First deer rifle - which calibre for my ground? (and new or used?)

[SD198]

Hi all - I hope to shortly (ish) be buying my first rifle for deer (have previously been using .22LR and FAC air on smaller quarry). In case it is relevant, I will (at least for the foreseeable future) only be shooting from a high seat and only at ranges realistically up to 100m (maybe 150m on the rare occasion). I have shot a .243 and 30-06 and was told I am able to shoot either with sufficient accuracy. I will be shooting mostly fallow and roe (but I guess eventually red or sika may be a possibility).

My simplistic logic tells me that if I am able to shoot sufficiently accurately with, say a 30-06, there is little reason not to go for the larger calibre to be sure of a clean kill. I was recently given that advice by a v experienced stalker. Is that good advice? I gather the .308 is more common as an "all rounder" - would that possibly be more suitable for my needs? I have also read that some FEOs "prefer" you to go for something like a .243 for your first deer rifle (although I'm not entirely sure why that would be) - and also that it is flatter shooting (although is that really going to be an issue at my sort of ranges?)?

Finally, I have also been advised to buy a new rifle rather than a used; is that generally a good idea with these sorts of rifles? As I will not be shooting many deer with it my (ie my wife's!) budget is LOW - as in I was hoping to get away with spending maximum £800 for a rifle, mod and scope; so I believe my new options would probably be limited to something like a Savage Axis - will something like that do what I need it to do or am being silly even considering it??

Any help gratefully received!!

 

[kennyc]

you are more likely to get a shot out .243 than .308, but there are plenty of both about second hand, in good condition either will do the job, 30-06 is a fine cartridge, and if you see a good one in your price range then grab it, it does very little that the .308 doesn't do unless you need a heavy bullet or more velocity, and it does use more powder.
there are plenty of good useable rifles around at good prices, and plenty of folk that will advise you to "spend once cry once" but IMHO if you want a tool for a job then most of the rifles out there will do just fine for a starter stalking rifle, once you gain more experience you can move to something more in line with your needs (as you will then be more able to decide what those needs are)
never forget a £300 second hand rifle sold at 50% of what you paid for it is going to lose you a lot less than a £1000 rifle sold at a 25% loss (and a lot lose more than that second hand)

 

[Uncle f]

Calibre wise get what ever you feel is suitable for your needs. Think of good availability of ammo locally if not home loading, as long as the calibre is deer legal then all calibres you mention will do the job most admirably, what is more important I believe is spending the absolute most you can afford on decent glass. Most if not all new rifles guarantee accuracy to a point so whichever you choose make sure it’s right for you and you understand the gun, however as most would agree on here good glass is optimum. If you can afford it in my opinion you won’t go far wrong than to get the old S+B classic fixed 8x56 (£450 with uttings at present new) if you can afford it look for vari power scope. Rifle wise I would look to avoid a second hand one unless you can get one that has lots of barrel life left and is not “shot out” or on the way out as this could A/ cause accuracy issues and B/leave you with a useless gun and a hefty repair bill potentially
Dont get me wrong there are some good used rifles out there but equally there are some iffy ones so buyer beware as they say
personally I would look if money is tight to get a new rifle (Howa,Bergara,tikka,etc) and look for a second hand scope, as scopes are easier to look at physicaly to ascertain if it’s damaged etc rather than a rifle as to a novice or inexperienced eye seeing a shot out barrel is harder

good luck with whatever you decide but remember it’s silly to get an more expensive rifle and put a £100 scope on it

regards Steve

 

[Jolyon2112]

Hi, Personally if I was starting again a 30-06 would be my choice but factory ammunition is hard to come by unless you're reloading. Also firearms officers may deem it too big a gun for your first deer rifle (makes no sense but that's the game I'm afraid). I paid under a grand for a second hand Sako .243 with decent Meopta scope and a new ASE mod for my first and in reality it is all you need for deer in the UK. .243 ammo is readily available (100g Federal Powershok is about £22 a box). My advise is buy a synthetic stocked Tikka or Sako. You will always be able to sell it and get your money back. Same goes for a scope, buy a second hand fixed power (6x or 8x) Swarovski/Zeiss/Meopta with a 42mm or larger objective lens. Do you actually need a moderator? I have found myself favouring an unmoderated set-up. If the barrel is threaded, you can always save up for one or get one on the never-never.
Read old threads on this site and you'll save yourself a load of headaches and cash. The guys on here know what they're talking about. It has been a fantastic help to me.

Good luck mate

Jolyon

 

[nick.308]

yep il second what others have said about tikka, sako etc I would see if you can try before you buy? whatever your calibre or brand of rifle it will be your baby if you can shoot a gnats ass with it. I picked up a cheap remington 700 police in .308 and its the one I turn to over all my other expensive rifles!

 

[Greener Jim]

I will simply mirror everyone else really. A 30-06 (or 308) will do the job definitely and would be my choice over a 243 since you shoot the 30's accurately, that will only get better with practice too. I presume you don't handload and 308 will be available everywhere so that is a good thing.
I would personally go secondhand, there is lots in your price bracket from very well established and respected brands. I don't rate the Axis and couldn't recommend one as a first rifle.

Purely as examples:
Savage Arms .308 Model 11 GCNS Hunter Bolt Action Second Hand Rifle for sale. Buy for 850.

Browning .308 A Bolt - Hunter Bolt Action Second Hand Rifle for sale. Buy for 850.

Tikka .30-06 T3 Lite Bolt Action Second Hand Rifle for sale. Buy for 695.

You would likely want to upgrade the scope at a later date but they get you shooting. I'm not saying buy one of those, just showing what's out there secondhand.

Would it be possible to run without a moderator? That would allow you to maximise on rifle and scope (the important bits) and you can just fill the slot for a moderator easy enough so long as the rifle is screw cut.

 

[Greener Jim]

As for FLO pointing you towards 243, apply for what you want. Either myself or Orion (amongst others) can help you with your application and if any problems arise we can help with that too. Orion in particular has a great depth of knowledge.

 

[Scuttlebuttin]

Go a little bigger. 6.5x55.

 

[308tikka]

Advice to me by an experienced stalker when I started :

Buy second hand.

spend more on your riflescope than you spend on the rifle.

spend more on binos than your combined rifle and riflescope.

Its proven good advice if expensive. The glass is worth it.

buy a workmans gun for your first one. A simple rifle you dont mind if you pick up a dent in the stock or a scratch on the barrel. That you can sell on without losing much value.

pre owned tikka, sako excellent. But so will be a mauser or an older parker hale if youre tight on funds-from well known gun sales sites. Ive bought two tikkas both under 500£ this way.

Nothing wrong with any calibre-they all have a role. Choose a calibre you can easily buy ammo for locally.

My preference is 308 as its super easy to buy factory ammo in multiple loads for multiple applications and exceptionally straightforward to reload for accuracy. But 243, 30-06 also superb.

you have to match ammo to gun and its the ammo that does the business. For 150yds or less it will be much of a muchness between legal calibres for deer in E&W.

 

[308tikka]

Tikka .30-06 T3 Lite Bolt Action Second Hand Rifle for sale. Buy for 695.

this. With a moderator at that price?! Buy it. You wont regret it.

 

[Alantoo]

Go and have a look at a few rifle shops and just get a sense of costs and availability and most importantly what actually looks and feels good to you.

http://www.ivythornsporting.co.uk claims to let you try before you buy and I have only heard good reports of them.

As others have said any deer legal calibre will do the job effectively, most rifles (with ammunition it likes) will outshoot the rifleman, so buy one you like the look and feel of.

Guntrader.co.uk and the classifieds on here are also a good source of information and opportunity.

Alan

 

[Odders]

Go a little bigger. 6.5x55.

Agreed.
The 6.5 Swedish is a very good round indeed & much overlooked. If I didn't already have .243 on my ticket, I'd seriously consider one (& may do so in any case).
As an all round calibre, that or .308 Win would be my choice.

 

[User00033]

At your new rifle price point, go with either Howa or Bergara, you can't go wrong. Get a smaller deer legal calibre / cartridge and learn to shoot it properly (.243, 6.5 in whatever version you can get ammo). At the range you are planning to shoot from the chair, a .243 would be the perfect round. Extend yourself, get out of the high seat and go find a friendly landowner who will allow you a 200yd, 300yd range. Developing skills, ballistics knowledge, shot placement / anatomy, patience comes before .308s and .30-06s. There's a reason the old timers eased their descendents into centrefires with .222s, .223s, .243s. I do not agree at all that someones first centrefire should be a 30 cal. No.

 

[308tikka]

At your new rifle price point, go with either Howa or Bergara, you can't go wrong. Get a smaller deer legal calibre / cartridge and learn to shoot it properly (.243, 6.5 in whatever version you can get ammo). At the range you are planning to shoot from the chair, a .243 would be the perfect round. Extend yourself, get out of the high seat and go find a friendly landowner who will allow you a 200yd, 300yd range. Developing skills, ballistics knowledge, shot placement / anatomy, patience comes before .308s and .30-06s. There's a reason the old timers eased their descendents into centrefires with .222s, .223s, .243s. I do not agree at all that someones first centrefire should be a 30 cal. No.

Quite a sweeping statement. The "old timers" easing descendents in 223 ? Come on... Surely you mean 303 ?

It depends on the acquired skills and experience of the shooter. skills from air rifle and rimfire shooting are transferable. 308 is not a viciously kicking round. Law in the UK means if youre going to have one rifle for all 6 prevalent species, you need to have a 6mm/.240 minimum. Some people dont have the money to have a centrefire 22 to learn on before they get to have a 30cal anyway. There is nothing wrong with a 243 but its hardly necessary to own one before having a larger calibre, despite what some FLOs believe.

My first centrefire rifle was a 308. My first sporting centrefire was a 308. In the UK many 14 year old kids learn to shoot 22lr indoors in winter and 308 fullbore in summer with the cadet movement, at the shortest range of 300yards. It isnt hard, particularly if you learn to shoot properly by holding the rifle, use the marksmanship principles and dont get sucked into the cradling stock with non-trigger hand while on bipod nonsense as though youre Bradley Cooper wearing a bad bandana. Or carrying round rear bags to setup belly benchrest positions. There is a lot to be said for learning your skillset on iron sights before using optics, sadly a dying art.

 

[Greener Jim]

Developing skills, ballistics knowledge, shot placement / anatomy, patience comes before .308s and .30-06s.

All those things come before shooting any live quarry with any rifle regardless of calibre.

 

[User00033]

Quite a sweeping statement. The "old timers" easing descendents in 223 ? Come on... Surely you mean 303 ?

Nope! Definitely not. My grandpa taught me in the early 80s when I was in my teens and he was in his 70s and he'd left the .303 behind 20 years before that. He was a .243 man. But he insisted on starting me, my brothers and sisters and the dozens of the cousins on a BSA Majestic .222 from sometime in prehistory (early 60s I think). Now he's been gone a decade or more and it's up to my generation to start off the newbies, and guess what. I won't be starting them on a 30 cal.

I do however like what you're saying 308tikka about the cadet movement, sadly that's not something we have access to where we live, too far to drive unfortunately. That's how my wife learnt, in the cadets and then the real deal SANDF with accurised R1s in 5.56x45 Nato, before she moved onto R4s (same round) and only after that the Steyr Mannlicher .308s.

Edit... I have been corrected by the wife who tells me that the Steyrs were 7.62x51mm and that I should bloody well know the difference by now....

 

[ChesterP]

Without knowing the OP or the ground, I cannot see how anyone on here can possibly advise on "what cal is best". To the OP: only you can decide what you need, and I would start with inviting your FEO onto your land to walk it and first demonstrate that you've thought about where you'll shoot, backstops, high seat positions, boundaries and PROW. Until you get beyond that, the calibre becomes academic. You don't need a canon like a 30-06 to shoot deer from a high seat at short distances of up to 100m, and your licensing team will look at that and probably say the same unless you have stalking elsewhere or want to widen your options for the future. It's what you have good reason for presently that counts, not what you might do in future and that is a reality for licensing decisions I'm afraid.

Having said all of that, given your position and the likely shots you'll be taking, and taking it as a given that you're deemed safe and have the understanding of where to cleanly kill an animal etc, I would probably advise either a new .243 or (preferably from my own personal preference) a 6.5 Swede and a used fixed 6 x 42 or 8 x 50/56 scope from S&B or Zeiss. I would advise against buying a .243 used. Buy new for the rifle, and as Dodgy suggests, you won't go far wrong with a Howa or a Bergara B14 for the money. If in the future you have the opportunity of stalking further afield and over longer distances, the Swede would be an excellent all round choice.

 

[stubear]

I love a "what caliber" thread

My personal view (for what its worth) is that you should try to get an all round rifle for your first one, especially if you have budget restrictions that mean you might not want to be swapping rifles around down the line.

You might decide to try for boar or maybe go up on the hill later on so it might be worth considering a .308 so you can push out a heavier bullet?

Positives of .308 are you can get ammo everywhere and in a wide range of grain weights, it will do all 6 species of deer plus boar in the UK, its just about big enough for some plains game and Scandinavian beasts, theres loads of reloading components and information out there on it, and just about every manufacturer does a rifle in this caliber. It is also a decent 1000y target bullet and you can get cheap ball ammo just for plinking on the range if you want to.

It also does a lot less meat damage than .243 (heavy and slow bullets are much better for things you want to eat as they do less carcass damage than light and fast rounds which tend to explode a bit) and fallow get a big thick layer of fat on them this time of year, so having a nice heavy 150gn bullet to punch through it is a good thing.

Downsides? Its arguably not as flat shooting as faster cartridges, but thats not going to make much odds under 200y and you can always buy the 123gn Sako ammo (or hand load a light bullet such as the 130gn TTSX) if you want it flatter and faster. TBH I think a lot of the negative vibes for the .308 come about because people see it as boring or safe. Its pretty much the most popular hunting round in the entire world and that alone speaks volumes to me.

The other all rounder in my view is 6.5x55. Also a great round for punching through thick layers of fat, doesnt do lots of meat damage either, has good ammo availability (though not quite as good as .308) and is very nice to shoot. #

.30-06 is also a really great caliber and doesnt kick any harder than .308 in my view, but its harder to get factory ammo for it. Consider if you're down in rural Dorset somewhere and need more ammo would you be able to get some in the local shop? .308 you'd most likely be fine but you might find .30-06 is harder to get.

Kit wise get the best you can afford really Savage Axis, Browning A bolt or X bolt, a Tikka... And top it off with a S&B 8x56. Sorted.

 

[Davee]

I see you have used .22LR, do you belong to a club? If not find one and join, why? because a) you can add target shooting to your needs, b) if you shoot a .22 there -even with a club loaner- it will be recorded -further evidence of commitment, c) they should have guns of differing calibers that you can try, d) you have somewhere to safely zero and practice, e) some kind soul may even allow you to fire his rifle in a different calibre or type, politely explain the situation and you will be helped, f) you will receive safety training whether you need it or not, but it will be recorded, g) if you don't have a permission then your prime need is target shooting and paid stalking. They are not allowed to be a referee for you but will be contacted. Yes you may get biased opinions and advice but you will get a lot of different ones.
Personally I would go with a new Bergara or Mauser in 6.5x55 or 6.5CM. Both good guns and a flexible cartridge loads from fox to elk, plus it is a sweet shooting round. There are some reasonably priced scopes that will get you started, and you can save for a better one, plus it's easier to change a scope than a rifle.
Steve at Ivythorn does allow -in fact encourages- you to fire before buy, we went there and he had checked the rifle before we got there and said that the barrel had some corrosion, offered my son a discount or a new barrel at a good price. Phone and make an appointment you'll not be disappointed. Don't be hasty and best wishes for your success.

 

[Heym SR20]

I used a 243 for many years, and the 243 will kill any deer in the UK. For bigger deer, choice of bullet is important and you want a tough 100gn bullet that holds together.

Saying that I can't help feeling that the 6.5x55, 7mm-08, 7x57, 308 are probably better all rounders. Just that little more thump and slightly less meat damage.

With a new rifle you know that it is new. But, and it is a big but, the older rifles where often very much better built, nicer to handle etc. Not necessarily more accurate, but accuracy is not the be all and end all.

Look for a high quality 2nd hand rifle - probably wooden stocked - many will have be owned by amateur stalkers who stalk for a week a year and they probably shoot less than 100 rds a year.

I would steer clear of 2nd hand stainless/ synthetic 308s and 243s - unless you know the provenance - many will have been estate rifles or general issue to professional stalkers and many will have a very high round count. Thats not to say they won't to shoot well, but make sure it is priced accordingly.

If you are a novice, try as many rifles as you can and get to know what works for you. As said above, don't worry too much about the calibre.