I just got a .45 Southern Mountain Rifle, and I think the caliber will be perfect for what I do. Back in the 70s when I got into BP it seemed the main choice was either .45 or .50. I got the .50 Hawkin and loved it. But I never hunted with it. I have however spent a lot of my life shooting "too weak" or "obsolete" hunting calibers. My deer hunts have been .30-06, as well as elk. I have hunted elk with .30-40 Krag, as well ast .40-65 Winchester. Honestly if you can shoot accurately I always kind of chuckle at the .33 Win Mag and 4000 fps Lazzeroni guns. On Hog rifles, my mom's family were Low Country farmers in SC for hundreds of years. The time we had a Pig Pickin my uncle brought a rifle out to kill the hog. It was a .22.
I mentioned "hog rifles" above. They are "smallish" caliber traditional rifles because they are for dispatching animals at very close range and shots to the head, as well as small game and such around the homestead. They are not hog hunting guns which would likely carry more lead.
AZshot I see you are new here, welcome to the forum, but the rules and mods don't allow us to "discuss" cartridge guns and while we can make passing reference to modern arms, usually a lot of cartridge naming will get our hands smacked because as soon as one guy does it, it leads to another guy replying/rebutting/mentioning his experiences or pet cartridges/loading data/ballistics with regard to such guns and then we have drifted from our purposes at ALR.
Pretty well all of us have plenty of modern guns experience, but there are dozens of better places on the web to discuss them.
So we don't, lest the penguin cracks us with the ruler again*. Carry on.
(*Blues Brothers reference if anyone is too old or young to get it)
