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Here's a link to a very good article on German hunting guns. My post above was a little tongue in cheek however I did spend a year in old West Germany doing a lot of hunting and had several German friends who had all hunted with me here in NZ at various times and who were hunters back in their homeland, some having their own hunting area and others guests of hunting area owners. I had a German hunting licence so could hunt unaccompanied in areas where I was invited to hunt.

Two of my friends were avid collectors of German and Austrian firearms, one a very well off Dentist who often visited Ferlach in Austria where he had bespoke firearms made. I accompanied him on one of these trips and got to visit several of the gunsmiths in residence in Ferlach, do some shooting on the famous shooting range there and then head up country where my friend went for an evening shot for red stag (they were roaring then) and/or chamois.

I shot several roe deer in the Black Forest area of Southern Germany and went out on hunts in the Swabian Alb and in a little village on the outskirts of Stuttgart where another friend's father had the shooting area.

I used firearms in various styles and calibres, my first roe buck with a 6.5x54 MS, my second buck I think was with a 6.5x55 in a Heeren falling block rifle, a cull doe and yearling using the 7x65R under-barrel in a Bochbuchsflinte (12G over/7x65R under) and others I just can't remember now. One was a nice bolt action in 8mm Mauser and I was horrified when opening the bolt to put one up the spout once settle in my allotted hochsitz, to see a magazine full of a variety of different types of 8mm cartridges. Fortunately no roe deer appeared so I didn't have to shoot, who knows whether the rifle was even zeroed properly.

In all the hunting I did and saw there wasn't one instance where I saw any value in lumping round some of the fancy, intricate and sometimes butt ugly guns that were being used, almost all topped off with great heavy scopes mounted high like carry handles. With one exception, the hunters didn't make use of any of the multi barreled guns they carried, all just using the rifle barrel. The exception was a poor shot with a Bochbuchsflinte who used two charges from his shot barrel and two rounds of 22 Hornet from his rifle to finally kill a fox from a hochsitz position.

A basic bolt action 223 with a Leupold scope would have fitted the bill perfectly for everything I shot and saw shot. My main German friend (a forester) with whom I spent most of my time with in Germany immigrated to NZ not long after I returned home. Despite his collection of 'fine' German and Austrian guns, his go to rifle for hunting NZ (real hunting he calls it) is a Steyr Mannlicher plastic stocked Professional Model 7x64. Low mounted scope in genuine Weaver rings on Weaver bases with a single stage trigger.

https://www.germanhuntingguns.com/about-the-guns/gun-types/

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