Originally Posted By: TripleDeuce660If you can afford that once in a lifetime brown bear hunt you can afford a larger caliber rifle for that trip. Would be silly to pay for cannon ammo and deal with the recoil and then never go hunt something which requires it.
Totally agree. The whole question is rendered obsolete by two factors:
1. The cost of hunting has risen so dramatically that instead of one of the most expensive parts of the equation, the rifle is now one of the CHEAPEST. Buy the rifle for what you actually hunt! Worry about what rifle you will use for Kodiak bears when you actually have the $XX,XXX dollars for that hunt.
Honestly, I saw a question posted some time ago, a guy was pondering if he bought a 7 MM for deer, if that would be good enough for a moose hunt in case he "decided to go"? Well, you can "decide to go" all you want, but obviously you have no idea how hard it is to actually draw a moose tag in most places these days and/or how expensive the hunt will actually be. The rifle is literally small potatoes in the overall scheme of things. Some of these hunts guys talk about are now 10,000++++ hunts when all things are factored in. If you have that money, why not just add a skimpy 10% to the budget and buy an el cheapo $1000 rifle?
2. There are SO many perfectly good rifles in the sub-$700 range that the idea that the cost of buying a rifle would make a sudden opportunity to hunt elk in Colorado a non-starter is pretty funny, to me at least.
If you look at the cost of firearms relative to average income, they are more good options now in the lower priced category than there have EVER been.
I shake my head every time I see an advertisement for a Remington 870. When I was 14, I plunked down $319 of my VERY hard earned money to buy one brand new. My jobs back then all paid minimum wage of $3.35 an hour! Over 30 years later, I can get a comparable 870 for the same price - $319.
My point is that guns in general have never been better AND cheaper than they are now. You can argue all you want about if they were one or the other, but they have NEVER been both.
So the bottom line is that ideal rifle for all big game is multiple rifles to do the job right.
Grouse
