Selling one gun and buying another, at the gun show...say it ain't so!

You know I want to go to the gun show this weekend and, I am going with the  purpose of selling my M1 Garand and buying a varmint rifle. So I am looking on line for some info and I like some of the guns I am seeing at the Gander mountain store. But I am now even more confused because of the many offerings and calibers. At first I was pretty sure it would be a 22 mag or possibly a 22-250  made by Savage or Ruger. I wanted to varmint shoot out to 300yds and the 22-250 will do that effectively on foxes and coyotes, the 22 mag maybe not so good at that range. Now Ted at the gun shop is a varmint shooter, and I am talking with him about what he likes to pick up and go with and he casually drops the 223 on me; and 400 yds., and cost of each round, and I am listening close thinking that maybe this is the magic bullet with foxes and coyotes falling out of the box of ammo. Okay enough already with that, but you get the ideal. So he has a 223 Remington assembled with the bipods and scope out on the counter and offers me to take a look at it. It  is top ported to reduce recoil, synthetic stock in green, with optics, and he says it is  good for 1500 shots. But honestly the Remington left a lot to be desired, I handled the Savage and personally I think the Savage is a much better gun, the Ruger was also well built but I only found it in 22mag. I am going to keep looking and get a better ideal of what I really expect this gun to do for me and at what range I honestly expect to shoot at. I will say there is  the availability of ammo to consider and the cost per shot, and the 223 fits both of those requirements while the 22-250 is more costly to shoot. Any info or suggestions feel free to share.