DannyD,
A question I have asked myself every year. I bought my 7mm 25 years ago this year and have , as you, worked and worked on that special load for many years till I believe I have got it as perfect for both me and the gun as I can. I too, have a 30-30 (Marlin), as well as many other cal. which would be more than needed to take home a deer. And every year I open my gun safes and look at the hardware to decide which gun I'm going to use this year and yes it is a fleeting thought for each year I reach in and pull out the trusty Savage 7 mm, which is nothing fancy but shoulders so well. I suppose it's what we get used to or perhaps for me, it is that when I finally got enough money to buy it (wasn't that expensive compared to today's fire arms but 25 years ago I had to save for a while), and that gun has been muled by me over countless ridges, bush, and fields that I identify with it as much as my old hunting jacket which has been sewn so many times that I think there is as much reparing thread as original thread (not quite but it feels like it does) and I have also bought a number of hunting jackets over the years (that I end up wearing under my old one). Perhaps it is the memmoris that my old equipment brings back to me. Maybe this sound alittle silly to some of the younger hunters that may read this but 25 years later that ol 7mm is far more comfortable in the woods than the day I bought it. Just a thought from an older (but still obsessed) hunter that has been chasing the whitetail for almost 40 years.