RE: Looking at possible first guns.
 

Narrowed down / changed my selection some more after reading some of the responses:

Rifles (.30-06, or 7mm-08 or .300 Win Mag when available)
Savage 110GXP3
Remington 700 SPS
CZ 550 American
Beretta Tikka T3 Hunter
Ruger M77 Standard
Browning BAR LongTrac

Shotguns (12 gauge)
Stoeger P-350 Synthetic
Mossberg 500 Field
Stoeger Model 2000 Synthetic
Remington 870 Express Combo
Franchi I-12 Synthetic
Beretta 3901 American
Remington 1100 Classic Field

Any more suggestions or anything I should add to or remove from this?

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RE: Looking at possible first guns.
 

I say 7mm-08. I'm still in the market for one ,though.
If you like smooth actions, take that Savage off that list! They have an extremely rough action that takes awhile to get used to.(You probably won't get used to it if you go to the shooting range alot.)

RE: Looking at possible first guns.
 

Go with the SPS. Smooth action, free floating stock, great price. You might want to consider a trigger job. Most all guns have "lawyer" triggers (9-10). A lighter trigger will help accuracy, and it is a cheap thing to do. As you may have seen in my earlier post, I'm fixin to do this to my rifle soon. As for caliber, 300 mag!

Shotguns-Again Remington 870- cant beat the performance, especially for the price!

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RE: Looking at possible first guns.
 

I've fired over twenty shots on my grandpa's Savage, and at some times when feeding and ejecting, the action get pretty darn annoying.
That can be gotten used to though, but one thing a fellow can't get used to is that the magazine is made way to large for the caliber, and if you don't put the cartridge to the front of the magazine, then the action will work, but it won't chamber the cartridge! That would totally stink if you couldn't make any follow-up shots on an elk! You'd just be sitting there trying to get your nails stuck in the magasine in order to move the cartridge forward a bit![:@]

RE: Looking at possible first guns.
 

I went to Dick's the other day and looked at some of the guns they had there. They didn't have the Stoeger P-350, but they had the supposedly similar Benelli Nova. I liked it, and the synthetic version was only $300, so I might get that if I can't find the Stoeger. However, the Mossberg 500 scoped slug barrel/field barrel combo was only $250! As for rifles, I only got to look at the Beretta Tikka, but I liked that.