In my area, you can run into anything from 25 yards in heavy brush, to 1200 yards from ridgetop to ridgetop. You just never know where the animals will be, and that varies depending on time of day most of the time.
This was on an elk hunt two years ago. Early morning, we are glassing open clear cut areas with shots out to 800 yards and temps at about 15 degrees, Fahrenheit....
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By midday, it is 65 degrees and the animals are in the dark and cool timbered draws where you can barely see 25 yards. There is a hunter 25 yards away in this pic...
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Like a rain forest down in these draws. Amazing the different species of plants found by walking 100 yards...
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Then by the end of the day, we are back to glassing the clear cuts and edge of timber stands in anticipation of the elk stepping out of the cover of the trees.
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There is no way a lever-action .30-30 would be adequate here, or a heavy-barrelled 10 lb rifle set up for 1000 yard shots. You need something versatile, and that is usually a bolt gun in a flat-shooting caliber with decent glass at 8lbs or under.
Sure, you can bring a rifle for a very specific terrain and hunt only that type of terrain, but you are at a disadvantage to those that have more versatile set-ups.
Of course, when I was younger, you carried a bolt-gun with a 3x9 scope in .30-06 or .270, that was sighted in at 100 yards. If you spotted animals at 400+ yards away, you figured out how to get closer to them. These days, guys just want to blast away at ridiculous distances. My brother is one of them, lol.