By Dave Hurteau

Well I don’t think any of us can pretend to be surprised. (If we did a shotgun tourney, the 870 would surely win, too.) But getting here was fun, and in the end it came down to mystique vs. legendary accuracy.

By Dave Hurteau

With the NCAA college basketball Final Four round now less than a week away, the time has come to tip-off our own March Madness, beginning with brush-rifle braketology. As your surely know, one subgroup into which deer rifles are commonly separated is the brush rifle—typically a light, quick-pointing gun that facilitate quick follow-up shots and is chambered for a short- to medium-range round sporting a fairly heavy bullet.

So we start with 16 contenders for the title of Best Whitetail Brush Rifle, which have been chosen, split into two divisions, and seeded by SHOT Business contributing editor Christopher Cogley, whom I chose to help with this, like year, so that I would have someone to throw under the bus if it comes to that. Cogley’s seeded selections (which I encourage you to take issue with) are as follows: