No argument there, especially with them last three sentences.
I can still recall how tickled I was over 40 years ago, when I killed my first woodchuck beyond 100 yards with a Hornet and thought that was a mighty big deal at the time.
It occured to some of us long ago, that if we could consistantly render rodents lifeless at ranges beyond 400 yards, doing same to a whitetail with a capable rig wasn't much of a challenge.
Some years ago, my old huntin' bud thumped a bedded doe in the punkin at about 390 yards (lasered), from the bipod with his M700ADL 6mm Rem and a 95gr Btip. He offered to donate the tagged deer to some guys that'd gotten one doe and were heading back home to the flatlands that night, (first day of the season, we were there all week, they weren't).
When they got around to surveying the damage (one guy said he'd take it if'n it wasn't "all shot up") and my bud related the shot, one of 'em basically called him a liar. The guy whose farm they were staying at, calmed things down by saying he'd seen us "lay out there in the fields like a buncha drunken hobos" and kill woodchucks a helluva lot farther away than that doe was. Also mentioned he didn't think it was much different to whack a pasture poodle at distance, than it was to poke a bedded deer in the head, since the target appeared to be about the same size to him. Bud had to ruin the moment by declining any honors, since he'd hit the doe under the ear and said he'd been aiming for her eye at the time. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />
They happily took the deer and went home, the noisy feller never came back up there to hunt afterwards and I ain't started missing him yet either. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />
When the Queen Bee still hunted deer with us, I had her M77 25-06 dialed-in 3 and a half inches high at 100 yds, which kept the 120gr Sierras about two inches low at 300yds, IIRC now. She killed one doe with it from the Harris, at 350 yards with a bit of urging and advice, otherwise she killed deer with it in the woods, offhand, at closer ranges every fall.
Some years later she handed the rifle to a cousin of mine that was carrying a Marlin 30-30 and told him to "just center it" on a doe a couple hundred yards across the hollow from them. He did, it died, she got a chuckle out of the way he whooped over that one, him having never killed a deer beyond about 80 yards previously.
