Thanks for all of the responses Gentlemen. Its one of those, "If I can only own and use one gun what would it be" kind of questions.

While reading through Humpty Dumpty's excellent web site and noting that he said Russian is mostly a shotgun country with most owning, shooting and hunting with one gun and that a shotgun, I just wanted to see what others would do if put into that situation. But, unlike Russia, our only restriction is income for how many guns we can own. Or to put it a different way, I only have enough money to buy one bespoke shotgun what would you do.