I live out West but I'm from the East where I cut my teeth on whitetails using 12 ga slugs (talk about overkill).
It's been a long, slow, education process for me. As I have said before, I can be a slow learner (read stubborn and obstinate).
I started out here with a pumpkin-chunking 30.06, it wouldn't group any better than 2-1/2", and with a cherry stock shooting 180's, it hurt like he!!
Since that gun didn't shoot, and since I listened to some macho advice from the Cabelas gun counter, I found myself with a used 7RUM in a stainless Remington with a pencil barrel. That gun also wouldn't shoot, and because I like to punish myself with bad experiences, I bought a takeoff 300RUM of the same barrel profile. Drum roll please..... that one didn't shoot either!!
During the course of trying to get those three rounds/rifles to shoot, I was so frustrated that I didn't actually rifle hunt (electing to just do archery). There's some fun discussion content - I felt that I needed a RUM to kill western critters with a rifle but I was happy to hunt them with a pointy stick...
To make matters worse, I became recoil sensitive during this evolution and really dreaded any further load work (no brakes on any of these). It took a lot of shooting with smaller calibers to grow out of that.
Finally, my financial means and some side work found me with a sparkly new custom in 300 WM (Bartlet, Defiance deviant, MH1, Jewell with a Leupold vx-6 and a brake). This was a game changer, shooting bug holes and finally having a rifle that exceeded my own abilities and allowing me to learn the finer points. I killed several mulies and an elk with that before I decided that it was too heavy for my tastes (98% of the time afield I was just taking it for a walk with 40 other pounds of food and backpacking gear).
So, I had a lightweight 7RM built that is just over 8 lbs with that big *** Leupold on top. I've had it for one season, harvesting a black bear, a Sitka blacktail, a big 6-point bull and a nice 4-point mulie. All shot with Barnes, either 139 LRX or 150 TTSX.
FOR THE HUNTING THAT I PREFER, and the animals I pursue, I have found MY perfect round and setup. I would happily shoot whitetails with the 139 and not feel overgunned, I'd also take the 150's for moose/elk (but I'd probably try to get a 180 load worked up if I had time, for moose).
It's a versatile round with a very wide range of quality hunting projectiles.
With that, I'd feel guilty if I didn't try to portray multiple sides of the story..... this thread is concerning, but I have not had issues getting my rifle to shoot (proof barrel, stockys CF stock, trigger tech trigger, Remington action).
https://www.longrangehunting.com/threads/cant-miss-7-rem-mag-load.210287/