Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Building the ultimate whitetail rifle

Talking out your ass is helpful though?

Too bad you spent all of that money on a good rifle and put cheap glass on them that will crater the first time you turn the knobs on them.

Oops. Wrong forum. j/k Hanco-most of mine are of the same persuasion.

The ultimate whitetail rifle is just any ole .308 Creedmoor

You got a reamer?

I've always liked the look and feel of a BLR. Been on my list for awhile. Damn we're lucky to have so many choices!

Not much building to it. Buy it. Scope it. Go hunt.




Another in ought six


An assortment in 7 Rem mag, 25/06, and 338 Win mag.

Solid advice. Skip the CTR if you like - the rest is perfect!

I don't like short action rifles, because of short magazines, though I have a couple. The 7x57 is a great cartridge but in a short magazine rifle - not so much.

If I were to have only one deer rifle for all hunting conditions and was stuck with a short action...
Then any of the 308 based cartridges from 243 to 358 would work.
As much as I like old classic cartridges and I'm holding my nose as I write this, a 6.5 Creed would work. But I'd prefer the 6.5x55 just because.

If you included Mauser 98 actions or longer than a short action 700, then the 7x57 would be a great cartridge.

As far as scope (and cartridges) goes, where you hunt makes a big difference. If you hunt at dusk and at dawn in waning light, you might consider a larger objective lens than what a 2x7 would have. My brother-in-law last year was using a 2x7 and he shot his deer near dark. He replaced that 2x7 scope directly there after. He said he was lucky.

Mine would be .250 Savage

Mine is a .250 Savage. the little cartridge that can and...does.

8x57's aren't that hard to come by...it works fine for this guy!!!



4x scopes are pretty useful too.

The 308 Creedmoor is the "30TC", the most worthless cartridge development ever, except the 30TC case was used to develop the 6.5 Creedmoor.

The 30 TC. Watered down 300 Savage. It wasn't so much the cartridge itself that was a big looser. The problem is,we just don't need anymore .30 caliber offerings. So in an effort to cross all the "Ts" and dot all the "I"s, 6.5 got the nod. It was the only logical choice. In a stale market,in a country not overly blessed with .264 diameter offerings. A stroke of marketing genius. Mag length and twist came online in the early going and a star was born. Not my personal cup of tea,but who can argue the benefits? I do the load development for my daughters. It's a nifty little case,with a slippery little bullet. Doesn't eat much. Not particularly speedy. In a 20" barrel anyway. It fills a niche nicely,but I'm not breathless over it. It could very well be the ultimate whitetail round. In the right rifle,with a 22" barrel.

Most worthless ever? More worthless than the Dardick Tround or Remington Etronx? I hadn't realized the 30 TC was that bad.....

Not worthless, just the ultimate in redundancy. Like a bunch of other short&fats from that era, a feller with a pile of brass will be fine. Before they pulled the plug on it, I was semi-interested in picking up an Icon (once I read that they were making a different trigger guard), but all I ever saw were for their silly little .30.

Ultimate whitetail rifle;

Well if beauty and class are not part of the definition of "ultimate" I'd have to say an AR15 in 6.5 Grendel or 6.8 SPC, light barrel, 4X scope and a good set of back up sights, tele-stock and match trigger.

Such a rifle is about the most user-friendly rifle yet invented in rifle history, with excellent accuracy, real "deer rifle" ballistics, one size fits all, even fits hot and cold weather clothing with the same stock, excellent reliability, light to moderate weight and very low recoil.

The only down-side to them is the looks.

I for one love to enjoy the feel and class of a rifle when I am hunting, so my Ultimate whitetail rifle is this.
My Rifle 3 by Steve Zihn, on Flickr

Maybe the post should have read "The Ultimate enjoyment in a Whitetail rifle"

If function is the measure of the rifle, I don't believe anything out there can match the hybrid AR15 or AR10 rifles available today.
But if enjoyment is the measure of "ultimate" you will have as many answers as you have hunters, and not one of them is wrong.

Oh hell yeah! I built a 58 Leman a few winters back.

WELL DONE Otter!

Id have posted more pics,but Photobucket dinked me around.

Are you going by post count?