Lots of really good posts here by some very knowledgeable & experienced people.
We once had 2 areas in Idaho, neither of which were overly rugged to hunt, compared to really mountainous terrain like maybe the Hoback area of WY.
But there were really a lot of big, high scoring animals there, especially deer & as a rule shots were always looooog, with a few exceptions & hunting was almost all spot & stalk or spot & shoot. And if you weren't pretty prepared to shoot longer than typically, then you simply weren't going to shoot as getting closer was frequently just not possible due to the terrain.
Some built purpose built rifles specifically to hunt those areas; I built a long-throated 300 Win with a heavy, stiff & stable barrel, all up, that weighted more than 10 lb.
Another guy built a 30-378 the we called the Big Gun & it weighed 13+ lb.
As I recall, there were some animals killed at about 750, longest I killed an animal was a little more than 500 which with good conditions is not all that difficult.
But any rifle to be useful needs to be able to reasonably carried & 10 lb is a load; 13 lb is beyond realistic for most normal people in rough terrain for a 10 mile day on foot, or even 5 miles.
So practicality becomes a consideration as does field recoil.
750 yards is very long under variable field conditions & 1000 is almost laughable for MOST, non-specially trained or exceptionally talented hunters, certainly not for most casual hunters or Shooters that are enchanted witn "LR Hunting".................my opinion is that's no longer hunting, that's just shooting.
I limit myself & will never hunt with a target stocked rifle or extreme "LR" clambering.
My rounds now all fall within the mundane & have no belts nor are of magnum case volumes.
It's not hard to build a LR Rifle, but 1,000 yard genuinely capable 1,000 yd hunters or even Shooters are about as rare as hen's teeth under field conditions............just being able to drag the heavy artillery piece from your car to the firing line on a range & & hitting steel at whatever range you want to brag about is not the same as doing it in the mountains under field conditions.
YMMV
MM
Throwing a lot of logic out there MM. Are any of these guys going to pick it up? Sounds like they like axle shafts for barrels though. It doesn't take that to shoot 1,000 yards consistently. Someone mentioned 300WSM, that is a great cartridge, and it doesn't take a #5 axle shaft or 26" for one of those to work really well.
A rifle (Tikka T3X 300WSM) I recently sold to one of my buddies, weighs 7.4 pounds scoped, and it's a sledge hammer. Even at 1,000 yards, given the right nut behind the butt.. That's shooting in the prone, as you said, other field positions can be different. I don't know if the OP plans on shooting from an elevated platform 100 yards from his truck, but I for damn sure would not be packing around a 10 or 13 pound rifle where I hunt elk.
