Which 7mm? There are a bunch, including the 7x57 Mauser, .280 Remington and 7mm Remington Magnum. Since you say you might need the 7mm for "bigger game hunting", I'm going to assume you mean the 7mm Remington Mag or one of the other magnums.
If you intend to go after bigger game than the venerable .30-06 will take down, you better get something heavier than the 7mm Mag. Think .375 H&H.
I personally am not a big fan of the 7mm Remington Mag. I'll qualify that by saying the only one I ever shot had defective scope mounts and would not hold a zero, so that did probably bias me a bit. But let's look at the numbers. I pulled out my Lyman reloading manual and here's an example:
The 7mm Remington Mag will launch a 175 grain bullet at around 2700-2900 fps.
The .30-'06 shoots a 180 grain bullet at around 2600-2800 fps.
So the difference in muzzle velocity between the big belted magnum and the old '06 is only about 100 fps! How is this possible? Well, two things come to play: First the slightly larger diameter of the .30 caliber bullet over the 7mm means that there is greater surface area for the combustion gases to push against, which means faster acceleration for a given chamber pressure. (similar to getting more force out of a larger hydraulic cylinder). The other reason is that the magnum has to use a slower powder to take advantage of its greater capacity. So it takes a larger charge of slow-burning powder to attain the the same velocity as a faster burning powder. And that heavy charge of slow powder translates to a lot of muzzle blast.
I think the 7mm Mag is a good choice for long-range hunting out west, because it shoots flat and it shoots a bullet with a high sectional density that will carry a lot of energy down range. But for ranges around 100 yards, give me a .30-06 anytime.
By the way, most rifles lose one round of magazine capacity when chambered for a belted magnum versus a standard cartridge.
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