One of the most important decisions for you to make in your hunting career is what deer hunting rifle you should purchase.
Selecting a firearm which has the ballistics, design, action, sighting and size to accommodate your hunting area and personal capability is the basis of achieving your goal once your prey is hunted and located. If you have a deer hunting rifle that meets your needs, you’ll have a more successful season.
Where Will You Be Hunting?
When you go deer hunting, you’ll typically either hunt in open range country or dense brush country, like deep woods. Some locations are a combination of both environments. Every hunting environment has different styles of shooting and require rifles with different characteristics.
Deep Woods/Dense Brush Deer Hunting Rifles
Good woods and brush deer hunting rifles should excel in short to medium range shooting. Typically, you’ll be shooting anything from 25 to 200 yards at deer in this environment, so this range is important. It is to your advantage that your deep woods deer hunting rifle be relatively light (less than nine pounds with the scope), and be relatively short in length with a barrel length of twenty two inches or shorter. It’s important to be able to move quickly and easily through densely wooded areas. Deer hunting rifles that offer the ability to reload quickly, such as automatics and lever actions are recommended in rough country deer hunting as quick follow shots are often required. You need to penetrate the brush, so get a bullet with a heavy cartridge - nothing less than 120 grain and .270 caliber. In order to prevent the bullet from getting deflected by brush, don’t get too fast of a cartridge, more than 2,200 feet/second is not needed. If your hunting terrain only allows shots to be taken within 50 yards or less of the intended target, you may want to consider using an open sight. If not, I would recommend a scope with four power, or a variable scope that can get down to 3X. If you want to find out if open site shooting works for you, test it out at the range.
Open Range Deer Hunting Rifles
Deer Hunting Rifles that work well in open areas are optimized for longer range shooting, up to three hundred yards (or farther!). You won’t have to worry as much about the rifle being light so much as it being accurate; go ahead and get a heavier one if it means better accuracy. Flat shooting high velocity rifle calibers and cartridges are required here. Calibers in the 6MM (.243) caliber range or higher will be OK, and bullets from 100 grain and heavier will work. Generally, the larger the caliber is, the heavier the bullet will need to be for the best ballistic accuracy. Scopes with a 6 X 9 variable power are what most shooters will need at the very least.
Personal Choices
As you select your deer hunting rifle, heed the advice you’ve just read where it talks about the environment in which you’re hunting; once you do that, figure out what other characteristics you need to fit your shooting style. Do you really want to lug ten or twelve pounds of long rifle with you around your deer hunting terrain?
Go to a local hunting rifle dealer and try many different models, types, sizes, and manufacturers of deer hunting rifles for feel. Whenever you can ask a successful hunters what type of rifle they use and why. See if friends will let you handle their rifles, so that you can get a feel for what kind of weapon you are comfortable hunting with.
You can learn so much more about deer hunting deer hunting rifles, and even get great deer hunting tips, by checking out our webpage dedicated to choosing the best rifle here: Deer-HuntingTips.com/DeerHuntingRifle.
You can also get our latest deer hunting course, “Secrets of Finding Monster Bucks Revealed” for free at Monster Bucks.
To your Success!!!
John Eaglesmith
Deer-HuntingTips.com