher magnification scopes that are chambered for flatter shooting cartridges for open country and longer ranges.

Shorter lever, pump, or semi-auto rifles with lower magnification scopes that are chambered for cartridges with heavier bullets for hunting in tight cover and shorter ranges. Old Winchester 100s and a Ruger 44 International fill this niche for me.

The spare rifle that I always take with me when I travel very far from home is a Smith & Wesson C made by Husqvarna that is chambered in 30-06, zeroed with 180 grain pointed bullet factory loads, and mounted with a 3-9x40 Scopechief IV. My idea of what a "universal" medium game hunting rifle looks like.

A Savage 99 in 284 does double duty pretty damned well for me. Shots from 20' on a buddies wounded bear to 425 yards have been easy and natural with the Savage 284. You've all seen the photos...

Beretta Mato in 30-06 Springfield, with a Burris 3-10x40 Signature Select scope. I have both wood and synthetic stocks for the rifle. The load is a 180gr Swift Sirocco at 2750fps.

This, in 308 @20"