Shooting How Far?

[Nowoolies]

Get as close as you can...and usually you can. If that means 400,500,600,etc etc be sure you can make the shot in the given conditions. Crippling an animal will ruin your hunt and future hunts/bad memories. If it does not bother you to wound one, something is wrong with you.....most big game for me have been under 200yds(80%), 200+15%, 350+ 5% this in cover and clear to 2000yds....crazy how far you can crawl sometimes....

My wife reckons Im very good at crawling, when I want to go for a shoot

 

[teesquare]

Which begs the question what would you accept as evidence?

I have this mental picture of a squirrel being vaporized by the round...such that even it's soul is separated from it....

 

[bigngreen]

On a more practical note it seems that there is a barrier every couple hundred yards to really succeeding in the pursuit of precision. I really found out to 400 not that difficult but 400 to 600 definitely took a step up, wind meter was a great aid and really helped, laser rangefinder starts coming into play. Then the jump to 800 and then your spending time with the above tools as much as with your rifle, I found this was the range that really started to expose my rifles ability and I had to really work with it, a MOA rifle will not teach you to shoot sub MOA, it took getting my rifle and load to a sub half moa for me to tighten up all my other calls at this point. At 1000 yards my method for doping and method for getting quality ranges and my muscle memory and interaction with the rifle started taking over. It's really a building block process, every once in a while you have to step back a few steps and rebuild something because you find you can progress on the track your on, ballistic apps really took me some time to wade through but that was when the first apps started and prior we basically had Xbal and Patagonia.
I would really encourage anyone pursuing the precision part of hunting to go full in on an app, charts and basic stuff really have walls that you should stop on, a full featured robust ballistic app is worth its weight in gold IMO, a real time solution is invaluable!!

 

[John Klingenberg]

On a more practical note it seems that there is a barrier every couple hundred yards to really succeeding in the pursuit of precision. I really found out to 400 not that difficult but 400 to 600 definitely took a step up, wind meter was a great aid and really helped, laser rangefinder starts coming into play. Then the jump to 800 and then your spending time with the above tools as much as with your rifle, I found this was the range that really started to expose my rifles ability and I had to really work with it, a MOA rifle will not teach you to shoot sub MOA, it took getting my rifle and load to a sub half moa for me to tighten up all my other calls at this point. At 1000 yards my method for doping and method for getting quality ranges and my muscle memory and interaction with the rifle started taking over. It's really a building block process, every once in a while you have to step back a few steps and rebuild something because you find you can progress on the track your on, ballistic apps really took me some time to wade through but that was when the first apps started and prior we basically had Xbal and Patagonia.
I would really encourage anyone pursuing the precision part of hunting to go full in on an app, charts and basic stuff really have walls that you should stop on, a full featured robust ballistic app is worth its weight in gold IMO, a real time solution is invaluable!!

There's a lot of truth in what you said about walls at various ranges. Walls in my skill set and walls in the capabilities of your equipment. When I got good at the longer ranges in exact 100 hit yard increments walls popped up when I'd shoot odd ranges like 860 or 725. I had an exceptionally accurate FN PBR I shot with fairly often. It showed me poor accuracy after 700 yards. Turned out it was the bullet I was using. After 800 yards I learned about neck tension, 900 it was extreme spreads and my reloading techniques. What was acceptable at 2,3,4,500 yards become no longer acceptable the farther you go.

 

[the hunter]

I shot a prairie dog at +- 1,500 yds a few years ago but the part that I leave out is that it took me 28 shots with a spotter to do it

I think it was Lancetkenyon on here who did it, and with one shot.