222 for roe and 243 for red?
or just 243 for an all round rifle.
Rick, I hope you have a tin hat on, this could get messy!
I don't know if you are in Scotland or England? So i will answer for us living in England, we have to use a .240 minimum for roe, effectively a .243. A lot of us are no great fans of the .243 for anything other than fox, it was after all designed as a "varmint" wildcat round. It is used on many estates, even in Scotland on red deer, but has a reputation of causing excessive meat damage amongst some.
I have found that two of my friends have a lot of heart lung shot roe deer with their .243's , that have burst rumens where the bullet has caused massive damage internally, even though the shot placement was perfect. Both use Lapua 100gn .243 ammunition. This, and advice from a head stalker, was enough to put me off buying a .243 for deer, so i bought a 6.5x55.
Now I am not saying that the 6.5 is the perfect deer calibre, I just happen to think it does what I want a little better than the .243.
If you are going for a Blaser or Sauer why not get a .223 and a .308, which should share the same bolt (I think?) thus saving you some cash. The .223 is a fantastic fox and roe round (in Scotland) and it is hard to better the .308 for larger deer, and both calibres are easy to find factory ammunition for.
It is a wonderfully complex and frustrating subject, there are so many calibres that will do the job, and everyone has their own opinions on what are the best calibres. To quote a well known big game hunter, "use enough gun". There will be die hard 30-06 users who consider anything less a waste of time. 308 users who
know they have the best calibre. Traditionalists who will tell you a .275 Rigby (7x57) was good enough for W D M Bell and Jim Corbett so that's what you should have. Us 6.5x55 users giving you the auld blarny about it being the best all rounder. And the 7mm-08 users telling you it's the round of the future! It's all cobblers really!!!
Find a rifle that you like and that fits you, and in a calibre it's easy to find factory ammunition for and go and enjoy yourself.
Atb, ft