This table from the English Wiki lists which callibres are ethical for hunting which species. "Ethical" in the game's context mean that hits and kills will be scored, not ignored. Mostly it reflects considerations from reality, but some decisions got made to benefit game balancing and also sales interest. As I said, one can get along with very few different weapons, if one chooses wisely. The weapons also may have different characteristics in deer-stop-power
, precison over range (ballistics), scope designs, and sounds.
For some reaosn I don'T know I cannot paste and copy the wiki's page title to link it. So I took screenshots.
One can cover the whole range of species with 2-3 rifles and 1 shotgun, to have a bow or pistol already is a bonus game. If you play with the .50 from the civil war
, you can even do all job with just one rifle. If you count slug and buckshot ammo, you do not even need a rifle, but just a shotgun.
A bow is handy due to its silence, the pistols imo are not really needed. Bows vary in power and noise level. The Python is the most silent weapon in the game, crossbow and Snakebite are the most powerful bow weapons, the crossbow is the easiest to handle and allows to shoot while lying flat on the ground.
As a shotgun, nothing beats the 6-shot pump action.
Rifles, you need a small callibre for small game, a memium for most other naimals, and a huieg c allibre for the real big animals out there. The scoring system depends on the state the trophy is in - and when you shoot a little deer with a 9.3x62, the trophy suffers more than if you used a .223. Since the points awarded also reflect how long the animals survived after the hit, you need some dropping power nevertheless. Ypou can score good for state of the trophy, but ruining it when the prey escaped and still lived (and suffered) for 3 minutes.
Is the .243 the only weapon you got so far, as a guest?