When I was young and had lost my small rifle collection due to a divorce, bought a tang-safety Ruger 77 .30-06 to get started again. It was one of those pre-hunting season deals at a local that included a scope, in that instance a Bushnell 4x, which worked fine. Used it for several years to take the standard variety of Montana big game--pronghorns, whitetails, mule deer, black bear and elk--and Eileen used it to take a bighorn ewe.
It was pretty darn accurate, grouping three shots of its "favorite" handloads into 1 to 1-1/2" at 200 yards. Can't imagine anything that would have done better on most of the big game animals I've taken in various places since, but hindsight isn't foresight....
