Hi Elgin...
LOLOLOL !
No problem, Elgin.
As a shooter and lifelong triggerjerk who has owned and used upwards of a hundred assorted guns I've enjoyed the plethora of calibers to talk about, reload for, shoot, swap and agonize over in general.
But as hunter and observer of many, many shooters/hunters I've become convinced that the "best" or, perhaps "most useful" calibers are those that help the shooter shoot well, and that is by default an advocacy for calibers with good trajectories and good terminal ballistics combined with the least-necessary recoil and blast.
Thus my personal position is that the (mythical) average hunter here is served to complete satisfaction with a .243 Winchester. Partly that's because for every hunter who gets to go after anything larger than deer there are probably 1000 who never send a slug after anything larger than deer.
Because of my involvement with Hunter Safety Ed. I have had contact with Fish & Game folks, guides and hunters from many places and those from the antelope states have always assured me that even with antelope the vast majority of those killed/recovered are shot at 300 yds. or less and a high % of those shot at beyond the 300-yd. bouy end up as "unrecovered".
Yes, longer range shooting is possible but, truthfully, a cross-section of those haunting forums like this would not be representitive at all of the hunting population in general. The somewhat scary eye-opener is to visit a large public range in the weeks ahead of deer season. The number of people with rifles that show up for their once-a-year "practice" and their general lack of knowledge and ability is astounding. And that is fact, not snobbery. Hordes of people go hunting who don't put 1/100th of the effort into learning to handle their weapons that the many of the folks on these forums do.
But back to calibers - my personal opinion is that a reasonably good hunter/shooter after anything on this continent would be in the absolute Lap of Luxury if they had a .22/250, a .243, and a 7mm/08 - and would never really need anything else. They wouldn't need the 7mm/08 until they went for something larger than deer. That's to say most hunters here would be just fine with only the .22/250 and the .243, and, truth is, whatever they could do with the .22/250 they could do with the .243 and worry a tad less about the breeze.
All that said - I really like the Swift, the 25/06, the .270 and even the 7 Mag. but I know they won't do anything in most hands that can't be done with the .243 and 7mm/08, and neither will any of the .30 calibers.
I also like the .44 Mag. and the 30/30 - not because they are more useful but because they come in rifle packages that are simply a lot of fun to play with and they can do a very commendable job on deer (and black bear) at the ranges where many, many deer are successfully harvested.
So all of the above leads to my habit of recommending calibers that the "average" shooter/hunter will be willing to shoot enough to develop some real skill with and recommending against calibers that I know will discourage a lot of the "once-a-year" types.
And from a political standpoint -
we all need those "casual" hunters/shooters because if the shooting sport(s) depended on the patronage of
just the really accomplished riflemen - both the shooting and hunting scenes, and the entire civilian firearms industry would have disappeared decades ago. Best case civilians would never have access to anything but whatever the military had. That is, in fact, how the hunting fraternity got saddled with the obvious overkill of the '06.
As always, local opinion may vary.
for fun, which is certainly possible.
