>>25057886I'm going to go a bit /k/ here, so heads up.
All right, first off, "a guy with a rifle." Not all cartridges or rifles are created equal; the guy with a .50 Beretta is going to have much better luck with this than somebody with a .22 varmint gun. For Stage 2 pokemon, I would imagine it would be comparable to Elephant hunting, in that you need a very large round aimed at the right place, or you risk the shot having little effect other than pissing it off. A rifle chambering the more standard 5.57mm or 7.62mm rounds could feasibly take down smaller mons, or mons lacking much in the way of protection, but the agility and movesets pokemon possess mean that as a rule, you're only going to hit your shot if the pokemon doesn't know you're there.
modular ammo is also a consideration; rare as it might be in our world, it's very conceivable that the pokemon world, with it's type weaknesses and resistances a demonstratable fact, would have developed and produced ammo in various typings as well. That guy from a /k/ thread who tried to go hunting with napalm rounds in his shotgun was an idiot, but similar rounds would be devastating against a grass- or Fighting-type pokemon. Rounds filled with poison, or compressed extinguishing foam, or any number of other types of ammo are all conceivable.
However, this all brings about why you don't see them much in the pokemon world; as effective as they'd be in certain situations, there's simply too many alternatives that are more easily accessible. If anything, they're probably used against other humans more than against pokemon, and either scenario requires an emphasis on going undetected. In short, too much investment for too little payoff when cheaper, more readily-available alternatives can be found in the local pet store.
