WOW! 14 pages of replies in only a couple of days. Obviously a topic of this sort is more popular than hockey, religiona and politics all rolled into one!
A hunting buddy chose 7mm-08 for the lighter recoil. If your wife is a bit lighter or recoil shy she'll like the lesser shoulder punch of the 7mm-08 over the .308.
As for how effective it is for the animals you are after you can see by the hearty opinions both ways that it's a rather split decision. But I'd say that the point is that the "little" 7 HAS been effective at taking down all the animals it sounds like you're after.
As for ammo it is out there. But it sure isn't as common as the .308. So shop around or order it in and stockpile it.
I should add that I'm a 7mm-08 owner. In my case the bullets are coming out of a fairly lightweight TC Encore. But I can shoot all afternoon without a care with this mild a recoil. It's really only a bit more than a .30-30 from a lever rifle. Yet we've got a 7mm bullet sizzling along at a pretty good clip.
Frankly you're missing out by not reloading. Thanks to the popularity of some other 7mm cartridges there's a bucket load of really nice bullets out there. And it's just not that complicated or expensive to set up a single stage press for reloading a hundred or so rounds at a time. I've done it and did around 100 very easily over an evening with lots of time left over to watch a movie before bed. A basic but nice rifle round reloading setup can be put together for between $250 to $300 for the first caliber and from there it's just the cost of new dies and $10'ish for a new plate to hold them.
