Great stuff, guys! Les, I will check all that out.

It has been more than 30 years since I was active in shooting sports or owned a firearm. I am working on becoming an informed consumer.

The idea of one gun plus a drop-in conversion offering an accurate centerfire .223 combined with a reasonably-accurate-at-short-distance and cheap-to-practice rimfire .22LR is intriguing. It may offer the potential of matching my likely opportunistic hunting style without burdening me with two guns.

The AR-15 platform seems also to offer modularity and upgrade paths for future experimentation.

More research!