I have been pondering getting a rifle. I live in lower MI so I can't deer hunt with a centerfire, so I have several shotguns, a dedicated slug gun and a nice inline. I also have a 17 HMR, but have been wanting something a bit more powerful.

I have been considering a high powered rifle for a while, I think I want one now. I looked at some of the stevens rifles at Gander Mountain this weekend and was pretty impressed for the money. I don't care for that ugly cheesy plastic stock, but the rest is nice (I'm a wood kind of guy). I used to have a 110E savage in 30-06 and was pretty happy with it. These look like the same thing pretty much.

I also looked at one of the cheaper remingtons, iiick I wasn't impressed at all. They just look cheap to me.

My dilemma has been what caliber do I want. I was flopping around between .223, 22-250 and a .243. I never really did much comparing though. This is what I assumed. The 223 would be cheaper and fairly flat. The 22-250 would probably be the most expensive, but the flattest shooting. I also hear they wear out barrels or something faster? I figured the .243 would be in between as far as price went and probably the least flat shooting, but still pretty good. Not to mention if I ever got the chance to go up north I could hunt deer with it. I could with the others as well, there is no caliber limit in MI, but I would feel more confident with the .243.

Well I got to looking at ammo choices and prices and found that they are all pretty much the same for premium ammo. Sure you can get .223 really cheap, but most of it looked like crap and not really what I wanted. And yes I found a few boxes of 22-250 that were pretty expensive, but I found some pretty pricey .243 ammo as well. I thought DAMN! this doesn't help me any.

I came home today and punched some numbers into a ballistics calculator. I found that winchester makes a 55 grn ballistic tip bullet in all three calibers. I was pretty amazed at what I found. The .243 is hands down the winner. This cartridge flat out rocks and will darn near do anything I want it to depending one what I load it with. It's even flatter than the 17 remington out to 300 yards. I would have never thought that.

My next rifle purchase will undoubtedly be a .243. I may even sell something to get one. Although I'm pretty fond of the guns I currently have. Maybe I'll ask everyone in my family to pitch in and get me one for Christmas or something. Maybe I should have planned this better since my 40th birthday is tomorrow. Oops.

Oh, I'm thinking medium range woodchuck/target gun for the intended purpose

Paul