Are you talking about a handgun? A contender can be either handgun or rifle. I hunted pretty much exclusively with a 7-30 waters improved handgun for a couple of years. A 30-30 would be a great choice, especially if you reload and use pointy bullets. They are fun guns, but pistol scopes suck in comparison to rifle scopes, and I got tired of not being able to shoot the last 15 minutes or so of legal light.