Skeets, it looks like you have gotten some good advice so far. First thing you need to figure out is what you are going to hunt? If you are looking to hunt just deer I would recomend a good bolt action in .260 rem up tp 30/06. If you are going to hunt deer and elk I would say the .270 is a bare minimum. If you are just going to hunt varmints I would recomend the 22-250. A great small game rifle is the .22 fimfire. I personally wouldn't use it on cyotes though. a littel under powerd even the hot new littel .17hmr is a little to small for them. IMO. It is hard to just buy one gun. I would say you definitely need a .22 rimfire and then a big game rifle. And don't forget to take the hutner safty course!!

And about the earlier post on killing squirles Well the littel gray things that you all see running around the neighbor hoods are an introduced species, therefore they are legal to kill! The western grey and red squirells are protected in this state and are smaller than the big greys that everyone thinks are so cute So go ahead and thin the population!
Buck