Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting The 300 Wby Mag for elk- is there anything better?

I can shoot and hit a 10"x 10" steel plate at the 700 yard range (the max distance at my range) 100% of the time unless the wind is truly gusty. Will I ever shoot an animal at that range? NO. If I did, I'd barely have to get out of my truck (or at least just enough to meet the legal requirements) in some locations of CA, AZ, CO and WY that I hunt in to get my deer, elk, Pronghorn, even bear.

I will say this: with a properly tuned rifle, almost anyone with coaching can place a shot on target at 700 yards, even 1000 yards or more. Shooting at a target and hunting big game animals to me and many other hunters is quite different. Each person has their own ethics.

I ask: At what range does it cross over from the actual action of hunting to just being able to shoot animals from so far away that it impedes the fairness of the 'chase'and violates the spirit of the hunter and the game and crosses the line of fair chase hunting?

Only you, maybe God and I can answer this for ourselves. 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.

Edited to add that while John Burns may possess both the skill and the hunting prowess to get closer to game animals; he 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.