First Bolt Action: Buy Once or Slowly Upgrade

[flyfisher117]

Being new to it all you don’t know what you don’t know.

Buy a basic rifle, with good aftermarket support. Shoot it as is, get a lot of time behind and slowly build it up. You will then figure out what you do or do not like.

You may buy some Gucci level off the shelf rifle. It may be perfect for you. You may also hate everything about it and sell it for a loss or end up spending even more money changing it to do what you want.

 

[nm.otter]

Since you are very inexperienced with rifles, I recommend you get a Tikka in a cartridge something no more recoil heavy than a 6.5 PRC/270/30-06.

Every one of those options has more recoil than is necessary for shooting accurately and killing reliably out to 600+ yards.

Very, very, very few hunters can (or should) be shooting live critters anywhere near that far.

My budget for rifle, scope, and suppressor is around 5k all in, but I'm also happy not spending all that at this point.

Buy the T3x and a SWFA (fixed 6x or one of their FFP MIL variables) with UM or Sportsmatch rings, then either spend a few dollars making it fit you or go ahead and spring for a stock upgrade (e.g. Rokstok).

I'll do a deep dive into scopes now

Start here and come back with questions.

Many of us here have been down this road, and it's entirely worth your time.