You have $700 for the rifle, $400 for the scope, and $100 for the rings. No after-market parts for the rifle other than a sling. No range finder. Factory ammo only; one load must do it all. Shooting prone from a backpack rest. Continental North America. Antelope, deer, moose, elk, caribou, sheep, goat, bison, wolf, and bears. The 30-06 or the 6.5 Creedmoor are your only two choices. KISS applies for all tie breakers. Once you step away from the plane, boat, or truck you are humping this rifle in - no horses, no ATV... Describe your medicine and tell me why. Describe how you set up your ballistic dope chart for the hunt.

OK, I'll play.
Pretty easy really.

Rifle: Used M70 Winchester Featherweight , in 30-06. Such rifles are available for around $700 all the time. 6.5 CM is an excellent caliber, but if the rules say I have only 1 choice of 2, so that would mean it's my only gun. Correct? Well the 30-06 beats the pants off the CM when it comes to a one-size-fits-all cartridge.

Ammo would be loaded a Nosler Partitions or some bonded core bullets in 180 grain, depending on what shot the best in that gun. Because the rules say Bison, moose (both of which I have hunted here in Wyoming as well as other places) and Bears (that means Grizzlies where I live) I would not even consider the 6.5CM if I could have a 30-06.

For the sake of this "answer game" I assume my ammo allotment would be unlimited. If not, the rules laid down here are not realistic because for the cost of about 7-10 boxes of ammo I can buy a basic hand-loading set, and so 'factory ammo only" is less realistic then "unlimited factory ammo" would be.

Scope would be a good 2X-7X, probably a Redfield, or one of the German Fixed 4X by Kaps if I could find one used for the required $400.

No ATV and no horses? That's how I have hunted about 75% of my life and that constitutes over 50 years of big game hunting in 9 states and 5 countries. No problem that I can't overcome and have not been overcoming for 1/2 a century.

Range card?

I zero at 200 yards and I know my drops at 300, 400 500 and 550. I don't shoot past that. I have when I was younger,( quite a few times) but I grew a brain and stopped doing it around 24 years ago. I have a self imposed limit of 500 meters now. (or "close to 550 yards", about 547 actually --- but that's close enough) In that time I have never had to keep my promise to myself because I have not ever needed to shoot past 450 yards on anything, anywhere, at any time, when I was hunting. Getting that close or closer is not hard. If it is, you need to learn to hunt more then you need to learn to shoot.

So a "range card" with your bullet drops is quite easy to make, when you select the load and chronograph it for true velocity. Within 1 month of shooting you would not need a card at all. You'd remember the drops out to 550 very easily.

Next you need to shoot enough in differing wind conditions to learn your drifts. Buying gizmos is a bad way to learn to shoot well, in comparison to firing a lot of ammo over a lot of different conditions, altitudes, angles and temperatures. So this comes back to my comment above about unlimited ammo or hand-loads. When I was in my teens I shot out the throat of my 270 Winchester and I did that in 3 years, starting with a brand new barrel. That rifle went from shooting under 1 MOA to about 3 MOA so I has a new barrel put in. I had to have the gun re-barreled when I was 18. I did it again and I re-barreled it myself when I was 29. It's now on it's 3rd barrel and has many thousands of rounds fired though that one too. I KNOW how to shoot that rifle well. Ammo is needed to shoot that much. Hand loads cost about 40% of factory loads.

So that's my answers.
My choices are my own and have the same amount of merit as anyone's, and no more.

I assume that's why the "answer game" was played here in the 1st place.

Last edited by szihn; 10/21/18.