All the above are absolutely correct. About anything from a 260 thru 30.06 will do the job on deer sized targets. 30.06 ammo is the easiest to find most anywhere.

Another thing to consider is do you expect to do lots of shooting with your new purchase to the tune of hundreds of rounds per year or just a box of ammo a year?

Reason I say this is there are models out there now than cannot be re-barreled which to me is like buying a car and the lug nuts are welded so the wheel cannot be removed.

It is so easy to ruin a barrel as contrary to popular belief they are quite soft. One wrong pass with a jointed cleaning rod can take off or wear down the muzzle crown and you just destroyed the accuracy you had.

Tens of thousands of vets had their rifles (rodded) prior to leaving the firing line on military ranges by range personnel running rods down M16s from the muzzles. I saw this happening at Camp Perry in the Small Arms Firing School and made a report on the practice when I got back to work.

A little background, I went to work for the US Army Small Caliber Weapons Lab in the 70s and was subsequently assigned Product Engineering Responsibility for all rifles, shotguns and SMGs in the Army inventory except the M16. One guy had that by himself and when he was covered up I was assigned M16 work which was mainly conducting Catastrophic Failure Investigations on the ones that came in. Most everyone on the internet calls such KABOOMS and other terminology I have seen.

I noted the "rodding" that went on at Camp Perry and came back and reported it and it took a couple of years and thousands of ruined barrels for the Army to issue orders that there would be no more "rodding" of barrels.

As an example of how little it takes to deteriorate your barrel's accuracy I walked into a gun show in Jax,Fla and walked up to this first table and this guy was dumping a Rem 700 Varmint in 223 and sold it to the dealer for 200.00 before I caught on to the conversation. The dealer offered it to me for 250.00 and I started looking it over.

It was obvious the rifle had seen very few rounds and that told me there was something wrong with it. I looked down the bore, OK and it was straight internally. Note: just because a rifle barrel is straight on the outside doesn't mean it is straight on the inside.

It took me a bit of examination and I worked my way to the muzzle and I saw it. There was a very tiny nick on the crown. I estimate it was about .003" wide (sheet of paper thickness) and I was convinced it had happened at the factory as the little nick was blued.

I paid him and left and came home loaded up three different loads and went to range Sunday afternoon and it shot 1 1/2" at 100 yards. Monday I called my contact in Remington Engineering and asked him what the acceptance was on Varmints and he said 1 1/2" and he wanted to know what I had. I told him what I had found and was going to pull it down and recrown the muzzle. He agreed.

Got home and recrowned it and took it to the range. The exact same ammo was shot again and the worst group I had was 5/8ths inch at 100 yards ! ! ! !

The point here is some rifles have barrels to short to go through the headstock on a lathe so you are stuck with a rifle with a damaged crown because you can't remove barrel to fix it.

http://www.fulton-armory.com/%5Cfaqs...%5CTEGauge.htm

Give the above a read, written by a good friend Bruce Woodford who just died a couple months ago. It will give a good background on how critical damage to your muzzle can be.

Personally I would not recommend a disposable rifle, it just goes against my grain to consider such.