I'm at this point going with:
M1 Garand - I just love the history and the sex appeal.
CZ452 - About as nice of a rimfire as you can get short of spending Anschutz/Cooper dollars. Enough variations to keep everyone happy.
Savage 110/10 - Darn accurate out of the box. With a couple fairly inexpensive tools the home hobbyist can swap triggers, stocks, bolt heads, and barrels. Swapping from a light weight deer rifle to a heavy barreled 100 yard bench gun to a 1000 yard F-class rifle only takes a couple screws, a nut, and then a go gauge. Not the best setup in the world but for the tinkerer on a budget it is one heck of a value.
Marlin 336, especially the older pre-crossbolt safety models - Darn accurate, very inexpensive, very handy, and powerful enough for anything I would come across locally. I really like my .30-30. It is the handy rifle of the group.
AR15 - Another option that is very modular. The platform can be pistol, sbr, carbine, a plain rifle, a service match rifle, a varmint rifle, as well as a competition rifle, and a very open ended fighting rifle. It fills a lot of roles well. It works well for a hunting rifle as well as a range rifle as well as a battle rifle. Not many that really fill all three well. Even the M1 I picked above is a bit heavy for field use considering today's lightweight bolt action rifles.
M1 Garand - I just love the history and the sex appeal.
CZ452 - About as nice of a rimfire as you can get short of spending Anschutz/Cooper dollars. Enough variations to keep everyone happy.
Savage 110/10 - Darn accurate out of the box. With a couple fairly inexpensive tools the home hobbyist can swap triggers, stocks, bolt heads, and barrels. Swapping from a light weight deer rifle to a heavy barreled 100 yard bench gun to a 1000 yard F-class rifle only takes a couple screws, a nut, and then a go gauge. Not the best setup in the world but for the tinkerer on a budget it is one heck of a value.
Marlin 336, especially the older pre-crossbolt safety models - Darn accurate, very inexpensive, very handy, and powerful enough for anything I would come across locally. I really like my .30-30. It is the handy rifle of the group.
AR15 - Another option that is very modular. The platform can be pistol, sbr, carbine, a plain rifle, a service match rifle, a varmint rifle, as well as a competition rifle, and a very open ended fighting rifle. It fills a lot of roles well. It works well for a hunting rifle as well as a range rifle as well as a battle rifle. Not many that really fill all three well. Even the M1 I picked above is a bit heavy for field use considering today's lightweight bolt action rifles.
