Alsatian

.30-06 Remington ADL black synthetic stock. Costs maybe $350. Put a good quality scope on it when you have some money, but you can use it with the iron sights it is sold with. If you get into hunting and want to have either more aesthetically pleasing firearms and/or rifles chambered in cartridges that are more optimized for specific game animals (.25-06 for pronghorn antelope, .338 Win Mag for Elk, whatever) this rifle will still provide a useful function as a back-up for all big game hunting. Additionally, this black synthetic stock package is very robust and sturdy. Maybe when the weather is foul and you don't want to expose your pretty wood stocked beauty to the elements you can go hunting with this cheap, ugly ADL? I've got one, and I got it for this role of back-up rifle.

The .30-06 is generally considered to be perfectly adequate for all North American game shy of Grizzly Bears and Brown Bears. Truth be known, probably many of these bears too have been taken with the .30-06, but it seems to be prudent to use the most powerful cartridge you can shoot accurately for these species -- but this is an expensive, specialized hunt for most of us, and you can cross this bridge when you come to it by buying a specialized rifle for that hunt. Probably no ammunition is more widely sold than .30-06 ammunition, and in appropriate bullet weights for the game species proximate to the retail location selling the cartridges.

I'm sure I'm repeating much of what others have already said about the .30-06.