The best military rifle to make into a hunting rifle if you can find one any more is the Swiss K31. Those never saw corrosive primers or warfare and were mainly used as expensive walking stocks around the Swiss Alps, normal is for the wood to be in bad shape and the metal pristine as if never used. On the ones with the walnut stocks, the wood can be fixed. The cartridge is somewhere between 308 and 300WM and looks more like a modern cartridge and the action is terribly strong and people have converted them to magnum calibers without problems. Since the thing is a straight pull rifle, what you end up with is like a gentleman's hunting rifle at a fraction of the cost.