Welcome and cool story.
plenty of folks will weigh in here. Some of them are big spenders and like off the run guns and calibers. Nothing wrong with that but Maybe think a bit about your budget. Those deer won’t be any more dead with that old rifle than if you buy $2k worth of semi custom rifle in some whacky wildcat caliber and $2k in nightforce glass. Assuming you don’t want to break the bank, here are a few thoughts:
- whitetail don’t take a ton of bullet. Pretty much anything from .243 up will do. 308 is plenty of bullet and cheap. 6.5 creed shoots softer and could be a bit funner for long, long ranges if he really wants to play Paper puncher. I like to keep it simple and stay with calibers I can find early anywhere, such as my local Walmart.
- if you/he like to tinker, maybe buy something with an entry price and you can upgrade it as he goes along (stock, trigger, glass, etc) if he really likes shooting.
- remingtons are great for aftermarket stuff if you want to make it a project. they have an ADL model for around $500. In that price point, the savage axis is probably the best out of the box option. If you want to step it up a bit, there are a lot of tikka fans around here (including me) and you can get their lower end stuff for under $700 on sale - same gun with blued finish and cheaper stock.
- scopes are another area where prices vary. IMO the best deals going for a decent entry level scope are the vortex crossfires. 3-9x is plenty of glass to get out to deer ranges. There are plenty of Nikon scopes still floating around and leupold v3xi is another option that can be had fairly cheap and will work great.
good luck and I hope your son enjoys shooting.