I come at this subject from the angle of hunters' ethics and the inherent, inevitable imperfection of marksmanship and bullet placement, where I'm completely at odds with a friend of over thirty years who thinks that shooting AT deer from 1,000 or more yards WITH A SINGLE-SHOT is sporting.
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<br>NO ONE can be 100% certain that he can without fail put his bullet where it must go, at super-long range, to kill cleanly. Even bullets with "adequate" retained energy at those ranges, punching through deer at even shorter ranges and with "perfect" placement, often let deer escape over the ridge or into the brush and out of sight.
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<br>Out here, "long range" typically means from one side of a canyon to the other. Putting a bullet across that space can take less than two seconds -- but GETTING over there to find and follow a blood trail can typically take hours. The help of a partner to stay where the shot was fired, to guide you with a two-way radio, is against the law in some states (still is here, I assume). But without it, shooting at a deer from such a distance is (IMO) utterly irresponsible -- you can't be sure you'll know the right spot to be looking for sign when you get over to where you think "there" is.
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<br>No one owes it to a game animal to shoot it. But once you shoot it, you owe it to that wounded animal to finish it off as quickly and as humanely as possible. It is simply not sporting, in any sense of the term, to discard or ignore this responsibility as a fundamental decision in adopting a hunting method or procedure.
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<br>And yes, I do shoot prairie dogs at 500 yards and possibly farther -- with a powerful rifle and cartridge that blows 'em to tiny pieces with any hit. Game animals and varmints are different categories that require different responsibilities of the shooter. I don't ignore a wounded gopher or prairie dog -- I finish it off ASAP if I can.
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<br>I once watched from a distance, with binoculars, as my "sporting" friend, who hunts only with single-shots, stayed seated in his pickup when a doe he'd just wounded with a .270 humped-up and ran into a coulee. He'd hit that doe with solid placement in the lungs. I doubt that she went much farther than 100 yards, if that far. He went to another spot and shot another deer. When this one fell, he drove over to it and THEN got out of his pickup. I'm sure he doesn't cross any canyon and try to trail any deer he wounds from 1,000 yards away, on another mountain. I know he doesn't always kill with only one shot.
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<br>I have to wonder how many other long-range deer-shooters (a) always kill with one shot, (b) get a second, finishing shot into any deer they've only wounded, or (c) bother to cross the canyon to find and follow the trail of wounded deer that they can't finish-off from their original shooting positions.
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<br>I have my doubts.
