I'm a huge fan of the .300 magnum family.

I have a 30.06, .243, .22-250, .270and a .300 Weatherby. All of the guns have good scopes, finely tuned triggers and are accurate, but my .300 is in my hands on opening day.

It does a sufficient amount of damage even after a bad shot that recovery is not a problem. On a good broadside lung shot, meat damage is very minimal. It has excellent range, and performs well in close quarters as well. It has tremendous knockdown power, even 350 yards downrange. It's also handy to have a "big gun" around, if you get the chance to hunt bigger game.

Remember, the buck of a lifetime is a survivor - he's a bit bigger, a bit tougher than your garden variety 110 pounder. He's not a 90pound doe. It's nice to have that extra bit of "umph" if you need to take a marginal shot, or make an errant shot.

To sum it up, while the other calibers can do some good things, the .300 can do each of those things, onlybetter.

I don't really differentiate between .300 Rem mag., .300 RUM, .300 WBY, .300 Short mag, and .300 SUM, they're all basically the same. Just stay away from the .300 Savage, which is a different animal.

That said, a gun is only as good as it's scope, and a scope is only aseffective as its trigger.