Hi! Welcome to the support group. It is indeed an addiction

What do you want to hunt with your contender?

As Doc says, a cheaper rimfire is a great idea for practice. I found 22lr to lacking in consistency, accuracy and range and prefer 17hmr which has the consistency and range to challenge my shooting ability and reflect improvements in technique. It can be tough on meat if you are hunting squirrel or rabbit to eat though. 22 mag might be a nice compromise.

If you reload, 30-30 can be quite versatile in the contender with a wide variety of bullet weights. 110gn bullets can leave the 14" barrel at 2500fps vs the ~2100 fps of flatnosed 150gn. It should be enough for deer, bear and reasonably sized hogs with factory ammo.

The nice thing about contender barrels is that there are tons of options and lots of used barrels floating around. It's pretty easy to find and sell barrels so you can try a lot of them and hang on to what you want. There are limits on how big of a cartridge you can shoot with it before you damage the receiver.