SW Florida FNG

[Pictorious]

Hello all,

Living well in the sunshine state as a twenty somthing year old and getting into the shooting sports. I am a first gen shooter in my family, as my father and grandfather both serving in the Air Force (Air core for my grandfather) never really got into them. They would never say anything like this, but I always got the impression of "why would we race a car or shoot tiny guns, we flew jets!"

So as they would say I'm flying solo in my adventures into shooting. So far my firearms are as follows.
First rifle: Armalite Ar-10 20"bbl (recently sold)
http://i1274.photobucket.com/albums/y434/Zac_Pictor/IMG_0699_zps68a4bb66.jpg
Second rifle: S&W m&p 15 (Just finished and boy am I proud of her.)
http://i1274.photobucket.com/albums/y434/Zac_Pictor/image_zps4b85e58f.jpg
Pistols: M&P 9 and 9c (getting sent off this month to ATEi to get finished)

With the pistols almost done I am looking into the my next project witch will be a precision rig.

My question to some of the more experienced gents on this site is. If you could do it all over again what would you start out with?

You see I'm at a crossroad. I have been doing a lot of research on what I think I would like to shoot and I cannot decide on what to get.

I have a 1000 yrd range about 35mins away and I would love to go out there and wail on That last plate on the range. In fact that is my no.1 goal. 2nd I like the tactical style of rifles( ie. DBM and folding stock) and would like to find a match near by and have some fun. I really haven't searched for matches yet as I don't have the rifle. 3rd I'm planning on taking some professional training with all of my guns.

My budget is pretty much whatever I want it to be as once I have a goal I am very patient and can save money for a long time. So my thoughts are in either case before the rifle get some quality optics. Should I save up $4000 for a S&B pmii, nightforce Beast, or USO Er-25 to have and never have to buy anouther long range optic again. Or get a mid range vortex ffp 5-20 or bushnell 3.5-20 w/ horous reticle to get me started in the right direction. ( I understand that things like spotting scopes, ballistic calculator, bullets and other such equipment are also in the future but for now I would like to focus on the rifle and optics combo.)

Next- Rifle, go all out fully built- GAP, Macmillan or buy pieces and do a custom build through a gunsmith like a Surgeon action, krieger bbl, jewl trigger and aics ax chassis.
Or
Base model- savage 10 or rem 700. And just shoot the crap out it until I know what I really want. Start customizing after I've done a little shooting. In this case I am leaning towards the rem 700 because just about everything on the rifle can be upgraded down the road.

I'm also leaning towards the bushnell w/ Horus reticle and the base rifle in .308 for availability of match ammo w/out hand loading and price.

I looked at another caliber for long range shooting like I think .243 win for light recoil and flat shooting, but I was leaning towards .300 win mag and 7mm rem mag for ease of getting out to 1000yrds and higher bc than .308, but i could ultimately get there with .308 from what I have read and it's cheaper.

So I know this was long and if you have read all the way to the bottom, I say to you that you are a scholar and a gentleman and any help with my decision would be great!

- Pictorious