Thanks to all who replied, especially Alsatian. Great advice. Guess I should have said where I was from, I live in N. California. I'd love to go out and scout for deer right now, but that's kind of a problem seeing as how there is better than 30 feet of snow on the ground! I'll have to wait until spring.

I did look at the ballistics tables, and I also downloaded a program called winbal that shows you ballistics of any gun you want. It is great and taught me a lot. I know most of you grew up deer hunting, but you have to admit that the way rifles are classified is a little confusing to a newcomer? I think it is anyway.

Another thing that is going to make my hunting more difficult is that there are two species of deer in california (plus hybrids). In the northern sierras and southern cascades that's where your mule deer hangs out. But, it's almost impossible (or very unlikely) that you will get drawn for that area--DFG only lets a certain number of people hunt it ever year and you have to enter a lottery for it. In north west california, you have the coast range and that is where the blacktails are, and is probably where I will have to hunt. So I'm trying to learn as much as poss. about blacktails. From what I hear they are pretty tough critters to hunt, but my goal is to get one this year. Like I said, it's not safe right now to go trekking out into the backcountry because it snows a lot and I don't have the equipment for that. So like I said I will wait until spring.

Thanks again for the info, great board here!