Many of us began hunting with whatever old rifle dad, or granddad, no longer carried. Usually because they had bought something new which they liked better. Hunters are no different from anyone else, and form attachments to specific guns and calibers based, often, not on solid science, but on affection. Affection is great for your dog, but your rifle should be carefully matched to the use you intend to put it.

In Oregon the big game you can expect to hunt covers a fairly wide range of size and range. You need to consider the differences between an antelope hunt at 300 yards in Grant County and a brushy, close-range elk hunt in the Wallowas.

Initially, it’s useful to break down rifles by game species.

Mule deer

Mulies, in general, occupy open areas which brush-loving whitetails would find nerve-wracking. This means that you’ll tend to encounter mule deer at much greater distances than the similarly-sized whitetails, and this will obviously require a rifle with a better effective range.

Deer, as medium-sized big game, are usually no more than 230-240 pounds in weight. Still, as a benchmark, it’s advisable to have somewhere in the neighborhood of 900 foot-pounds of energy at the range you expect to be shooting. With mule deer, that means you should concentrate on rifles delivering that much kinetic energy at 200 yards.

The obvious candidates for a mule deer rifle tend to higher velocity, medium to small bore guns, preferably with a nice, flat-shooting boat-tail bullet, since hunters won’t be worried about brush deflecting a round. A round like the 100-grain 6mm Remington is close to perfect for 200-yard hunting, with a 100-yard rise of only 1.4 inches when zeroed at 200 yards, and delivering 1470 foot-pounds of energy. The 6mm can even be an effective round out to 300 yards, where it still hits at 1205 foot-pounds. At that point the round has dropped only 6.7 inches, allowing a hunter to aim for a deer’s back and drop the round right in the money.

Some hunters, desirous of the mild recoil, will hunt deer with rounds as light as the .223, which is legal in Oregon. It’s not really recommended by most experts, though. The .223 with a 50-grain bullet develops only 909 foot-pounds at 100 yards, and at 200 has dropped to 674. Its small size and high velocity can lead to fragmentation and wounded animals that may run a long, long way before dropping.

Some good open-country mule deer (or antelope, coyote or cougar) calibers hunters may want to consider include the 6mm (100-grain), the .243 (100-grain), the 6.5×55 Swedish Mauser (140-grain), the 257 Roberts (117-grain), .25-06 (117-grain), the .270 (130-grain), the .280 (150-grain), the 7mm (150-grain) and the .30-06 (150 grain).

Whitetails

Whitetailed deer are just starting to establish themselves in huntable numbers in northeast Oregon, and will quite probably extend their range and population rapidly, as they require less open range than mule deer and thrive in agricultural areas, brushy draws, and even your back yard, given half a chance.

That love of cover means you’ll usually be encountering whitetails at under 100 yards in areas where branches, twigs and leaves can deflect a bullet. Energy delivered at 200 yards becomes less important than having a stable bullet that can chop through brush and knock an animal down quickly.

Changing bullet weight in some open-country guns can work in the brush. A 140-grain boat-tail bullet is liable to tick off a branch and go wide of a target, where the same gun with a slower-moving 190-grain round-nosed slug will punch through brush efficiently. Still, there are guns that lend themselves to medium big game in the brush.

The classic is, of course, the tried-and-true .30-30. While it loses punch rapidly beyond 200 yards, with a 150-grain bullet it delivers 1355 foot-pounds of energy at 100 yards, more than enough to drop the biggest deer. With its low recoil and light weight, an average .30-30 lever-action carbine is among the most enjoyable guns to hunt with in the thick stuff. The British .303 is another good brush-gun, as are the .300 Savage and the .35 Remington. The .45 long Colt, a popular carbine caliber among cowboy action shooters, does the job well, too, with hunting loads delivering up to 1100 foot-pounds at 100 yards.

A canny reader will notice that all the brush-guns listed here are .30-caliber or bigger. That’s because a fat, heavy, slower slug has a much smaller chance of fragmenting or deflecting. Also, lower muzzle velocities mean that a correspondingly bigger slug is needed to deliver enough energy to the target.

While all these guns are discussed in relation to whitetails, they’re obviously just as effective on mule deer, or other medium game, in wooded areas.

While technically not a rifle, the shotgun can make an excellent brush gun, especially firing slugs. A 12-gauge slug, even a modern sabot round, suffers too much drop past 100 yards to be really useful, but with only a two inch drop at 100, it still delivers 1378 foot-pounds. At 25 yards it hits with 2140 foot-pounds, equal to a .308 (150-grain) at 100 yards. In really thick brush, where deer may be exploding out of cover and giving you only a second or two to make a shot, you might think about buckshot – after all, it’s harder to miss with 12 double-ought pellets than a single round.

Black bear and elk

You don’t necessarily have to have a magnum to hunt these large, tough animals. In fact, people often overgun for black bear, which average around 200-250 pounds for an adult (black bears run from 125 to 500 pounds in the males, and 90 to 300 for females). Elk are much tougher to bring down, with a mature bull weighing anywhere from 800 to 1,100 pounds. Still, even elk don’t require a cannon. They do require a rifle generating 1,500 foot-pounds of energy at hunting distances, which actually gives a hunter a surprising number of options. If you’ll be hunting at 200 yards or less, by far the most common situation, a good Core-Lokt or other tough bullet design that will mushroom but not fragment will do the job in many “deer” rifles.

Among the most popular calibers in use are the .270, the 7mm magnum, the .308, the .30-06, the .300 Winchester Magnum and the .338 magnum. All these guns generate plenty of energy.

Even at 200 yards, though, some lighter calibers can handle really big game. The Swedish 6.5×55 mauser in 140-grain, a much underappreciated round, delivers 1,514 foot-pounds at 200 yards, more than enough to drop the biggest elk with a well-placed shot. In fact, the round has long been used in northern Europe for moose, another huge sport animal.

The guns to avoid are those light, fun brush guns discussed for deer. The .30-30, the .44-40 Winchester, the .45 long Colt, the .35 Remington and other low velocity rifles simply don’t deliver enough punch to be reliable for elk. That’s not to say that you can’t kill an elk with a .30-30 if you hit it correctly. You can. But you may also wind up tracking it for many miles trying to finish it off if you strike a shoulder or miss the thoracic area.

For hunters looking to bag an elk, it’s very important to check the ballistic properties of your chosen gun. It’s as easy as logging on to the internet and accessing Remington’s or Winchester’s Web site and looking up the statistics for your chosen caliber and bullet weight.