you are going to hear a billion trillion answers on this question. first i will say this, you say you hunt in the catskills? do you hunt in the woods? because this is usually a very mountainous, wooded area and a 400 yard shot would be difficult in these cicumstances. infact it would be impossible in a heavily wooded area. the more distance between you and that deer inside a thick / even moderately thick hardwoods is all the more difficult to make shots count (they way we all would like them to) no matter how good of a shot you are a 400 yard shot through the woods would be extremely difficult. in fact i would pin a medal on you if i seen it. because atover 400 yards in the woods things dissapear from your eyes that are still therein the way of your line of fire, like twigs , sticks, branches, even rocks. its a very risky shot to take. So, now that thats all discussed, lets move on. assuming that you are hunting in a wooded area, you will never get or (should take) more than a 150 yd. shot (ever)!!!! unless its a 15 ft. cleared path to your target. so that leaves us with a good choice of guns, like... the 30-30, 35 remington, 45-70, even a good slug shot gun is plenty...all inside 100 - 150 yd range. now if by chance, you are able to shoot 400 yds. that opens yet another array of fine rifles like- .260, .264, . 270, .280, . 30-06, . 7mm, . 300 win mags. and for slightly shorter ranges there are . 257 roberts, . 243, . 308, .300 savage, 30-40 craig,. 303 british, . 358 winchester. i could go on all day!!!!
but the answer to your question is that there is no perfect gun for just deer. it depends on what distance you would like to shoot them at and many other factors as well. and even at different distances you still have a barrage of cartridges to choose from. so its really your personal preferance. i like my 30 -06...but i will hunt more than just deer with that. but (JUST A DEER GUN) ? there really is no such thing as just a deer gun. a 30 - 30 can kill most any game in north america ( inside its effective range) and a 243 cant kill much larger game than a deer, but you can also hunt varmit and coyote with it. so you can really choose whatever gun you want to out of about 40 calibers and different configurations for each. they will all kill deer and do it effectively ( JUST AS LONG AS WE DONT HEAR OF ANYONE TAKING 400 YD. SHOTS IN THE CATSKILLS THIS SEASON)
