459 Yard Buck - and the founding of LRH.com

Ha. Your story reminds me of the whitetail I killed in fall of 1997 in South Dakota with the lowly .30-06 from a sitting position using a fence corner post as a rest. There was another hunter who was on the property for the first time that year and he wanted to sit in the same corner I did. He was an older fellow (I was a senior in high school - 40 seemed old, though I think he was in his 60s.) and I offered to help him get a deer back to the farmyard if he had a shot at one. A nice 4x4 showed up in the pasture southeast of us. I didn't have a rangefinder at the time, but I had been shooting flickertails in that pasture all summer long with a .22 LR and a .243 Win with 55 gr. Ballistic Tips and knew he was about 425-450 yards out. The older guy was shooting a .300 Win Mag. I asked him if he wanted to take the shot and told him my range estimate. "No. That's too far. That buck is over 500 yards away." "Nah, he isn't that far. If you don't shoot him, I'm going to." He laughed at me and said, "Good luck". I settled in, shooting a 165 gr. Nosler BT over 57 gr. of IMR 4350, sighted in 3" high at 100 and dead on at 250 yards. I put the horizontal crosshair just to where I could see a sliver of light above his back and squeezed off. We both clearly heard the bullet impact and the old guy said, sotto voce "Holy crap". The buck had turned 180 degrees, presenting a broadside shot again. I sent another bullet down, but it was unnecessary. We heard the impact from that bullet also and the buck's hindquarters slowly sank down and he was done. The older fellow said, "If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes I wouldn't believe it." I paced off the shot - 427 yards to the deer. It was my longest kill on a deer at the time and made me realize that 400 yard shots weren't impossible. I'd just done it twice. The impact wound from the second shot was less than two inches from the exit wound of the first shot. Longest kill on a critter at the time was a paced 642 yards on a prairie dog with my .243 Winchester and the 55 gr. Nosler BTs.

Thank you for your great story

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459 Yard Buck

459 Yard Buck - And The Founding Of LongRangeHunting.com By Len Backus In 1997 I posted this story on a couple of forums or "newsgroups" and was absolutely hammered for being a good-for-nothing idiot to think that it is acceptable to shoot big...

www.longrangehunting.com

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That was a long time ago, been with you for most of it!! Off and on anyway. Longrangehunting.com certainly was a big part to help me build my business 20 years ago!!

Fiftydriver said:

That was a long time ago, been with you for most of it!! Off and on anyway. Longrangehunting.com certainly was a big part to help me build my business 20 years ago!!

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Kirby

It has been quite a ride for both of us!

Great Story, Thanks for the website.

I don't ever speak for others, however I believe most will concur, we're all better in one way or other for being here... Thanks Len

30378wbymag said:

I don't ever speak for others, however I believe most will concur, we're all better in one way or other for being here... Thanks Len

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That is nice of you!

ADMIN said:

This is a thread for discussion of the article, 459 Yard Buck By Len Backus. Here you can ask questions or make comments about the article.
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459 Yard Buck

459 Yard Buck - And The Founding Of LongRangeHunting.com By Len Backus In 1997 I posted this story on a couple of forums or "newsgroups" and was absolutely hammered for being a good-for-nothing idiot to think that it is acceptable to shoot big...

www.longrangehunting.com

Click to expand...

Thanks Len, for the LongRangeHunting website. We would have been crucified as well back in the 90s as we were shooting Coues deer at extended ranges, 300-500 yards. We would practice at the Tucson Rifle Club out off Ajo Highway near Three Points. They had/have a 500-meter steel setup that allowed us to verify our groups and drop data. Sometime between 1995 and 2000 I bought a Bushnell Elite 1500 Yardage Pro Laser Rangefinder. It wasn't very good, but it did the job when combined with our data.

Some great stories, in the article and in the thread. Living in the West, I don't think a 459 yard shot is considered exceptionally long today (it is certainly longer for some than others, depending on shooting ability). I will say that hunting has changed as our tools have evolved; even in the late 1990s a sub-MOA rifle was considered a rare and valuable thing, certainly not something you could count on off the shelf. The BOSS was revolutionary, and accurate commercial ammo is a thing (although Federal Premium ammo always shot well out of my tuned hunting rifles back in the 1990s... under 1 MOA).

I can see both sides, but if you keep doing what you always do, you keep getting what you always get. It took someone to push the envelope, to prove that it could be done, regularly and repeatedly. It took having the tools available and affordable (I bought an ex-USSR laser rangefinder with 20 KM range back then... it was EXPENSIVE). It took inexpensive chronographs, good ballistics programs, accessories like lightweight but steady bipods... all things that often were produced before the demand was there. Weatherby rifles were famous for their 1.5" 100-yard group guarantee; today no one would be happy if the best their rifle could shoot was 1.5" groups.

My experience has been that hunting pressure in the West is heavier than ever as more people have more money to pursue their dreams. Long distance shooting at big game is a lot more common, and hunters understand and accept this, and prepare themselves for it. This is true in the East as well, as exemplified by the rise of beanfield rifles and the disappearance of the trusted .30-30 lever action as a proper deer rifle and a good choice for eastern whitetail hunters.

I'm glad to have stumbled across this site. Lots of good information. Cheers!

Well what really changed the world as far as long distance hunting and shooting is concerned is dialing of scopes.
In 1949 my father joined a smallbore rifle club.
Both my brother and myself as well as a sister also became involved.
In fact in 1952, my sister became the national junior girls small bore champion.
We had several model 52 Winchester rifles equiped with both iron sights as well as Unertle target scopes.
When shooting indoors, the distance was mostly 50 feet.
But outdoors the distance would be much further, anywhere from 50 yards up to 200 yards.
Every shooter had a book, in which they recorded things like scope elevations by way of click information needed to get from one distance to another.
And of coarse sighter shots were used in order to confirm and fine tune that information for that particular time.
Back then, nobody was using that type of logic for hunting situations.
That would be almost nobody, but fact is that some were.
And for the most part, those were varmint hunters, not deer hunters.
But it took more than just adding clicks to the scope, because differences in the distance between the scope mounting blocks meant a difference in the click value of the scope.
So who figured out that a distance of 7.25 inches between scope block centers made for a scope having 1/4 minit clicks?
For sure somebody did, and for sure it wasent any of us.
And for sure it wasent even the vast majority of gunsmiths at that time.
In 1972 i had my first custom rifle built for long range hunting.
I had been advised by my then new found l/r friends to use Howard Wolfe for the build.
He had told me what actions he would and wouldnt use, and i asked him about a Hart custom built action.
So thats what i chose to use, and i ordered from them a # 4 sleeved action with a magnum bolt face.
I also ordered a 30" 1"250 30"Hart barrel in 7mm with a 9 twist at the same time.
A months later i received word from Hart that my barreled action was ready for pickup.
When i arrived at their Nescopec PA. location i found the barrel had been threaded onto the action.
I was then asked what i intended to do about chambering it.
I answered by saying that i knew they only chambered for factory offered cartridges, no wildcats.
And i wanted it chambered for the 300 Wby. case.
I was all but thrown out of the place, and told to never bring that action back in case of issues with it.
When i delivered it to Howard, he just shook his head and said that they just live in a different world.
He then said just look at how they drilled and tapped the action and sleeve.
Obviously they didnt know the proper scope block spacings for 1/4 minit clicks.
And in their world at that time it didnt much matter.
Of coarse in todays world it dosent matter either, because nobody is using those old target scopes anymore.
But prior to about the mid 80s it did, untill the scope builders got it figured out as well.