Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Your First Big Game Rifle

Marlin 336 30-30. My folks bought it for me in 1977 after they realized I had caught the deer huntin' bug. I still have it and always will. I hunted with it last week.

Push feed 70 Featherweight in 280 and a push feed 70 in 458 WM. I was a boy and killed everything at the time with the 458.

Ditto with a Weaver K-4 and flip up tang peep. Was a well used '54 model when I spent paper route cash for it in '71 and I added to the stories it could tell....

I killed my first big game (deer) with my Dad's '94 in 30-30, made in 1927. The one I most carry on walkabout up here. That was in 1966. Haven't killed anything with it since, tho a couple of my brothers did before I re-acquired it 25 years after that deer. Had to pry it out of my oldest brother's cold, dead hands.

Well, actually, when he died, I had to swap a Blackhawk to his worthless oldest son for it....Then refinish it metal and wood.

My first self-purchased BG rifle (no-one ever bought me one) was a used 336 also in 30-30, about 1970, with which I took my first moose. It is now sleeping with the fishes following a boating incident a few years later in which I was not involved.

Coming from a shotgun state I killed my first deer with a Rem M870. I killed my first deer with a rifle while stationed in PA in the early 70's with a M70 (1952 version) in 257 Roberts borrowed from my wifes uncle. The first big game rifle I actually bought was a Belgian Browing in .270 after I retired from the service.