Have a S&W 629 6" , I'm considering using it for scoped distance shooting.
Before I blow $300 ( or more ) on scope and mount, I would like to know
just how much distance this thing is capable of. Has anybody here used
this gun for distance shooting ?
Everyone is giving you advice, so I'll just talk to your original question. Some years back I had a pair of identical 629s. One had a Leopold 2.5 and one had open sights. The scoped revolver was sighted in at 75 yards. The open sighted revolver was sighted in at 50.
The range I shot at had metal plates, 8" in diameter at distances from 75 yards, 100 yards, 150 yards and 200 yards. The plate diameter didn't change.
With the scoped revolver, after learning my bullet drop, I could easily make repeated shots easily out to 150 yards with nary a miss, and I considered this to be my max distance on whitetails, standing still on a windless day with a good, steady rest! Keep in mind, the drop was enough that I never actually tried it on a real live animal, because of the variance in body size being used to determine distance. With a range finder, I might have done it.
With the open sighted revolver, my hit ratio at 150 was considerably less. Even though the drop was the same, that 8" plate was mighty small. However, when I missed, the misses were pretty close - if you know what I mean.
The funny thing was, with the open sighted revolver, I could knock over bowling pins standing off hand at 75 yards 5 out of 6 times! Those 6" N Frames point like lasers and the single action let-off is wonderful.
Distance shooting is a lot of fun. A place I used to shoot had an old VW Beetle hood lid propped up against a tree at 300 yards. I found making 100% hits on it with my 1911A1 was easy if I aimed for a fork in the tree about 10 feet above it.
