someguy2800
Member
The Nikon Buckmasters are nice scopes for the money. My father in law has one. I got a manufacture refurbished Leupold VX1 3-9x40 this summer for 120 shipped from midway. That's the best scope under $200 I've ever looked through.
As for cartridge choice I was just looking at some bullets and load data between a 308 and a 6.5 creedmore. A 140 grain 6.5 Sierra game king and a 180 grain 308 Sierra game king have the same ballistic coeficient. Hodgdon's load data has the velocities for those two as identical so the only difference for practical hunting purposes as far as I can see is the 308 is putting 40 grains more lead on the target with probably a third more recoil. Recoil is a big deal to some but not others. I've been party to enough deer hunting tracking adventures that I've personally come to the conclusion to use the biggest gun you can comfortably and accurately shoot with the heaviest practical bullet for the caliber. I think light recoiling calibers make a lot of sense for people that do not shoot very much. I'm a big guy and shoot a lot so it's not much of a factor in my thinking.
As for cartridge choice I was just looking at some bullets and load data between a 308 and a 6.5 creedmore. A 140 grain 6.5 Sierra game king and a 180 grain 308 Sierra game king have the same ballistic coeficient. Hodgdon's load data has the velocities for those two as identical so the only difference for practical hunting purposes as far as I can see is the 308 is putting 40 grains more lead on the target with probably a third more recoil. Recoil is a big deal to some but not others. I've been party to enough deer hunting tracking adventures that I've personally come to the conclusion to use the biggest gun you can comfortably and accurately shoot with the heaviest practical bullet for the caliber. I think light recoiling calibers make a lot of sense for people that do not shoot very much. I'm a big guy and shoot a lot so it's not much of a factor in my thinking.