“Ideal” for me is very subjective - what I bought and built for myself are a long ways from what I’d recommend for others.
I went through a fit of folly about 5 years ago (same as I did about 12 years ago), and I liquidated a big part of my accumulation, reducing to what I thought at the time made sense. I’ve crawled slowly back to about the same count now, with a different inventory, so like the time before, it was largely for naught, but at the time, I had the idea to create a couple rifles which would do everything I needed in hunting fields.
I’d caught myself a handful of times looking into my safes, thinking about what I wanted to shoot, what I wanted to use for hunting, and what maybe didn’t need to be there. But as my wife and I looked at our list, so many rifles had “that one memory” of a hunting trip one place or another on it. Kinda like candy sprinkles, a single memory here and there, but not much cake. I had my first deer rifle in the back of the safe with a lot of memories of a lot of hunts and harvests in it, but hadn’t considered it my “preferred choice” in years. I separated some memories in my mind, sold a lot of rifles, and “started over”.
So at the time:
1) I built an AR with uppers in 204 Ruger, 5.56, and 6.8 Grendel. Colony varmints, coyotes, and whitetails.
2) I bought a Ruger M77 Hawkeye All-Weather in 300wm, and bought an extra barrel in 45cal to make a .458wm option. Anything far away, or heavy. For my wife, another All Weather Hawkeye, but hers in 7mm Rem mag, with spare barrels in 338win mag and 416 Ruger.
Naturally, I had a couple dozen rifles which I didn’t liquidate at the time, such I wasn’t limited to just those options, but these were the plan... at least at the time... But I unfortunately didn’t succeed in sustaining a reduced inventory...
Certainly wouldn’t say either of my choices make sense for others, but for me, they’re what I wanted, to do everything I needed. I took the 300wm bear hunting this season, probably take it for whitetails in a couple of months here at home. I did replace the 18” 6.8spc with a suppressed 10.5” upper, which somehow grew its own lower, but the purpose remains - short to midrange whitetails, and smaller.