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.
