If and when you acquire your first combination gun, drilling, or double rifle, you will find lots of people on the forums who are surprised to discover that, with the right loads, their break action rifles are more accurate than any bolt action they own.
If the bullets are moving 200 fps slower, so what? These are made for the woods, swamps, thickets, tall grass, moving on uneven and slippery ground, quickly aiming and firing offhand. They are more capable than most hunters are inside 200 yards, and most shots will be at 100 or 50 or 25 yards. A 7x57 starting a 140-gr bullet out at 2,600 fps, or an 8mm pushing a 200-gr bullet at 2,300, will kill big game, not just deer. A 9.3x74R or .375 with a mild load is flat shooting and potent.
They are safe, just like a SxS shotgun, and you can move one about to balance oneself when fording a stream, as an aide, rather than an impediment. Try that with a ten pound rifle with bipod and Hubble scope on it.
If you only hunt ducks from a blind with a Benelli autoloader, you will not understand why a grouse hunter, climbing steep hills with his Springer Spaniel, prefers a light 20-gauge SxS. But the great thing about hunting and fishing is not waiting until you need a different tool, but that owning one opens up new types of hunting and fishing, makes you dream of doing something different, and then doing some of it.
If the bullets are moving 200 fps slower, so what? These are made for the woods, swamps, thickets, tall grass, moving on uneven and slippery ground, quickly aiming and firing offhand. They are more capable than most hunters are inside 200 yards, and most shots will be at 100 or 50 or 25 yards. A 7x57 starting a 140-gr bullet out at 2,600 fps, or an 8mm pushing a 200-gr bullet at 2,300, will kill big game, not just deer. A 9.3x74R or .375 with a mild load is flat shooting and potent.
They are safe, just like a SxS shotgun, and you can move one about to balance oneself when fording a stream, as an aide, rather than an impediment. Try that with a ten pound rifle with bipod and Hubble scope on it.
If you only hunt ducks from a blind with a Benelli autoloader, you will not understand why a grouse hunter, climbing steep hills with his Springer Spaniel, prefers a light 20-gauge SxS. But the great thing about hunting and fishing is not waiting until you need a different tool, but that owning one opens up new types of hunting and fishing, makes you dream of doing something different, and then doing some of it.
