I'm not sure how far the shot's are where you're hunting or what style of hunting you're doing, but after becoming accuracy obsessed and putting together several long 10+ pound rifles myself, I found they put my legs to sleep in the stand and were hard to maneuver efficiently while hunting. I went back to hauling a couple of factory sporter rigs around, much better but still catch on limbs and things when slung and moving through the woods also easier to wield. I looked around a bit and saw that several members were getting very good accuracy out to 400,500 even 600 yards with the Striker bolt action handguns and thought if they can hit it with a handgun I can hit it with a rifle so I decided to build myself a handy carbine style rifle to lighten the load, handle well and not snag on everything when I encounter the thick stuff. I started with an older flatback model 11GL in .243. Wanting a bit more oomph I picked up a .308 sporter barrel from the classifieds here. After a little deliberation on contour and length I had it cut down to 16" and thinking about recoil on a little rifle I went ahead and had it threaded and braked. Cutting 6" off of the sporter left me with a thicker contour at the muzzle but knocked off a pretty good chunk of weight and drastically reduced the overall length. I also picked up an older staggered feed DBM synthetic stock and bottom metal and swapped it over to fit my lefty action and took a couple of inches off the butt, relocated the studs and re contoured the recoil pad to fit. I also tuned the 3 screw trigger (lighter wire) and added a bolt lift kit and made a kydex cheek rest. then I scoped it and painted the stock with a nice Khaki and OD sponge camo. The resulting little Carbine, Truck gun, Rifle for things that need shooting, or whatever other title fits is now one of my very favorites. It has plenty of punch is right at MOA accurate and at 37" overall length (same size as a 10/22) handles like a dream. In my experience, If you want a standard sporter rig for hunting I would say you wont be giving anything up at all, but instead will be gaining a much more functional easy to use purpose appropriate rifle. There's a very good reason most hunting rifles from various manufacturers come in sporter contour, they just make better hunting rigs. Also factory sporter rifle barrels can be stupid accurate as well. I have several Savage hunting rifles with factory sporter contour barrels that will often send the loud talking Mall Ninjas and Sniper Wannabees with their "my rifle cost this much", truck axel barreled, "customs" packing at the range. Want a hunting rig? Go with a sporter, No apologies, No regrets. Want it shorter and lighter cut it some more. I think you'll like the results.