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| Photo copyright 2012 by Jackson Landers |
A new hunter should acquire three basic weapons in order to hunt everything that North America has to offer in the way of meat. If you buy these three types of weapon then you can probably hunt with them for the rest of your life. Unlike a car or a kitchen appliance, guns can literally last a lifetime and they will pay for themselves many times over in reduced grocery bills if you take care of them. I still hunt at least once a year with my great-grandfather's deer rifle and I expect it to outlive me by a few generations.
First, you should buy a bolt action .22 rifle. A .22 is good for both target practice and for meat. You can still buy a box of 500 rounds for a .22 for around $20. At pennies per shot, this is the cheapest way of getting to be good with a gun. The .22 cartridge, fired from a rifle, is ideal for squirrels, groundhogs, iguanas, gophers, nutria, rabbits, and anything of about that size. In my home state of Virginia it is legal to take wild turkeys with a .22 and this has become my weapon of choice for them.
There are no bad .22 bolt action rifles being manufactured and sold today. I can not say the same of semi-automatic .22s. There are good semi-autos on the market as well, but the semis are more fussy to disassemble and clean and new hunters are likely to find this a problem.
I've had very good experiences with Marlin's .22 bolt action rifles. I own a bunch of .22s and my number one .22 that I bring for serious work is a Marlin that has seen at least 7,000 rounds of ammunition fly through it with no serious mechanical problems or loss of accuracy.
Other brands are also good. Expect to spend around $250 brand new, or as little as $100 for a used gun.
There are lots of birds that are good to eat and most of them require a shotgun to kill. A shotgun is a tool designed to hit a moving object with a cloud of projectiles rather than a single bullet. Federal law prohibits using rifles to hunt migratory waterfowl and pretty well limits you to archery or shotguns. If you want to eat ducks and geese then you need a shotgun. Shotguns are also required in many states for wild turkeys. They work well on leaping squirrels and running rabbits. Quail, pheasants and doves all require a shotgun for hunting. You can do quite a lot with one of these things, though all shotguns are not created equally.
Shotguns are made with various action types. Double-barreled side-by-sides, over-and-unders, pump-actions, single-shots and semi-autos. All of these designs have their place, but if you want one shotgun that does a little bit of everything then what you want is a pump-action 12 gauge.
Rifle cartridges are usually expressed in terms of their 'caliber'' (which refers to the nominal diameter of the bullet), but most shotgun cartridges are named after their 'gauge.' The gauge is a very old term that describes how many round balls for that size barrel can be made out of a pound of lead. A 20 gauge gets 20 round balls out of a pound of lead. The 12 gauge, 12 balls. The lower the number, the more powerful the gun. These days almost nobody is shooting solid lead balls out of shotguns -- we usually load shotgun shells with lots of tiny balls of lead instead -- but the nomenclature has stuck with us.
A 12 gauge is your all-around shotgun cartridge. A shotgun built to use 12 gauge shells is capable of taking everything from geese to squirrels. It is more powerful than necessary for smaller game such as quail, but you can't possibly kill it deader than you were supposed to. A Canada goose is a big animal that really shouldn't be hunted with anything smaller than a 12 gauge for fear of wounding the animal without killing it. I have even hunted wild pigs with the same 12 gauge loaded with solid slugs (only because I was required to use this weapon).
The pump-action shotgun is a good choice for someone who will only have one shotgun to hunt with. You will usually have the option of extending the magazine capacity to as much as five rounds, which matters when hunting certain birds. Pump-actions tend to be inexpensive guns which hold up well to abuse and dirt encountered in the course of varied types of hunts. I have swum down a river using a Mossberg 500 as a bargepole and had the gun shooting just fine for me that same afternoon.
I recommend looking at two models of pump-action 12 gauge shotguns for all-around meat hunting. The Mossberg model 500 and the Remington model 870. The action of the 870 is smoother, but it rusts up very easily if you don't take perfect care of it. You can find either model on sale brand new for around $350. Used, as low as $100 depending on where you live and where you shop. Both of these models are easy to take apart and clean. Both offer a lot of after-market parts and its easy to swap out stocks or even barrels if you eventually have some type of hunt that requires modifications to the gun.
Finally, the well-rounded American hunter must absolutely own a center fire fire. Something that can take deer, elk, moose, pronghorn, bear or pigs.
If you have military experience (as millions of Americans and Canadians do) then you will probably be most comfortable with an AR-type semi-automatic hunting rifle. Its what you trained with and your hands will automatically reach for the safety in just the right place and you will know how to clear a jam instantly. There are hunting rifles on the market that imitate the ergonomics that you are already comfortable with. If you did not train with such a rifle then you will be a lot happier with a bolt-action rifle.
Bolt actions have very few moving parts and tend to be simple to clean and disassemble. There isn't much to go wrong. The oldest bolt action rifle in my personal collection was made in 1892 and still shoots accurately and reliably. 120 years of smooth service is a pretty good track record.
I have taught some hundreds of people how to hunt and shoot. Out of this experience I have come to believe that it is best for a new hunter to hunt deer and other big game with the most powerful rifle that he or she can comfortably shoot. Most adults will be able to comfortably handle the .308 cartridge and many will shoot the .30-'06 (thirty ought six) without any trouble at all.
A bolt action in .30-'06 will settle the hash of anything in North America, up to and including bison, musk ox and brown bear. Mind you, there are more powerful cartridges that are more specialized tools for these larger animals. But the .30-'06 can and has done the job well on everything on this continent.
I have taken more whitetail deer with the .30-'06 than with any other cartridge. I've hunted whitetails with the .32 Winchester Special, .303 British, 7.62x39, 7mm Mauser, 8mm Mauser, .22 LR, and .308. I've followed up and helped butcher deer for other hunters who used the .243, 30-30, 7mm Remington Magnum, .223, and all sorts of other things that I'm probably forgetting. Out of all of those, I've witnessed a better track record of dead deer rapidly resulting from the .30-'06 than by any other cartridge.
In really expert hands, it almost doesn't matter what the cartridge is. An excellent marksman who understands anatomy well and has an intuitive grasp of the animal's movements and rhythms will kill as reliably with one gun as another so long as he or she is familiar with the weapon. But we aren't talking about expert marksmen -- we're talking about beginner hunters. And beginners should throw the biggest bullet down-range that they can handle.
If the .30-'06 is too much recoil for you, try a .308. The .308 will do almost everything that a .30-06 will do. Its more of an expert tool for elk, its illegal for wild bison, and you'd be crazy to hunt brown bear with it. But on deer and moose and pronghorn a .308 is just dandy.
A few years ago I could say that every bolt action centerfire would work well on deer and last for many decades of use. Today, that is less true. There are a lot of low-cost options now that should have traded a bit more quality for a slightly higher price. The Remington model 700 remains a good product, as does the Marlin XCR and the Winchester Model 70. You can find good bolt action deer rifles on sale for as little as $400. Used, you might get one for as little as $200 on a really good day
I cover deer rifles in greater detail in my book, 'The Beginners Guide to Hunting Deer for Food.' There is a lot more about various calibers and different action types.
These three guns will do everything you could ask of them in North America. You could spend the rest of your life hunting with these tools and be very successful. The .22 rifle, the 12 gauge pump action, and the .30-'06 rifle can keep you in every sort of meat until the day you die. You can buy the trifecta for less than $1,000 if you like. Possibly a lot less than that if you shop carefully. Ask older relatives if there are family guns sitting in a closet somewhere that you can have to hunt with. You might be surprised.
Here in Virginia, a hunting license (without applying for any extra tags) gets us six deer, three turkeys, one black bear, dozens of squirrels and doves, scads of other small game, and dozens of geese and ducks for a small additional fee. The dedicated hunter can bank hundreds of pounds of meat every year, displacing thousands of dollars in expenses at the grocery store. A thousand bucks worth of guns can pay for its self many, many times over if you take the time to keep them working for you.
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