Morewood;
Good evening to you sir, please send hearty congratulations along to your grandson!
Personally, I never tire of hearing about some of the next shift of hunters getting a good start.
My first center fire was a Pattern 14 sporter in .303, but I never shot anything other than gophers with it. My first big game animal was taken with a borrowed '06 Model 70 which I much preferred over the first deer rifle I used which was a Model 100 in .308.
When my good wife took up hunting with me, her first rifle was a 788 carbine in .308 again and it was and remains an amazingly accurate arm.
That said, when our two daughters decided they'd like to try hunting, both of them found the blast from the full power .308 loads in their Mother's little carbine way more than they could do good work with.
We ended up finding a 722 that had been rebarreled to .250AI for our youngest and our eldest saw her late Grandad's 6.5x55 in the back of the safe and claimed it.
For whitetail and mulie bucks, the .250AI proved to be a wonderful little cartridge using 100gr Hornady Spire and 80gr TTSX bullets.
Perhaps the lighter bullets "rocked" the bucks a tad less than the 6.5 did with 130 TSX, but in terms of terminal performance on deer it wasn't truly noticeable.
If memory serves I shot at least 2 local deer with the .250AI as well, testing out some of the bullets, etc. and it was easy to place bullets very carefully with, which sometimes is quite handy.
That said Morewood, I was impressed enough watching our eldest smack stuff with her Swede that I unscrewed the .270 Featherweight barrel off of my walking around rifle and had a smith up the valley make it into a 6.5x55.
While I do carry something bigger if I am purposefully looking for moose, I do carry the Swede with an elk tag in my pocket and do not believe I'd be too, too handicapped with it. I've been running either 120gr TTSX or GMX in it and want to say that 3 local bucks used one each at various ranges - none super far though.
If I was helping another new shooter to pick out a hunting rifle, I believe I'd try to include them in the process as much as possible/practical - especially in terms of what controls make sense to them - ie safety position - which stocks fit them best and what they like the look of too.
One daughter loves her nearly 120 year old Stutzen stocked Swede and the other thought her laminated stock, stainless match barrel rifle was the coolest looking thing ever.
Hopefully that made some sense and was useful to you or someone out there tonight.
Again congratulations to your grandson and good luck on all your remaining family hunts this fall.
Dwayne
