Wow guys, how come the first 5 posts don't say ruger 10/22????
We all know this is the best .22lr and offers most replaceable peices, and upgrades, including 25 round mags...
Don't do this guy a dis-service, and suggest to him the one and only best starting rifle, You will start with a ruger 10/22, and you will probally be your last rifle you shoot too
you can never out grow it, cheap to shoot, plentyful, and the thing doesnt jam... you want to look at functionality over aesthetics
dand883 put a lot of it into perspective. I would never recommend a semi-auto as a "first" rifle. You can develop a lot of bad habits that way.
I've been shooting since very young, more than 30 years ago. Always had plenty of access to whatever I wanted to shoot, and got kinda lazy about bothering to get my permits and my own equipment until last year.
When I did decide to finally "go legit" - I put a lot of thought into it from the perspective of someone who's done a lot of shooting over the years, but now that it comes time to buy my own equipment, I want to put the money where it counts, and make sure I get some pride and joy out of what's in the gun cabinet.
I spent the better part of 4 months waiting for the Redcoats to get off their lazy butts and process my app, so I spent that time getting some trigger time in, every single weekend, and really
thinking about what I was doing and trying to get out of it. I was lucky because there are so many rifles kicking around the extended family, that I got to shoot a really wide spectrum of types/quality of gear (the 10/22, which will always be a favourite, among them). Old Cooey's, Savages, Remingtons, some newer gear, including a Henry Golden Boy, and on and on...
What I ended up realizing was there was one rifle I kept going back to when I really wanted to do some work on the Gophers and not get frustrated by circling the little turds with puffs of dirt in the air. It was a late 50s vintage Remington Matchmaster 513t with a 4x scope. If you've ever handled one, you know it's a 10ton tank to haul around the field. It's heavy, way overbalanced towards the front, and takes a commitment to hold up and fire off the shoulder, it comes in at close to 9lbs. That may not sound heavy, but wander around the prairie with it for hours on end and keep it steady in a wing shoot hold long enough to sight in and pull the trigger on a gopher 70 yards off - and do that 70-100 times a day. It's a workout.
So given the
disadvantages of it, why the heck did I keep going back to it? Easy: Accuracy. I knew that if I put the cross-hairs on a target and pulled the trigger, that gopher was going down. I could do that consistently at ranges that just weren't possible with any of the other .22s I was shooting.
So when I finally got my permits in the mail, that's what informed my buying decision. I bough a rifle that's known for it's accuracy, but has better balance and less weight on it than the old Matchmaster, put a good quality scope on it, and a nice sling. And that's where the $$ goes on a
great rifle, as opposed to a good rifle. A
great rifle will be balanced, have a nice trigger, a reasonable weight, feel comfortable in your shoulder pocket, and be accurate as all get out. Getting all those things together in one rifle is not going to be a $300 or even $400 rifle... It's going to be a $500-$600 rifle before you even put a scope on it. For me it was a CZ-452 Lux (among the last of the 452s to come into Canada as everything switched to the 455).
I don't regret for a second spending the $$... I've since picked up a 10/22 (because, hey, they're damn fun), an older "beater - project" .22, and a few other rifles in different calibres. Whatever. But I absolutely treasure that CZ, I baby it, and I shoot it, a lot. I'll keep it in good trim and I know, without a doubt, it will be the last rifle I let go of when i get too old to shoot anymore - and it will get passed on to my daughter, not sold at a gun show or whatever.
I'm not going to say "Buy a CZ..." There are other guns in the same price range at the same quality level. Just think about what "your first gun" is going to mean to you, how you're going to use it, and are you going to be proud to pass it on to your kids and say "this was my first gun."
