I don’t want to be “gun broke”, and Mae sure I have money for gas, tags, and applications- which is where the budget part comes in.
You
still seem to think that you'll save money by cheapening out on hardware. The only people who really save money doing that are people who are the most casual users and who don't
really need a general purpose hooved-game rifle, anyhow. They're the people for whom their rifle is their biggest expense.
Here's a photo essay illustrating the reality of hunting in most of mule deer country:
In order to do this:
Or perhaps this, too:
You will need to use routes like this:
So, you'll need something like this:
Or this:
.....in order to use things like these:
The rifle in the photo immediately above is a Browning A-Bolt II Medallion in .257 Roberts. I won it in a raffle on $100.00 worth of tickets. In essence, it was free.
But
using it costs
exactly the same as using this:
I bought the rifle above when I was 19 back in 1984. It cost the equivalent of $1,350.00 in 2026 money, even back then.
That wasn't my biggest hunting-related expense that year and if you're planning on engaging in the kind of hunting where you actually have a real need for a general purpose hooved game rifle, it won't be yours, either, particularly if future plans call for hunting BLM or Forest Service land somewhere in mule deer country. A lot of that, as mentioned previously, involves vehicle travel on "most difficult" routes, so in order to make use of ANY rifle out in mule deer country, you're going to need a vehicle that can handle the kind of routes you're going to need to use.
I don’t want to be “gun broke”
If shopping outside of the budget bolt action discount bargain bin is going to make you "gun broke" now, then......
So it’s finally time to upgrade in some way shape or form.
....probably isn't as true as saving toward the goal of buying a rifle worth spending "use cost" on is.
Look closely at the photo of the Ruger No.1 Single Shot. I took that photo in 2024. I bought the rifle in 1984. I spent far more on
using the rifle over the four decades that I owned it than I spent in buying it new.
That's the kind of economic reality that you don't seem to "get."
Owning a rifle is potentially cheap. It doesn't get cheaper than a free to you Savage Axis II. Using a rifle never was, isn't now, and never will be. That being the case, my argument is that you'll be better off budgeting for the goal of buying something truly satisfying than spending what t costs to use a rifle on the privilege of using something that you "settled for" based on price.
With a quality item, there is no "coulda woulda shoulda" involved. The sting of the purchase price fades and you're left with genuine satisfaction and pride of ownership across decades of use, in which you will have spent far more to use a quality rifle than you'll have spent in order to buy it.
But, it's your money. Buy whatever trips your trigger.
Personally, I'm not spending $10,000.00 on a Jeep, and spending another $10,000.00 on another Jeep I had to put together myself, in order to hunt with a rifle like a Tikka that's half the cost of something like a controlled-feed Winchester Model 70 that I'd get more satisfaction out of owning and using. If I'm going to spend 20 grand on vehicles so I can use a rifle, I'm going to use the rifle I really want and not something I settled for because it was a cheaper option.
