Ruger Hawkeye Predator.
Great two-stage trigger, good weight, very nice lammy stock. Also comes in some other chamberings if you guys decide to try something else. As mathman suggested, a .223 makes a lot of sense with regard to recoil, barrel life, economy, etc etc. The Ruger .223s are mostly 1-9”, but that lets you shoot bullets up to 69gr and maybe some heavier. When I let my son choose from several of my rifles, he picked the Predator .308 right off, as he had used it to kill a couple of does on a cull hunt in VA and liked it. That trigger makes it easy to shoot well, much better than the standard LC6. I whacked a couple with it myself using 165 BTs and about 42gr of RL15.
