PS, making a shot from a bench at a known distance with spotting rounds is not the same as making a shot at an unknown distance on the first shot in the field.
Exactly, you've proved my point. I when on to write in my post that I do NOT shoot at animals at 700 yards as I do not find it ethical nor sporting at that range. I've had the most fun hunting by trying to close the distance from 700 yards down to 150 yards or closer. It's why they call it "fair chase hunting" and not "shooting at live animal targets".
Enough said. Let's focus on the real issue at hand:
Only you, maybe God and I can answer at what range is acceptable. This said, Theodore Roosevelt's aspiration for all hunters was to hunt ethically, in a fair and sporting manner where the animal has the benefit of the chase, as in "fair chase hunting". This said, the implication is self-evident: The more mainstream 'long range shooting' becomes, the more people rationalize distance "shooting" as "hunting" (which it is not) and as an acceptable action of "the hunt" and most either do not have the capability (and therefore wound game or endanger others) or lose the values and skills of a great outdoors-person and of the 'chase' as in fair chase hunting. John Burns has chosen to carve out a public niche for himself and mainly shoot at extreme ranges where neither hunting prowess nor woodsman skill are required and where there is no 'fair chase' in the hunting...hunting looses it's action verb "to hunt" and the only thing he needs most of the time is the ability to squeeze the trigger of his finely tuned sophisticated bullet propellant to a target. While many of us have this ability to shoot long range, I cannot say it is hunting for the reasons mentioned above.
