[OneSickPsycho]

Originally Posted by Trip

You will be surprised just how far 500 yards is, you probably want to look at more like sub 300 for practical fun, LoL. My club range has a 200/300/500 rifle range in addition to other shorter stuff. 500 is only open for competitions because you have to shoot across a road that goes to the rest of the ranges. It's really fuckin far away, LoL. I shoot my M1A at 200 mostly with a 3-10x 40mm scope, 300 is a big difference. When you get to 500 shit gets serious, I don't even bother right now. Still too much of a noob at distance. Most people I talk to about deer hunting pretty much say 90% of your shots will be at 100 yards or less. The guy I sit next to at work who is the president of the Safari Club in this region said he has only needed to make a shot over 150 a very low percentage of the time for deer.

If you really want to focus on distance and hunting, go with a bolt action and definitely go with a caliber larger than 223. I would probably go with a 30-30 for hunting, everyone just has it, hunters/stores/doesn't matter. People just don't regularly hunt with ARs unless they are fucking off with boars they don't want to eat or something.

Yeah, no doubt. I just was googling 'long distance rifle' and different shit like that... everyone talks about 600+ yards... and the money that goes into shots like that. I figured I'd mostly be in the 100-200 yard range 99.9% of the time.

Originally Posted by CasterTroy

For me (personal opinion) I prefer an AR base for just about every rifle need, thus my answers reflect my preference and reasoning.

I've owned bolt action .22, .223, .308, .30-06, 7mm mag (all scoped)

AR-15 (multiple, and several scoped)

AR-10 (scoped)

AK-47

SKS

.44mag, .22 and .357 lever

Followup shots are much more difficult to maintain target with bolt action. But at the same time....Bolt less tempting to waste ammo.

Bolt is going to be basically designated as sniper/hunting only rifle, as it gets to be a pain reloading a 5 round mag for "plinking" around having fun.

AR recoil is similar to 22 in many ways (as opposed to taking the brunt of the recoil in a bolt). The buffer tube absorbs most felt recoil allowing for very fast target acquisition after initial shot. I can empty a 30 round mag in 30 seconds and have a 12" group at 100 yards with iron sights (may not be impressive as military but for a "hillbilly with ammo", that's pretty dang good)

AR has endless parts and accessory upgrades. You can build a base AR for $600 and upgrade $100 here and there over time to have a superior rifle

The down side to an AR based rifle is that it IS only .223/5.56 and some states will not allow deer hunting with that small of a round.

EXACTLY

Ammo is plentiful and most establishments will have it in stock (zombie apoc consideration)

Most of the time I can score 1000 rounds of 5.56 for under $400. Sometimes $300 if I run up on a deal

New Magpul 30 round Magazines are running about $9 if you buy 10 at a time now.

AR platform is addicting as HELL. Yeah it's a "do-all" rifle, but you build ONE and think "damn I'd love to have a short barrel" or "Man a bull barrel sniper setup would be the tits" and before you know it you have 5 in the safe all configured differently. Then you gotta get an additional safe

I knew the AR-15 was .223/5.56, so I guess I meant, should I go with the AR-10. I recognize that throws my economy out the window in more ways that one, but is it worth just sucking it up and investing in the bigun right off?