Want to buy a new rifle

[Mercedesrover]

Tikka all the way. I have a T3 Hunter in .270 and it's the most accurate rifle I own. It wears a Nikon Monarch 3-12x42 BDC That I'm very happy with. I'm not a good shot and I can post 1" groups at 100 yards all day long with this gun. Something about it just makes me shoot it well.

My next long-range gun will be the same Tikka T3 Hunter but in .204 Ruger and will have another Nikon Monarch only this one will be 4-16x42.

I can't say enough good about these Tikkas.

 

[Mercedesrover]

In Gary's part of the U.S I believe that anything other than a buckshot or slugs are illegal to use for fear of hitting something further down range. This is typical for a large portion of the highly populous Eastern U.S. In that circumstance it would be easy to come to think that anything less is not enough power since those are the minimum legal requirement.

Here in CT it's shotgun and muzzle loader only on state land. On private land you can use a rifle. Must be 6mm/.243 or larger.

 

[Jonathan Hanson]

On private land you can use a rifle. Must be 6mm/.243 or larger.

That brings up the problem with one-size-fits-all caliber requirements - all loads within a specific caliber are not the same. A 6.5mm someone saddled with a lightweight, shoddily constructed bullet of poor sectional density to try to gain a flatter trajectory would be far less humane weapon than a 6.5 with the long, well-made bullets that commonly completely penetrate Scandinavian elk (moose) side to side. A whole bunch of African settlers used that cartridge on anything up to and including eland.

The poster boy for proper bullet construction is Roy Weatherby, whose early hyper-velocity loads earned his rifles scathing derision among African hunters.

 

[Mercedesrover]

I agree with you on that point, and the state tries to do what they feel is best when it comes to hunting laws, but they often fall short in their logic.

With modern "slug gun" shotguns, the rational of having a "shotgun only" season and no rifles on state land is hard to support. I don't really understand how a rifled-barrel shotgun is still a shotgun at all, but I don't make the rules.

Technology has propelled the muzzleloader light-years ahead of what legislators think they are as well. They're a far cry from grandpa's flintlock for sure.

Both modern slug guns as well as modern muzzleloaders are rivaling rifles in accuracy and I don't really see the point of excluding rifles in some areas or season dates, but that's another argument.

But getting back to your point about caliber being the rule instead of bullet weight. You're exactly right. I do hunt deer with a .243win (among other calibers) and I can buy ammunition from 55 grain to 105 grain in that caliber. I shoot 95 grain at deer and it works wonderfully. Making the rule read a minimum of say 80 grain would make more sense than a minimum caliber but would be difficult to enforce.

 

[Jonathan Hanson]

Yeah - I actually wasn't implying game departments could do anything differently; it's just a downside of cut-and-dried rules. Imagine trying to implement a minimum-sectional-density law . . .

The problem, as I see it, with archery and black powder seasons is that, originally, they were designed to offer some advantage to hunters who were using clearly "inferior" - weapons, i.e shorter range and requiring much more skill and practice to use. Modern, inline-ignition, scope-sighted muzzle-loaders, and compound bows with illuminated sights and God knows what else, have made a mockery of that concept. Most black-powder hunters these days have no connection with and no interest in the long hunters of colonial days; they just want an extra season. We need a flintlock-only rifle and no-training-wheels bow season!