In all honesty I think the comment about taking shots at animals "moving at animal speeds" was a stupid comment. Because I don't know anyone who takes long range shots at moving animals. Yes it's true that stationary animals can move, but an undisturbed stationary animal is not going to all of a sudden decide to move, accelerate from a dead stop, and move very far in 0.65 seconds.
Having said that I can understand why some decide never to take such a shot. I just can't understand someone jumping to the conclusion that anyone else taking the shot is "unethical."
Add to that 0.65 seconds, the average time for the brain to make the decision for the finger to pull the trigger and the finger to act....now we’re approaching that 1 second. It is not “just” bullet flight time that should be factored in! I’m “not” opposed to and will take a lengthy shot on game....but all possible factors should be recognized! The biggest factor, for those of us that are human.....we “can” screw-up! memtb
While confessing our sins, I had a whitetail "jump the string" when I shot it broadside at 40 foot range with a hot loaded 6mm Remington. Through the thrown up scope I saw its muscles start to bunch under its skin so I hurried my trigger squeeze to rib shoot the buck through a 3 foot wide hole in brush. By the millisecond of time it took for the sear to break, I called the shot as a hit through both hams, where the crosshairs were by the time the bullet left the barrel. That's where I hit it. (OK, you may rag on my reaction time.)
On a buck rattled in and facing me at 50 yards, I shot as it started to move. The bullet plowed a furrow through hair the full length along one side, hip to shoulder. During my reaction time, the buck had turned 180 degrees.
The simple truth is that we do all that we can to reduce risk of a bad hit, do all that we can to insure a good hit, and then pull the trigger and take our chances -- at any range. The miss factors to overcome increase geometrically as range increases. Fortunately the technology for long range accuracy is phenomenal, but it is not meat in the freezer till we find out if the bullet went where we intended.
