I have two favorites.
My first and most special favorite is a pre-64 Winchester Model 70 in .30-'06. It was my father's rifle, although he wasn't into deer hunting or centerfire rifles that much. He bought it during the Korean War while he was stationed at Kodiak NAS in Alaska and flying patrols out of Japan over North Korea (and parts of China). They would get days off in Kodiak and as he loved to fish he would go for salmon runs on one of the rivers. One evening he was pulling out a 30" salmon with every cast and tossing it on the bank. He heard a noise and turned around to find a brown bear sitting about 10' away on its haunches, waiting for my father to throw another salmon his day. He slowly reeled in his line and walked away... and went to the base commissary the next day and picked up the Model 70. He got some military ammo from his squadron armorers and put 20 rounds through it and then slung it. Two decades later when I was a teenager and enthralled with all things hunting and guns, he pulled it out of the closet (it had been cleaned and put away years ago) and let me shoot it. To be 15 and shooting a by-God thirty-ought-six was the absolute best. Those Frankfort Arsenal National Match FMJ rounds would shoot clean through the trunk of a 24" diameter oak. I went deer hunting with it when I was 16, in the fall of my senior year in high school while we were visiting family in Alabama... my Dad told me to take the rifle and go hunt the Weyerhaeuser land that was adjacent to the property, and although I came across several does I didn't shoot one as it was bucks-only back then. My father passed three months later and I inherited the Model 70 along with his Browning over/under, his Browning .22 auto, his Colt Woodsman, and his S&W 27. A year later I got into hunting, scouted a state WMA, and went solo hunting... and shot my first deer, a fork horn buck that trotted past me within 25 yards on a game trail through the woods as I sat at the base of a tree. I had to take a quick shot as the buck trotted past an open space in the brush, and I hit it halfway up the body in the middle of the chest, destroying its lungs. A couple of years later I took the time to refinish the factory lacquered stock with a Birchwood Casey Tru-Oil kit... it looks good to this day. Of course I will never sell this rifle.
My second, and my default, is my 1990s era Winchester Model 70 Classic Stainless in .243... one of two I bought, the other I had converted to a custom high-power over the course rifle by Jim Coward. My gunsmiths tuned the action on my hunting .243 and it is very smooth and accurate. I've also swapped out the flimsy factory injection-molded stock for a Hogue Overmolded stock. It is quick handling and quick pointing and my favorite carrying rifle.
