I am not an expereinced hunter or outdoorsman, but I do believe in being as prepared as possibe. My main focus when researching/buying items for preparedness is low maintenance. I feel that I or people I'm with will have very little time and be in very poor conditions for maintaining and caring for our goods. In my opinion, in an emergency situation, the time and materials needed for maintenance and care of most items will not be available. As an example, for a sidearm I chose the H & K USP 9, due to its safety (dropped loaded and cocked w/ safety off onto the hammer from 6' onto concrete repeatedly without firing), performance in adverse conditions (submersed in mud for 7 days, withdrawn and immediately fired 10 times with no reduction in accuracy or performance), and ruggedness (fired with obstruction lodged in barrel, then fired again, with minimal reduction in accuracy; also fired 10,000 in succession with no adverse results). Assuming this, I was hoping for advice/feedback on the following:

- I would like to have a rifle for larger game hunting/protection, and have been told a .22 caliber would not bring down anything larger than a rabbit. I have a read a lot that makes this seem true. Do you have any advice on a minimum caliber and possibly make/model of something that would perform best after extended use with very little maintenance/cleaning (ie. a hunting rifle with the same stress-testing qualities as the H & K)?

- I very much like the idea of the "double gun" (I hope I'm using that correctly, when there's shotgun barrel or two along with a rifle barrel). Is there a make/model that excels in low care performance, or is this combo similar to most other multi-function items; the more it can do, the crappier each function is?

- It seems to me that a couple things to stay on course with are materials used in construction (with synthetics favored over wood where there's a choice) and a caliber that is most universal. If I'm reading other forums right, this seems to be the 30.06 caliber. It would also b a good idea if it is relatively foolproof and ambidexterous, in case others in my party become the owner of the gun

If this is the type of thing where some aspect is always a trade-off with another aspect, I'd like the reliability even with no maintenance to be at the top of the list. I don't mind spending the money for a superb quality item, it just needs to be worth it. After about 2,500 rounds out of the USP 9, I can see I made the right decision with that. A comparable longarm, and I believe I'll have the solid projectiles category finished up but good.

Thanks for all your time, everyone, and for your participation on this website.