Just wanted to drop a line on the subject. Shawn was kind enough to send me a slightly early copy of his new video to check out and review for him.
Now, everyone that has been on LRH for any time at all knows that I hold Shawn in the highest respect and consider him a friend and if I could not personally build myself a rifle, he would be building all my rifles for me.
Some may say I may have a bias opinion on the subject but to them I say, there is no bias in long range performance or in a quality product, either it works well or it does not.
I set down to watch Shawns video with as open mind as I could as I always want to give him as honest of a review as possible to be fair to him and his success as I hope he always does for me and I know he would.
Many long range hunting or instructional videos make it seem really easy to do what we do. Now I am not saying its difficult but certain things need to be done.
I was very impressed when I watched Shawns video. He honestly showed what Long Range Hunting really is, not what you generally see with most videos but the honest protrayal of what LRhunting is. The issues we have to deal with in canyon country, the issues we have to deal with in flat land hunting, the issues we have to deal with concerning target animals and how they can make life hard to get a quality shot off at long range, and yes, the principles and respect to the animals to pass on a shot when its called for.
He also shows that not every long range shot is a perfect hit. There are some times when the impact is less then ideal, there are times when we flat out miss. This does not make LRH unethical because the same issues arrise with any hunting. What is important is how the situation is delt with and followed up and Shawn did very well on the video to explain these things and tell and show how the proper way to DEAL with a problem is.
I do not care if you hunt at 200 yards or 1500 yards, eventually, a bad hit will be made, more often then not, what happens after the shot will determine if the animal is recovered or not and it was good to see this honesty in the video.
I was also very good to see the clip where they were shooting at a steel target at around 800 yards in very difficult wind conditions. I believe it took 5 rounds to get a hit on that target. You never see this with most of the "so called" long range hunting videos, they seem to never miss or at least want to put that preception out there. Truth is, there are some situations and shooting conditions where shooting at game is simply not a good idea, Shawn has the knowledge and more importantly lack of ego to be able to show this to the general public and show them just how difficult it can be for even a world class shooter to hit a target at a relatively easy range for him and his rifles.
I believe this is often more valuable for many shooters to see then perfect hits all the time and this is why I believe Shawn has made some of the most honest and realistic videos out there which is what makes them so worth while to watch.
No smoke and mirrors, no gimicks, just honest shooting and some **** fine shooting on some great animals.
If you want to see a video which shows you what Honest, Real long range hunting is, get his latest video.
My only comment to Shawn about his video is that I wanted to see him stretch things out even more. I believe he pushed things to 1500 yards. I remember a calm morning in Idaho a couple years ago when we were stretching his Edge and my 7mm AM out to the mile marker and we had great results with both. I told him it would be great to see him push that Edge and AM out to 2K for the camera. It appears he had the same idea because he has already started on some 2K film work.
My only real problem with the video was that I was not able to be on one of those clips!!! LOL
Other then that, great video, I will watch it many times and already have. Well worth the asking price. There is one scene where JR misses a big artic wolf, that was hard to watch but we all do it and I have missed far easier shots then that, felt really bad for him, that would have been a hell of a trophy!!!