Long range hunting

[Oathkeeper1775]

One long shot, one muddy face

I have the .308 case in my desk drawer with @ this story on a 3x5 card stuck in it;

I had a cow elk tag (Jan through March), gout and a cracked ankle. I drove all over this hunt unit in the Oregon Cascades for three months. The last day of the tag, I was at 3,500 feet; rain wind and snow, the elk were about 450 yards away and down in a deep canyon. I hopped out of the truck and over to a berm, I took my shot.

I hit a fir limb about half-way between myself and the elk (herd of about 20 cows). I seen the grey diagonal line on the scope, I thought it was water. They ran off and I stumbled and fell on my face while hopping back to my truck. :banghead:

That is the only shot I ever missed with my Rem 788. My farthest B.G. kill is 165 yards. My closest kill was a Rooster at 10 yards; I field dressed hime in flight.

 

[wankerjake]

Those measurements are from the muzzle - they drop off exponentially after that, which means by 20 yards, let alone 100, you will have trouble making a skull shot

I've shot a number of rabbits as a youngster, in the head at 20-30 yards. They all died as a direct result. These were .177 caliber pellets traveling at 630 fps (according to the box) at the muzzle. Now did the pellets pass thru? I truly don't recall. But those rabbits all died, I'll tell you that much. Pellet rifles are no joke, they get the job done. Killed a whole bunch of quail with them too.

Now if you're thinking of the Red Ryder then yeah, not rabbit material. I had trouble even killing birds with friends' Red Ryders. I think muzzle velocity must be around 300-400 fps on those. They look great, but are not adequate for the "serious" young hunter

 

[Freedom_fighter_in_IL]

I can remember many moons ago when Daisy first came out with their pump pellet/bb gun and my dad aquired one for my amusement. Many squirrels, rabbits, mice, birds, and various other small game fell to that little air rifle with many of the rabbits being out to 40 yards. I am of course assuming that the OP had a similar pumper and having a long time with that little bugger, I too have to call a smidgion of BS as to the long range double rabbit head shot at that range. 40 yards was a pretty good poke to cleanly dispatch even the soft skull of a rabbit. 90 yards?? Sorry but that is just too far out there for my experience to comprehend.

As to the long range "hunting" I am a strong advocate against it. I don't care how good you are at all the logistics of long range shooting, there is one thing that NOONE can compensate for. That is you are shooting at a LIVE animal and them animals have a tendency to take steps. Now, say you are at 900 yards, you have your handy dandy laser range finder and have got your yardage, you have your handy dandy wind reader and you have doped your wind, you have your handy dandy BDC program and have set up your scope to the proper elevation. What you DON'T have is your handy dandy animal mind reader to tell you that that Elk or Deer or whatever is going to take a step right as your trigger breaks and that half second it will take your super duper .300 win mag loaded at 3200fps to reach that animal it just moved a foot putting your perfectly calculated shot into the heart, in the guts! Long range shooting is for paper period NOT for live animals for this reason alone.

 

[Ankeny]

...must have been a really tall deer...

Now that's some really funny stuff.