Get the Right Deer Hunting Rifle For Your Season

When you go hunting, there’s nothing more important than picking the right deer hunting rifle.

The keys to achieving your deer hunting goals come in the form of the best firearm for you. When you go to pick out a firearm, you want the one with the best style, action, sighting, size, and ballistics for your hunting area and physical capabilities. Whether or not you make the kill is largely reliant on whether or not your deer hunting rifle matches up best with the criteria above.

The Importance of Where You Will Be Hunting

When you go deer hunting, you’ll typically either hunt in open range country or dense brush country, like deep woods. Some areas contain a mixture of both environments. Every hunting environment has different styles of shooting and require rifles with different characteristics.

Deep Woods/Dense Brush Deer Hunting Rifles

Deer hunting rifles that work best in the woods are rifles made for medium or short range shooting. The average distance you will be shooting in this environment runs from twenty-five to two hundred yards. You should avoid a deer hunting rifle that’s too heavy; it shouldn’t be more than nine pounds, and don’t get a barrel that’s longer than twenty-two inches – it’s gotta be short and light to get you to move quickly. When in dense brush, you have to be able to move around. Deer hunting rifles which can be reloaded quickly, such as automatics and lever actions, are suggested in rough country deer hunting since fast follow up shots are frequently needed. I would recommend using heavy bullet cartridges, .270 caliber or greater, with at least a 120 grain bullet, in order to penetrate any brush that might be in the way of your intended target. Any cartridges that travel more than 2200 feet per second have a higher chance of being deflected by the brush, and are therefore not well suited to densely wooded terrain. If your hunting terrain only allows shots to be taken within 50 yards or less of the intended target, you may want to consider using an open sight. If not, I would recommend a scope with four power, or a variable scope that can get down to 3X. You may want to conduct a few experiments at your local rifle range to figure out whether or not open site shooting suits your hunting style.

Deer Hunting Rifles for Open Range

Deer Hunting Rifles that work well in open areas are optimized for longer range shooting, up to three hundred yards (or farther!). In this situation, mobility is less important than being able to shoot accurately, and the ability to make long distance shots. That said, most open range deer hunting rifles are heavier than their deep woods counterparts, and have a longer barrel. You need cartridges and calibers that are high velocity and shoot flat. 6MM (.243) calibers or higher will work well, and bullets from 100 grains or heavier will be best. If you have a bigger caliber, you need a heavier bullet to stay accurate. Scopes with a 6 X 9 variable power are what most shooters will need at the very least.

Personal Preferences

As you select your deer hunting rifle, heed the advice you’ve just read where it talks about the environment in which you’re hunting; once you do that, figure out what other characteristics you need to fit your shooting style. Do you really want to have almost twelve pounds of rifle to carry around when hunting?

Go to a local hunting rifle dealer and try many different models, types, sizes, and manufacturers of deer hunting rifles for feel. Get advice from hunters who have a lot of experience in your chosen hunting area when finding the best rifle. If you’re really interested in learning about their firearms, you could ask your friends to let you hold and handle their rifles, and ask if there are any things that they don’t like about them

You can learn so much more about deer hunting deer hunting rifles, and even get great deer hunting tips, by checking out our webpage dedicated to choosing the best rifle here: Deer-HuntingTips.com/DeerHuntingRifle.

You can also get our latest deer hunting course, “Secrets of Finding Monster Bucks Revealed” for free at Monster Bucks.

To your Success!!!

John Eaglesmith

Deer-HuntingTips.com