How much shooting have you done and with which calibres?
You'll want a .22LR anyway just for the bulk of your training so you may as well get one first. You can lay in a paddock for a couple hours and put 250rds down range for maybe $30. With the .223 you'll be lucky to get 25rds for $30.
.22LR will kill anything provided you take the time to place the bullet where it needs to go, brain/cervical spine, but it can be marginal on larger beasts and in less than perfect circumstances. It is however range-limited, you're unlikely to take much game with it over about 50m, and more likely about 30m when you're starting out. When you have a fair bit of experience and confidence in the rifle and your ability, you _might_ occasionally head-shoot a fox or rabbit out to 100m, but you are going to have to expect to have them run off sometimes - this is when you need to start looking at something that hits harder and/or is more accurate.
.22LR is low-velocity with a cast lead bullet, both of which work against long-range accuracy. When you start seeing supersonic impact velocities, the bullet does significantly more damage, as well as shocking the animal's nervous system. A high-velocity bullet is more effective through the "boiler room", thus giving you more options than a low-velocity cartridge. A low-velocity bullet merely punches a hole through the heart and lungs, which will certainly kill, but not immediately.
A high-velocity bullet and its shockwave pulverises the lung tissue, tears the vessels from the heart and can destroy the diaphragm. Even if the bullet doesn't kill it instantly, there's a very good chance it will drop it or stun it so you can hit it again. With a low-velocity bullet the animal may not even know it's been injured, and will be running flat-out before you can take a second shot. It may be far away before it eventually dies of blood loss, or worse, infection. Sometimes even when a high velocity bullet removes the heart and lungs from the animal, or even the brain on rare occasions, the nervous system can still allow it to run a short distance before falling over dead. The animal is effectively already dead, the body is running on adrenaline triggered by the immediate response to the shot.
But high-velocity cartridges are not always warranted, and often not preferred due to the noise, cost, weight and such that come with them. If you're out chasing rabbits or foxes, your first shot with a .223 is likely to be your last for the day as everything will take cover (so make sure that first shot is a good one). With a .22LR you can walk a creek for an hour taking numerous rabbits as they're less likely to be spooked by the shooting, though animals are not always sent running by hearing a shot (Paul Harrel posted a video yesterday standing with a deer herd shooting a Mosin Nagant, and the deer barely responded at all - at 13:50
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyaHi7T8JFs). It's more likely you'd have trouble with your neighbours complaining about the noise than the animals, which is a reason sometimes to use low-velocity ammunition even in a high-velocity rifle.
If you can lay over a rabbit warren 250m away with something like a .223 or .204 you can drop a dozen or more rabbits, and even the foxes that might come to see what's happening. With crows they tend to fly off then circle round and come back to see why one of their mates exploded in a cloud of feathers - I dropped 27 crows one morning from one shooting position this way with the .222 as a kid. They can hear you shooting but the sound is far enough away that they may not associate it with any threat, even as their buddies are being blown to pieces nearby. High-velocity cartridges generally maintain supersonic speed well past any acceptable hunting distance, effectively extending your hunting range to however far you can effectively place your bullet on target. Personally, I try to keep it within whatever distance I'm happy to run through the bush to finish off whatever I just wounded with my poor shot placement - so a max of about 300m across open farmland. I gave up a shot on a donkey once that was under 20m simply because there was a deep gully between us and lots of dense bush, if my shot had been bad I could never have gotten in there to clean the mess up - I had a 12ga gun with slugs but it wouldn't have mattered what I was using, if he had dropped into the bush wounded I had no way of getting a second shot at him.
If you decide you do need centrefire then you need to work out what you need. A .223 or .204 will take care of most of our pest control on farms, but if you're dealing with pigs, goats or deer you'll probably want something bigger, like .243, 7mm-08, .270, .308 or any of the milsurp cartridges (.30-06, .303, 7.62x54R, 6.5x55mm, 8x57mm and such). If your shooting is confined to dense close bush you might find one of the pistol-chambered carbines a more effective tool, like a lever-action in .357 or .44 Magnum.
I'm not a fan of using shotguns to kill anything, except larger beasts with slugs and heavy buck. Pellets can be effective at very close ranges, but not as effective as bullets, in my opinion. Their biggest advantage is that your pellets won't even penetrate a T-shirt past about 50m and are only going to travel maybe 200m max if you're shooting into the sky, perfect if you're on a small property. The ammo is huge and heavy though as they fire several hundred pellets in hopes of half a dozen actually hitting the target, the rest is just wasted against the landscape. Learn to shoot better and use a rifle (except for game - you _must_ only use guns for game birds, not rifles).
I think all states now have shotguns classified as more than 5rd capacity being CatB or C, if it's only 5rd it should be CatA still. Rifles have capacity limits on detachable mags only, built-in rifle magazines are not restricted in any state as far as I'm aware. All states allow 15rd rimfire detachable mags, some states limit centrefire to 5rd or 10rd detachable mags.
Rider888 wrote:Just obtained my Cat A/B and looking at buying some rifles for Vermin Control including foxes.
As I know nothing about rifles, can I please get some recommendations on types (Centerfire Vs Rimfire) and Caliber?
Looks like a common caliber for a rifle is .222 and .223. Is this all I need? There is also something called a .22LR. Advantages and disadvantages of each please?
Following on from that I will also be looking at a Shotgun. Any suggestions/recommendations for a first time owner? Single, Double (side by side/over and under) Barrel and also gauge recommendations would be great. Looks like I can only buy a shotgun with a 5 round Mag? Is this correct?
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated
Thank you