How did you get there?

[Xringer07]

I grew up in an average lower-middle-class PA hunting family where any gun purchase was a “big deal” and all firearms were based on utility and filled a role vs wants. When I was born, my dad owned a .22, a .270 and a 12ga shotgun. Covered all his needs from a hunting perspective and there was no room for anything extra.

My dad grew up essentially without a dad, and taught himself most of what he learned about guns and hunting. He had some influence from some neighbors and his father-in-law (my mom’s dad) and uncles, but was largely self-taught. He made it his life’s mission to give me everything he never had as a child; not necessarily from a material perspective, but from his presence as (one hell of) a dad and his desire for us to learn about hunting together. He made guns and shooting fun for us and encouraged my love for it with hunting rags, Shooters Bibles, and ammo.

He bought me a $10 gun raffle ticket in 1996 and told me if we won anything on that ticket, it was mine. I was 8 years old at the time. We went to the raffle dinner and lo-and-behold we got drawn for a Remington 700 BDL in .243 Win. A $700 rifle at the time. Worth more than all the guns he owned combined.

I have hunted with that gun for 25 years now and have taken many whitetails, a mule deer, a coyote and countless groundhogs. It will always have a special place and I will continue using it until my boy starts hunting with it.

I have had the itch for a semi-custom rifle for a good while and am now in a place where that is realistic. I finally assembled all the parts this year into a lightweight mountain rifle in 7 SAUM. I wanted something lighter than the 700 and with enough hp to shoot a decently heavy copper bullet further than I needed to shoot. No kills with it yet, but hoping to change that this year in PA.

 

[Nick4050]

When my dad moved to Alaska before I was born, him and a buddy bought matching Weatherby Accumarks in .30-378. I grew up watching my dad hunt with that rifle, as it was the only thing he'd use since upgrading from his Ruger m77 in .243 that he previously carried when he lived in Nebraska. When I was old enough to carry my own rifle, I got handed his old .243 but never ended up shooting anything with it. My first big game animal was a black bear that I shot with his .30-378, and I remember feeling a sense of pride knowing that I got to use my dad's "big" rifle to do it. From then on, I was hooked on Weatherby Mark V's.

As soon as I was old enough I got a job at Sportsman's Warehouse, where I got a killer deal on Weatherby through their dealer employee program. My first self-bought hunting rifle was a Weathermark LT. I spent months researching and self-debating on the chambering, as I really wanted to get it in a Weatherby cartridge just like my dad had, but couldn't afford the $100+ per box price tag of the .30-378. I finally decided on .300 WBY, and told myself that that rifle was going to be my "forever rifle". I ended up shooting my first moose and a couple bears with it, but it didn't quite shoot to my expectations. Between my novice reloading skills and lack of factory ammo variety, I got discouraged from the cartridge and sold the rifle. It was replaced with another Mark V, this time a Hunter "Live Wild" edition in .300 Win Mag. It was an amazing shooter right out of the box, and I still have it today.

Then I dove down the suppressor rabbit hole, and decided I needed a better suppressor host with a shorter barrel. When Tikka announced this spring that they were threading their t3x superlite models, I knew that would be the perfect setup and bought the first one that shipped to the local Sportsman's, again in .300 Win Mag. It quickly became my favorite rifle, and I used it to shoot my largest ever moose this fall.

There are a few other rifles in 7 Rem Mag, .308, and .338 that I own and hunt with, but the win mag is by far my favorite cartridge and the one I always reach for. However, every time we bring the rifles out my dad still likes to tease me about my puny rifles, and how his big bad .30-378 is a real man's 30 cal.

 

[TX_Mike D.]

I appreciate everyone's responses. I always find these stories interesting. Probably no surprise since I started a thread on this topic, but I was always the kid that would sit and listen to my grandparent's stories.

Y'all keep them coming.

 

[Snowwolfe]

I hunt big critters most of the time, moose and grizzly. If not hunting grizzly there is always a chance of running into one.
I like big guns with mono bullets that can break big bones and leave exit holes for blood to leak out in two spots.
Except when sheep and predator hunting make mine a .30 caliber or bigger and I'll be happy. Some of my current arsenal includes 300 RCM, 338 RCM, 300 Win Mag, 300 Wby Mag (2), 338 Win Mag, 340 Wby Mag, 9.3x62, 375 Ruger, and 375 H&H.
I been debating on building a left hand 458 Win Mag for over a year now. Still might do it.

 

[bnewt3]

For centerfire hunting, I started with my family's Win Model 70 in ".270 WCF" (early stamp for .270 Win) that my great-grandfather bought new in 1942. Thats what I used until 3 years ago when I bought my first centerfire rifle.

I chose 308 for a few reasons:
1) ammo is available absolutely everywhere
2) you can find dirt cheap ammo up to high end match and hunting ammo
3) it will work for anything in north america
4) recoil is reasonable
5) very minor point but its short action so rifles tend to weigh a bit less

To be honest: i never went big game hunting growing up, my dad went a few times when I was a kid. He and my uncle went with my grandfather in Nevada a few times who carried a Winchester Model 88 in 308. My great-grandfather was the big game hunter, having lived in Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, and Utah: a couple of moose, some elk, antelope, & muleys.

Growing up we were mostly a bird hunting family. Dove mostly around Thanksgiving. Pheasant and chukar out west before my time. Good story: my great-grandparents visited my grandparents once. They decided to go see if they could find some pheasants. My grandparents had a weimaraner, Blitz, that had zero bird training. My great-grandfather said "leave the dog, he doesnt know what to do". My grandfather brought him anyway but he was forced to ride in the trunk. As soon as the trunk opened Blitz was gone. My great-grandfather was perturbed but they decided to get suited up anyway and see if they could find anything despite the dog. By the time they got ready they looked into the field and Blitz was on point. So they hurried up and got to him and flushed a ringneck. He worked that field all day long, multiple birds. Blitz rode in the front seat on the way home.
So shotguns is where I had most of my experience until a few years ago.

My great-grandparents on my dad's mom's side were legit shotgunners. My great uncle was a junior champion of the western states in trap or skeet, my great-grandmother was accomplished as well. In fact when my grandparents moved back east, she came to visit once and my dad took her to shoot some clays. He was pretty tuned up, dove hunting regularly and she hadnt shot in at least 15 years. She smoked him in a couple rounds of trap, giving him pointers as he was shooting.

My great-grandfather and my grandmother had horses. My grandmother was Miss Reno Rodeo in 1957 and won some endurance races with her horse. At 5 years old she would get her mom to make her a sandwich, get one of the ranch hands to saddle her horse and she would take off for the day.

 

[Anschutz]

On all except one hunt I went with him on before leaving home, he used a Ruger M77 Tang Safety in .270. It wore a 4-12 Simmons that, despite how crappy of a scope that is, piled a few tons of deer. He finally replaced it this year after it fogged up.

My first rifle was a NEF Handi-Rifle in .243 topped with a Tasco 3-9x32 after a summer shooting my BB Gun on a challenge my dad prescribed for me. I was upgraded to an adult stocked .270 Handi-Rifle 7 years later. I ended up selling that to a fella looking for a rifle for his daughter that had outgrown another rifle and bought a Savage .243 in college and bought a Marlin Guide Gun with my first Lieutenant paycheck. I only bowhunted in Colorado, but when I got orders to Alaska, I started looking for something else with some range. Perusing the Cabela's Gun Library, I saw a Winchester Model 70 EWSS for $650. I looked at the barrel and it said .270 Win and followed me home. I got two Caribou with it while up there. The past few years, I've been in a muzzleloader/shotgun area and I found an H&R Ultra-Slug 20ga barrel on eBay. Killed three deer with it this year, topped with the same 3-9 Tasco that was on my .243 barrel. Next year, it'll be back to the .270 and I'm adding a Tikka .243.

 

[EastHumboldt]

My dad was into mountaineering, rock climbing, and travel. Not so much with the hunting and fishing. So i knew nothing about it when I bought my first rifle at 29 years of age. I got into hunting backwards. I moved to NV in 1986, and one day talking at lunch time I found out my new boss was cleaning out his storage shed which included 3 NOS 1963 Model 70’s and one 1963 R700. The Remington was chambered in 30-06, and the others were 338 win mag, 264 win mag, and I can’t remember the last. I went down to the hardware store and opened a box of each caliber. The 30-06 looked like it would be big enough to kill some shit, and the other two cartridges looked very large and unpleasant to me. So I went back to work the next day and asked him what he wanted ffor the ‘06. We agreed on $180. I didnt know that pre ‘64 model 70s were valuable or I would have bought em all. I think he was asking 400 each for the others.

That’s how I got into the 06. It had a brass butt plate and iron sights. I took it out to the range and popped off a few rounds. No hearing protection. Somebody told me I should get a scope for it, so I bought a Tasco 3-9 for $39 or something. So I was an 06 guy for 30 years.

I read an article by Dave Petzal (Still my favorite gun writer) where he said what a great gun a Tikka T3 was. My kids kept asking me what I wanted for Xmas and I jokingly said a Tikka T3 in 30-06. Then it showed up under the tree. So I was a tikka guy years before I found this forum. That one was my main squeeze for about five years and then I bought a 7-08 and a .243 both T3x. Now the 7-08 is my main gun. .243 for antelope. The 06’s stay in the safe, cuz they’re not as fun to shoot.

 

[Big Sky Guy]

I grew up hunting whitetail deer and turkey in Ohio, where centerfire rifles are illegal for hunting both. Listening to my dad and grandpa talk about guns as a child was the equivalent of listening to a foreign language. At the age of 9, after passing hunter safety my dad got me a Remington 1100 20 gauge with both a rifled iron site barrel and a standard bead barrel. I was a small child so had to have the stock cut by gunsmith, no youth or compact guns back then. It would take me a few years until I got a turkey with that gun. Didn’t kill a deer with that gun until I was 16. After college I wanted to shoot groundhogs and wanted something my dad didn’t have and had a little bit of money so got a Bushmaster Predator AR in 5.56/.223. Really liked that rifle and killed a lot of groundhogs and probably a couple dozen coyotes with it.

Fast forward to 2015, at the age of 27 a family friend learned I would be moving to Montana and asked what rifle I would take. Told him I was considering purchasing a Sako A7 or Finnlight in 7 rem mag (that’s the caliber my dad loved). The next day he brought over a Weatherby Vanguard Backcountry in .30-06 with stainless barrel and gave it to me as a gift, said it will just sit in his safe. This would work. Went and got a scope, a Leupold vx3 4.5-14, and off to Montana I went. Used that rifle to immediately take a bull elk on my first day elk hunting after waiting the required 180 days to get residency.

I used that rifle until 2020 when I got a Sako Finnlight in 6.5cm. Used that for a few years, kills a few more elk and deer and have recently been using a Weatherby Mark V Backcountry in .280ai, have only taken a cow elk and one muley buck with that.

Probably going to try a .308 or 6CM/.243 at some point, I like short actions and lower recoiling cartridges and the .30-06 is definitely on the upper end of what I like.

I admire the guys on here that have been content with one rifle they got as a child or years ago. I think going from someplace where these weapons were illegal and only 1 week a year with a shotgun only season to a state with a 5 week general season, all centerfire legal and then several more months of late season has given me a desire to try as many as I can lol.



From the backyard in Ohio . . .


To the snowy mountains of Montana 6 months later.

 

[Macintosh]

Grew up hearing stories about his M1 garand from my dad, and 30-06 was (and still is) the gold standard that all guns were compared to. So when I bought my first rifle I got a 3006. I traded that gun in on the same thing in carbine form a couple years after that. About 25 years later, here we are. I have yet to find a centerfire cartridge that doesnt work reliably well for everything I shoot it at, so while I have other cartridges that I prefer for various uses and various reasons, that 3006 carbine is still my go-to. Im as bad as anyone when it comes to overthinking things, but the formula hasnt been that complicated. Ie shoot what you like, they all work.

 

[Cherokeeguide]

I started off hunting the wide open spaces of the wide-open west as an 11 year old kid back in 1976 with the Marlin 336 in .30-30 pictured above. My dad asked me what i wanted and this rifle wasn't that, but I thank God, literally, that I didn't get my way and got this instead. Hunting within the performance envelope of this rifle and the best ammo I could hand-load for it forced me to get really good at "still hunting" really fast.

The rifle of my childhood dreams, however, was this:



Here, I was a victim of Sturm, Ruger and Co marketing. My dad subscribed to American Rifleman and there always an advertisement in it for the No.1. It was the first rifle that I have any independent memory of aspiring to own. I saved my Simoleans bought it when I was 19. I'd have bought it sooner, but I got side-tracked by this:




This is a "Parker Hale by Ugartechea" 20 gauge box-lock ejector gun. I bought this the day I turned 18 in 1983. It was on sale at Bob Marriot's Fly Fishing Store in Fullerton, CA for $450.00. That wasn't an insignificant sum for a guy still in high school and was about equal to spending $1,494.00 in 2026, so my Ruger No.1 dream had to wait another year. I wanted this because the two uncles who got me into upland game bird hunting when I was 13 shot an A y A No.2 side-lock 28 gauge and an A y A Matador box-lock 12 gauge, respectively, and in hunting with them, I could see the same advantages in the double gun that they did. When I stumbled on to this gun, I wanted the 28 gauge version in the rack beside it but Bob Marriott refused to sell it to me, citing the expense and lack of availability of the ammo, so I ended up "settling" for the 20 gauge.

That same day, the childless widow of my pediatric dentist and shooting buddy called to let me know that "Doc" died and to ask if I would like to have Doc's rifle, which was a Griffin and Howe on a 1903 Springfield action. She said that she'd discussed the matter with her husband before he died and they both agreed that I'd be more likely to treat it like he did if I "paid her a little something" for it. To arrive at the price, she asked me what new bolt action rifle I would buy and when I said "Probably a Ruger M77," she asked me how much they cost, and I said "about $250.00." I didn't have that much after buying the shotgun above, but Doc's widow let me have the rifle and pay her in installments.

Here's what I wacked most of my mule deer with in adulthood:


It is a c.1985 Ruger M-77 RL Ultralight in..........



.250=3000 Savage.

I was at Andrews Sports Kingdom in Southern California when the guy behind the counter was putting a couple of these on the racks and complaining to the gun-counter flies present that they would never sell because of the .250 Savage chambering.

Having read too many books by Roy Chapman Andrews as a kid, I asked the shop employee how many they had in stock and when he said "three," I said "I'll take 'em." As it happened, Mr. Andrews was saving one for himself and only sold me two, but made up for that by selling me the Leupold Vari-X IIc's I topped them with at cost. The idea behind buying all three was to give one to my dad and one to his older brother (one of the two uncles who got me into upland hunting) for Christmas.

I used this thing for three decades and took something like 21 mule deer with it, 3 pronghorn, 2 caribou, 1 bull elk, and God only knows how many California Central Coast swine with it.

That rifle informed what I use now. I shot handloads out of it, topped with 100 grain Nosler Partition bullets, but I stuck to SAAMI pressure data, so I only got 2,620 fps average MV out of my 20" barrel. That has the bullet moving at just a tick over 1,800 fps at 300 yards, with 770 ft/lb of energy remaining. Loaded to SAAMI pressure, the .250 Savage is a LOT closer to a .223 Remington in terminal ballistics than it is to a .243 Winchester, but I never had to to pull the trigger more than once per critter with it, in spite of its pipsqueak nature.

Being an old geezer now, with my adventure hunting behind me, I have lived to see all of the men I hunted with die or become too old and infirm to hunt, fish, or shoot, anymore. When they died, I saw their gun collections become useless, burdensome junk to their heirs they left behind. Not wanting my wife to be burdened with a stupid-large gun collection when I croak, I did the gun collection liquidation myself and decided I would use ONE center-fire rifle to see me through my twilight years to the end of my days.

That rifle is this:



In deciding what center-rifle rifle I needed to see me through to the end of my days, the decision was really a no-brainer. I wanted to shoot Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP) Service Rifle and Modern Military rifle matches, so the rifle would have to be an AR-15 A4 in good, old-fashioned 5.56 NATO.

The deer and pigs I've shot with this thing can't tell the difference between getting shot with a 77 grain TMK out of it or a 100 grain Partition out of my old .250 Savage.

It is cool, too, because I don't have to have one load for this and another for that. I can do everything I want to do with a center-fire rifle in my old age with this one rifle and the 77 grain TMK load I use in Service Rifle matches.

I assembled the rifle myself on a stripped Anderson Mfg lower. Aside from a Rock River Arms 2-stage National Match trigger, an oversized White Oak Armament barrel extension, and a titanium barrel nut and titanium fasteners for the "carry handle" and pistol grip, the other parts came from a Palmetto State Armory 20" Freedom Nitride kit.

It isn't a one-minute rifle because of wazoo parts, but how the parts were assembled. It has all the mechanical accuracy I need for what I do with it. And, unlike the polished blued steel and walnut "Fudd-Guns" I previously collected, my sons and daughters have an interest in this. It is fun to shoot because it is easy to shoot well.

I'll finish by saying that I will always have a soft spot in my heart for the Marlin 336 but my personal opinion is that, as long as horses aren't involved, an AR-15 A4 style rifle like this makes for a better "thutty-thutty" than the real thing does. The AR is, to me, a "still hunter's dream." All I have to do to get into "hunting rifle mode" is swap the 20 round G.I. mags I use in CMP matches for 5-round flush-fit. Most of the time, I just run the A2 style iron sights.

 

[TX_Mike D.]

Being an old geezer now, with my adventure hunting behind me, I have lived to see all of the men I hunted with die or become too old and infirm to hunt, fish, or shoot, anymore. When they died, I saw their gun collections become useless, burdensome junk to their heirs they left behind. Not wanting my wife to be burdened with a stupid-large gun collection when I croak, I did the gun collection liquidation myself and decided I would use ONE center-fire rifle to see me through my twilight years to the end of my days.

I understand you wanting to liquidate some rifles, but I know I’m partial to family history though. If any of your kids are that way, I’d try to pass some down if I were you.

 

[Cherokeeguide]

I understand you wanting to liquidate some rifles, but I know I’m partial to family history though. If any of your kids are that way, I’d try to pass some down if I were you.

It wasn't a case of "wanting to liquidate some rifles." It was a case of not wanting my wife to have to deal with a really stupid collection of firearms, numbering into the hundreds, when I died. I use the word "stupid" because no matter how big or small the collection was, I only actually used a handful of pieces from it with any degree of frequency. The rest of it just occupied space and needed periodic oiling.

All four of my children got an opportunity to take whatever they wanted from my former embarrassingly large gun collection before I sold anything to the general public.

Between the four of them, they chose everything having any sentimental value to me, and what's really cool is that they use what they chose. I get to enjoy seeing them enjoy their "early inheritance."

 

[Q_Sertorius]

It wasn't a case of "wanting to liquidate some rifles." It was a case of not wanting my wife to have to deal with a really stupid collection of firearms, numbering into the hundreds, when I died. I use the word "stupid" because no matter how big or small the collection was, I only actually used a handful of pieces from it with any degree of frequency. The rest of it just occupied space and needed periodic oiling.

All four of my children got an opportunity to take whatever they wanted from my former embarrassingly large gun collection before I sold anything to the general public.

Between the four of them, they chose everything having any sentimental value to me, and what's really cool is that they use what they chose. I get to enjoy seeing them enjoy their "early inheritance."

I like that attitude. If my father had his way, I am fairly certain he would pile all the things he owns onto a funeral pyre and take them with him. And if he had the guts to put it in writing, I would do it for him.