Accuracy and long range hunting

[Karl Blanchard]

My post was not about littering . It was not my grandfather shooting it was my dad. It was his grandfather's rifle. He was shooting with the German iron sights. Did you even read my post? Ethics meaning not having my son and me in their line of fire. I actually didn't mind them taking long shots. The point is the got a hit at 1000 yards and one guy spent one hour looking for that deer. The point is if you take that shot be prepared to do the right thing don't go back to glassing. Get your butt into the brush both of them should not have come off that mountain til they had made an ethical attempt to track that buck. We all have our opinions that's mine and I stand by it . The equipment doesn't make it ethical the man does.

. You included the littering jab in your post.  Both in the middle and at the end, so it was indeed part of your post.  It also read as though guys with good gear are slob, unethical hunters.  Not sure if that was how it was supposed to read or not but that is how it sounded to me.  Just FYI

[Biggerhammer]

How about a heart shot at 375 yards on a Muley at a dead run from a standing position?

(The rest of the story)
One of the members of our hunting party made a gut shot and the deer took off running. All tolled, thirteen of us (men, wimmen and kids) searched the sagebrush all morning. We were all gathered on a hill, deciding what to do next, when the deer broke out of the brush on the flat below us, running for a posted "No Hunting or Trespassing" fence line.

My buddy sat down and missed two shots with his 7mm mag. He went empty. I stood next to him with three rounds in my Model 88 Win .284 Win. w/open sights. I fired a round which hit ten feet behind it. The next round was five feet back (I could clearly see the puffs in the dust). The third round scored and the deer went face first sliding. Stopped about a hundred feet short of the fence. Had no choice but to try it. Got lots of witnesses to my pure dumb luck combined with a generous portion of clean living! 

As posted before.

"Even a blind nut finds a squirrel every now and then".

[b23]

Savagehunter, with all due respect to you and your son, with regard to your safety, I'm of the belief that ANY time I step out of my vehicle and in to the wild blue yonder, I'm assuming some amount of risk.  Again, my point is not to discredit your concern for the safety of you and your son and I have no idea of the circumstances or negligence surrounding the incident in which you described but I believe there is always some amount of risk involved.  As the saying goes, common sense is the least common of all the senses. 

[Rich_S]

"Even a blind nut finds a squirrel every now and then".

Ya, dats vat I said. But also that I had no choice but to try it.

[coachcw]

everyone will take luck now and then

[kbrowne14]

Well, as I stated, if you have the right equipment, the knowledge, the training, and the ability to make ethical shots at distances, then I don't see anything wrong with it.  Based on your command of the english language as demonstrated by your grammar skills and nearly unreadable posts, you obviously had no idea what I was saying in my post.  At no time, did I ever even hint that expensive equipment means that you are an ethical hunter.  I simply stated that in order to make shots like that, you need the right equipment.  You wouldn't frame a house with a ball pein hammer, you would use a framing hammer.  But if you don't know how to build a house, the right hammer won't help you. 

The fact that you generalized all hunters with nice equipment to be unethical and slobby shows a great deal of ignorance.  I'd be willing to bet that you and I have see 10 times as many unethical and stupid things happen during hunting season where the hunters had regular old "cheap equipment."  Taking a 600 yard shot at a deer with a 8mm mauser from WWII is flat out dumb and unethical, regardless of the outcome.  But that is your opinion and you will "stand by it."  Just know, that your opinion and your posts in this thread, are completely contradictory, and make you sound uneducated and ignorant.   

[savagehunter]

K Browne my post was not targeted at your post or the OP. I was posting my thoughts on ethics accuracy and long range "precision hunting". Actually your post was well thought out and is what prompted me to state my opinion. The majority of hunters long range , bow , muzzle loader, still , stand , road , young, old are by far the most ethical people I have met. As far as name calling and being uneducated and your personal preconceived notions. I will just say I am not the smartest man I know but sure as hell am not the dumbest. Rereading my posts I do see where auto correct does give me a little redneck flavor. Hmmmmmmm may not be a bad thing.

[coachcw]

Let's be nice

[kentrek]

Coach..although it doesn't appear that your really pushing those extreme ranges (1300 and beyond) I'm curious as to how you and other guys determine your max distance ? Do you live an die by remaining energy ? Time of flight ? Remaining velocity ?

This is putting shooting conditions aside..zero wind, middle Temps/other inputs

I'm fine with 800 foot pounds of energy but am not a fan of the long flight times so that limites me to that 750-800 mark before I get uncomfortable

Alot can happen in 1.5 seconds !

[jasnt]

I'm not that good yet but my personal goals are to reach out till I go subsonic or just before.  Currently I'm working at 730 yards with my fav 243. I'm shooting 64gr Berger BR column  in this weather they are going 3775 at the muzzle(re17 is very temp sensitive!)  these bullets are designed for 500 and less yard match. I'm thinking this is a little far for these tiny flat base bullets.  I'm wondering if they are getting unstable cause in no wind it's still difficult keeping them on 10" plate, yet at 500 the 6" plate is simple.  I think that it's not one thing that should make or break your personal limits, you really need to take all of those things mentioned( conditions aside) in to consideration.

[j_h_nimrod]

I'm not that good yet but my personal goals are to reach out till I go subsonic or just before.  Currently I'm working at 730 yards with my fav 243. I'm shooting 64gr Berger BR column  in this weather they are going 3775 at the muzzle(re17 is very temp sensitive!)  these bullets are designed for 500 and less yard match. I'm thinking this is a little far for these tiny flat base bullets.  I'm wondering if they are getting unstable cause in no wind it's still difficult keeping them on 10" plate, yet at 500 the 6" plate is simple.  I think that it's not one thing that should make or break your personal limits, you really need to take all of those things mentioned( conditions aside) in to consideration.

I'm surprised you even do so well at 500. At 200 I would have .5 MOA or less with light for caliber bullets in a number of ripples but much past 300 they start to open up significantly. There is a reason "long range" bullets are typically heavy for caliber. I will give up velocity any day for consistency and accuracy. My go-to bullets in all my guns are heavy for caliber, never seen the need to get a ricer to 150 when I can get a semi to 130.

I shoot a 220 Swift a lot and see no reason to shoot 40s through it and gain a bit of speed and a flatter trajectory inside 200yds. The 40s shoot good but so do 55s and the 55s stay accurate much farther out there and inside 200 the difference is minuscule. I wish I had a faster twist to stabilize the 62s or slightly heavier bullets.

Longest shots to date were a coyote at 465yds with the 220 Swift and a 62gr Berger Varmint and a whitetail across a field this year at 533yds with a .30-378 Wby and a 210 Berger Hunting VLD. Not way out there but far enough for me on an animal.

[yorketransport]

You guys make me feel inadequate! I don't put any real effort into long range shooting. I'm a firm believer that shooting at it isn't as complicated as some would make it sound. To hunt at long range (we'll call it over 450 yards) my standard is to be able to hit an 8" target 9 out of 10 time like others have said. as far as someone can it hit, that's what I would consider that individual's max effective range. For some people that might involve dialing turrets and for others it may be hold overs. I've made some dumb luck (but repeatable) hits using poorly judged random hold overs and random dialing.

Hitting an 8" target at 600 yards just isn't that hard. We take people out all the time and get them to make hits at long range after about 10 shots. That certainly doesn't make them candidates  for the next big long range hunting video craze. But it does go to show that just hitting a deer sized target at long-ish range isn't that tough. Heck, I've seen an awful lot of deer that took 4 shots to the guts at less than 75 yards. I think I could make a pretty convincing argument that if poor hits on animals make for poor hunting ethics, there are a higher percentage of unethical short range hunters than long range hunters.

As far as special and expensive equipment for long range shooting, it's not necessary. I just dump some powder into a 7mm RUM case, cram a bullet on top until I hear the powder start to crunch, sight it in 11.6" high at 100 yards (that's a 675 yard zero by the way. ) and go yank the trigger. Sometimes I get lucky and hit stuff. We've done this with $300 rifles and $200 scopes and we've done this with $3000 rifles and $2000 scopes. We even got a Vortex scope to make a hit at 1000 yards. Once.

Now excuse me, I need to go meticulously hand weigh powder charges into weight sorted cases, and seat my bullets which have been segregated by weight to the the 1/10 grain, sorted by bearing surface, and pointed, and then check them for bullet run out. If I'm lucky 5% will make the cut to be used the next time I shoot at 200 yards.

Andrew

[jasnt]

I'm not that good yet but my personal goals are to reach out till I go subsonic or just before.  Currently I'm working at 730 yards with my fav 243. I'm shooting 64gr Berger BR column  in this weather they are going 3775 at the muzzle(re17 is very temp sensitive!)  these bullets are designed for 500 and less yard match. I'm thinking this is a little far for these tiny flat base bullets.  I'm wondering if they are getting unstable cause in no wind it's still difficult keeping them on 10" plate, yet at 500 the 6" plate is simple.  I think that it's not one thing that should make or break your personal limits, you really need to take all of those things mentioned( conditions aside) in to consideration.

I'm surprised you even do so well at 500. At 200 I would have .5 MOA or less with light for caliber bullets in a number of ripples but much past 300 they start to open up significantly. There is a reason "long range" bullets are typically heavy for caliber. I will give up velocity any day for consistency and accuracy. My go-to bullets in all my guns are heavy for caliber, never seen the need to get a ricer to 150 when I can get a semi to 130.

I shoot a 220 Swift a lot and see no reason to shoot 40s through it and gain a bit of speed and a flatter trajectory inside 200yds. The 40s shoot good but so do 55s and the 55s stay accurate much farther out there and inside 200 the difference is minuscule. I wish I had a faster twist to stabilize the 62s or slightly heavier bullets.

Longest shots to date were a coyote at 465yds with the 220 Swift and a 62gr Berger Varmint and a whitetail across a field this year at 533yds with a .30-378 Wby and a 210 Berger Hunting VLD. Not way out there but far enough for me on an animal.

I don't shoot them for the speed tho it is nice at times. They where available in a 1000 ct. And cheap. I need a faster twist to shoot the heavies in the winter time.  During warmer weather I can shoot 105's great! But they won't stabilize below 35-40.  This is a new rifle with only 643 rounds down the tube so I'm still playing with it. Had it about 9 months now.  Next barrel will be 8twist

[RadSav]

... my post was to really make guys think about the whole long range hunting aspects and whether or not they really have both the skill set and equipment to pull those shots of consistently . just like bow hunters that shoot 100 yards not much difference just the scale changes . I know guys that id bet money on them at 100 vrs others at forty.

From what I have seen most 1MOA shooters tend to be 3 MOA shooters when the target has hair on it!  Gets even worse if there are horns to go along with that hair   So regardless of gun I tend to think of long range hunting as anything over 300 yards.  I am not one to hold much weight in energy numbers when it comes to long range shooting.  Energy only applies if the bullet you shoot has the ability to dump upon impact.  You could have 5,000# of energy at 800 yards with a Barnes and it wouldn't make much difference if the velocity wasn't above 2,200.

I know there are some on here that can rely upon regular long distance kills.  These guys fascinate me and pull at my jealousy strings.  However, it makes me nervous talking long range hunting on a public forum.  Most have no reason and lack enough experience and terminal ballistics knowledge to shoot more than 500 yards at an animal.  Sure is fun to pound rock and steel at long range though.

[b23]

I wish I had a faster twist to stabilize the 62s or slightly heavier bullets.

I don't know how fast a twist you need for a 62 but if you've got at least a 1-12tw maybe take a look at Hornady's 53 Vmax.  It has a G1 BC of .290 and they shoot lights out in my 223 Ack Imp but you'll need at least a 1-12tw to stabilize them.