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My 'first' was a loaned sporterized krag, owned by Paul Muelbauer(sp?) He is the guy that killed the biggest mule deer in Colo. until the Burris buck. He took me and my brother to hunt the exact same place he took that monster......

Good ol 94 30 30

Cool pic, Tan her.

First center fire ever shot....Gramp's 1873
First deer season .....Dad's 30-30.
First shotgun kill......J.C. Higgins

Mine was a WW II surplus M1 .30 cal carbine. I'm glad I never shot at a deer with it.

Grasshopper, not to twist the knife, but last November my dad gave me his Winchester .30 WCF that belonged to his dad, DOM 1912. My grandpa got it on his 12th birthday in 1912. My brother got the Weatherby .300 Wby Mag Deluxe made by JP Sauer & Sohn, DOM 1962, purchased by my dad in West Germany.

I am secure in the knowledge that I got the better deal.


P

Midland Arms aka Parke Hale .243 Winchester with a Jana 4X scope mounted on. It, bought it right after my 18th birthday. I needed a rifle to hunt my first deer, and I paid $175 for it at an estate auction with four boxes of Federal 105 grin Speer ammunition. Shot this deer second day of the season with it.

First was a Rem 710 in 30-06. Killed my first several deer with it and, yes, it is now long gone. Don't think I'll ever regret letting it go. I doubt that model will ever be considered a "classic"!

Model 93, in 30/30... bought new in 1966 at the Alconbury Rod and Gun Club, before we came back stateside.. still have it...

Marlin 336 .35 Remington

Same here. The Marlin 336 in 35 Rem was the first I hunted with. It was one of two rifles my dad owned at the time. When my brother was old enough he got the Marlin and I used one of my grandfathers 30-06s. It was some sort of Mauser that had PO Ackley on the barrel. He traded it for an 1100. Wish I had that one still but it's been twenty years ago.

First centerfire was a Winchester 670 in 243. Killed lots of woodchucks with that gun. It taught me to love rifles but hate certain blueprints.

Model 1893 Spanish Mauser in 7x57 ,I was 14 and mowed a lot of lawns to get it and finance the sporterizing of it.I was 17 before I drew my first deer tag and used it to kill a 3x3 buck with 140 gr NPT's loaded by myself. I had by then a M700 7mm Rem Mag in an ADL but I wanted to use the Mauser on the first one. Still have them both. Magnum Man

In 1975 I bought a left handed, Remington 788 chambered in 308.

I still have it.

Killed my first deer with a 700 classic in 257 Roberts. We found two of them in .250 and .257 in a LGS . I believe the .250 was issued one year and the 257 the next. Anyway my buddy took the 250 and I bought the 257 in a package deal. Took mine out and shot a deer about 30 min after sunrise about a month later on opening day. I have always sort of thought of the 257 as a lucky round for me.

Interesting side note...there was a VERY nice whitetail buck around here last fall. There were a number of guys(myself included) trying to figure out how to put some lead into him. Far as I know the only one that even saw him(during season) was the 14 year old girl that shot him with a borrowed M1 Garrand...ran into her grandfather at the local store day after she got it(her first deer too)...That rifle probably weighed more than she did...

My first centerfire rifle was a Ruger M77 MKII Standard .30-06 that I bought when I was 16.

Before that, it was a single-shot 20 gauge w/slugs my first year, then my vintage Remington 870 2 3/4" w/ a slug barrel until I got the Ruger.

I shot my first buck (which was also my first mule deer) with that Ruger, it was also the first time I reloaded ammo for myself.

The first load I made for that rifle was using Winchester brass, 56 gr of IMR-4350, Winchester LR primers, and some old 180 gr Hornady Spire Points that were sitting around my dads's reloading bench.

They were leftovers from when he briefly owned a Browning A-Bolt Medallion .30-06 w/ the B.O.S.S. system on it, he also sold that rifle because of the B.O.S.S. system on it, but that's a whole other story.

I didn't necessarily love the recoil of that load at age 16, even though I was (a hulking 5' 7" and 150 lbs soakin' wet), but it killed deer well, so I used them until I shot all those up.

Then, I switched to Hornady 165 BTSP and worked up to 58.5 gr of IMR-4350, that's still my standard .30-06 load for deer to this day.

When I bought that rifle, all I knew was that I wanted a .30-06.

Nowadays I check and see how a rifle feels when I shoulder it, how the controls work, and how it balances, I tend to gravitate towards short-action rifles with 22" or shorter barrels on them and prefer cheekpieces on my stocks.

I hate the stock and trigger on that rifle, and sold it to my brother years ago, but I recently got it back, I will be putting a McMillan and a Timney on it one of these days.

Winchester 94 and Marlin 336, both in .30-30.

Hasn't impacted my choice in rifles one bit.

Mine was an old British 303 that had been sporterized. Shot 3 foot higher w/factory ammo than it did w/military ammo. powdr

Remington mod. 700 ADL in .243. Got it with money I saved working at a local sawmill during the summer. Put a Weaver V7 2.5-7 on it, had the local gunsmith replace the plastic buttplate with a thin Pachmayar white line pad and never changed anything else on it. That was in 1974 and many rifles later, I've yet to own one with the out of the box accuracy that gun had. Pretty too, that was when the 700's had the HIGH luster blue and the gloss finish on the wood.

Posted before but Dad had a Remington 788 .243 waiting under the the Christmas tree for me in 1973. It wore nothing but irons until I bought a Leupold 4x for it in Sacramento while in the AF.

We didn't even have deer near us when I got the rifle, but it scragged many a crow, groundhog and feral dogs before I finally used it to take a whitetail in the early '90s. It was a truck gun because it was my only CF rifle for a long time and got really battered.

In honor of its approaching 40th birthday I stripped and refinished it with Tru-Oil last summer and it looks better than it did when received. The Micro T1 has since been replaced by a Nikon 3-9x40 BDC and is ready to start its second 40 years in our family permanently zeroed for Fed Premium 85-gr. BTHP.
[URL=http://smg.photobucket.com/user/elrata/media/788PhoenixProject_zpsc519fcfa.jpg.html]Chrismuss Gif 1973![/url]