I'm not sure what folks mean by "perfect." From the responses, it really seems more like "favorite." Perfect? I'd think there would be a lot more quantitative responses. However, I'm perfectly happy to treat this as a beauty contest.
I started off my shooting career with 3 chamberings:
22 LR
30-06
12 GA
Since I molded my own shooting and hunting experience around those 3, they would be a the top of my list. I had others available to me (like 16 GA and 22 WRF that I really never warmed up to)
To this I added:
357 MAG -- just so I'd have a pistol to shoot
223 REM -- I got tired of nailing groundhogs with a 30-06
. . . and a few more not really relevant to the discussion.
OK. There's half the list. It was about then (roughly 2000) that I started hanging out at shooters.com and later at the 24hourcampfire. The dam burst. I started trying all sorts of new stuff. Here it is, 20 years later, and there have been very few that I found that I really could add to the favorites list.
45 ACP
308WIN-- I download mine to 300 Savage levels.
9mmX19 -- I was a latecomer to 9mm. I like it because it's cheap
35 Whelen -- I had a decade-long love affair with my Whelenizer (Rem 7600). Yes it killed deer (a lot of 'em too), but I finally got tired of all the recoil.
7mm-08 -- This is my new favorite. I just started loading and shooting it in 2020.
