RE: Looking to get into hunting...need direction on rifle and caliber.
Welcome to the forum, Lambchops! My guess is that you don't relod (yet) so you will want a rifle in a caliber that is easy to find, and has a wide variety of loads available. My personal favorite will always be the tried and true .30-06. You can get lots of different types of ammo for it in lots of bullets weights by lots of manufacturers, so you should be able to find a load that groups well in your rifle. The recoil is not unmanageable for most healthy adults. Accuracy is superb in a good rifle. It has adequate power for most anything on the North American continent except for big Alaskan bears you probably can't afford to hunt for anyway. There are many other calibers that shoot flatter, kick less, etc and so forth and they are ALL great (I'd love to have a .280) but the ammo for these may not be readily available at small hardware stores in rural areas.
There are so many good bolt action rifles out there that I doubt you'd go far wrong wityh any of them. If you're the type to have picked a Browning A Bolt you won't need too much advice from anyone. I personally favor the Remington 700, Winchest Model 70 and the CZ 550. I had a Ruger 77 MkII that wouldn't shoot straight no matter what the gunsmith or I tried, but this was probably just a lemon. Most Ruger owners are very happy with their rifles. I loved everything about mine except the fact that it would not shoot consistently.[&o]
Good luck, let us know what you settle on.