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Winter Olympics Biathalon is pretty cood to watch en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B… . .22 Long Rifle (subsonic ammunition, so no earplugs needed) is the standard for the 50m targets. From 1958-65, .30-06 Springfield and 7.62x51 NATO (close to a .308 Remington) were used to shoot from 100-250m(!), which must've been quite a ruckus!
The rifles themselves must weigh at least 3.5 kg (7.7 lbs) and use a bolt action or straight-pull bolt action, and they are *not* semi-automatic, despite looking really fast. The rapid cycling one notices is a straight-pull bolt (most famously the Anschütz 1827F Fortner action), where the athlete pulls straight back and pushes forward rather than lifting and turning. It's very quick but still manually operated. Each rifle holds four magazines with five rounds in each, with up to three spare ("Nachladen") rounds held on the bottom plate.
In individual races: a missed target adds a time penalty (1 minute) to the total time, and the atheletes don't get to use spare rounds to avoid it.
In relay events: eight bullets are carried in each magazine; the standard five-round magazine is used first, and if more rounds are needed, the extra "declared rounds" are hand-loaded one at a time to knock down remaining targets. For each target still not hit after all rounds are used, the biathlete must ski a penalty loop.
Men
Women
