I like cool guns, and I am not ashamed. All guns are good. But I like them better with a black stock, and Picatinny rails, and a pistol grip.
That makes it hard to buy a hunting rifle. I keep wanting to buy a ridiculous contraption with a 40-round mag hanging off it. An ordinary run-of-the-mill AR platform weapon can surely be used to hunt deer. But first of all it’s not very comfortable to have it bumping against my back on a sling, and second — and more important — I like to hunt elk, not just deer, and .223 isn’t really a suitable elk-hunting cartridge.
I know, I know, any cartridge will take an elk if you place it right. I’m just not that much of a marksman.
I also know that one can buy AR Platform weapons in .308, which is a caliber I feel confident about ethical elk hunting with. You can, in fact, buy AR’s in 300 Win Mag and other big game calibers. But they’re heavy, heavy, heavy.
Once I bought a Savage Model 10 with a bull barrel and an ultimate sniper stock. Heavy? The word heavy is inadequate. I actually did carry it around in the field a few times. It’s a good thing I didn’t find game, I was too tired to hold the crosshairs on the target.
So, I have a nice, ordinary, boring Ruger American on the way. It’s light. It’s .308. It’s inexpensive. It’s absolutely positively fine as a hunting rifle.
But man, I sure wish they made an after-market pistol grip and adjustable stock for it!