Best first rifle for hunting

[AK907]

What are you hunting?

Have you been shooting/ how good of a shot are you?

How much recoil can you handle?

For someone thats never even shot, and assuming your deer hunting, I would suggest a .30-06. You can get heavy rounds that are still high velocity, and as long as you can hit somewhere in center mass, whatever you shoot is going down pretty quick.

And a very important thing to keep in mind, is to use the same ammo during practice and sighting in as you are going to use while hunting, that way you have the same trajectory out in the field.

Also, hollowpoints are your friend

Good suggestions and questions, but I would NOT recommend standard hollowpoints for hunting at all! Most standard factory hollowpoints are designed to expand rapidly and not penetrate. Basically they are cheaply made bullets with a cool name. These can cause a lot of blood shot meat and/or inadequate penetration resulting in a wounded animal. This might be ok if you're hunting varmints like prairie dogs or groundhogs where you're just out to watch them splatter, but for big game you'll want a bullet that provides a controlled expansion and good weight retention. I swear by Barnes X bullets. Nosler Partitions and Failsafes are great as well and I have used both before. These were designed for hunting and most manufacturers offer loads like these designed specifically for hunting big game. Most standard bullets were designed for paper targets.

Another question:

What kind of terrain are you going to be hunting in? Seeing as the OP has NC as their location, I'm going to assume they will be hunting in mostly wooded areas, generally at close range (under 200 yards). If that is the case and this will be for hunting whitetail and similar stuff, a .30-30 might be a good choice and they can usually be handled by even smaller/inexperienced shooters. Marlin 336 comes in .30-30 and are great, lightweight little brush guns that are perfect for hunting deer sized stuff in heavy brush.