Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Sheep - Realistic Ranges

Yes, pretty incredible amount of experience here. For my part, I have none to share other than second-hand. I thought that scoring sheep was difficult enough that closing distance might be necessary to make sure you are taking a legal ram. Does that play a roll in final shooting range?

Sheep hunters will get close, under 200 yards. Rams are scrutinized like crazy and long shots are considered foolish. Here in BC if a ram is 1/4" short he will be taken away.Many close ones are mature Rams.

Five dalls and two goats. 1 dall taken at over 300 yards but 1 dall, my first and longest, at 10 yards. 1 goat at 250 yards and 1 goat at 330 yards. Most of the time its harder in the area that I do a lot of hunting to get up close on goats in locations where they can be retrieved then getting close to sheep.

Myself, my wife and a son have taken 6 Dall sheep between us. One (son's ewe) was about 200, one ram of mine about 330 - both with 17 inch bbl 30-06.
My first was @ 50 feet wth .243 Rest were less than 100.

My wife could have taken her ram at 70 yards with BP, open sights, as planned.

If I had brought the Pyrodex.

She had to use the .270....

Me, sample of one ram, 75-80 yds. My brother, 2 rams, 2 ewes, 75-175 yds.

3 dalls, one bighorn. 110-250yds.

Thanks for all the responses. For those who have taken sheep and goats at 200+ yards, was it by choice or necessity (i.e., impossible to stalk any closer)? No judgment one way or the other; I'm just curious.

Thanks again.

RM

Good to see you comment on this thread,

I shot my sample of one at 80 yards as lasered by my guide. I was offered shots at 180 and a little over 100. It was pretty easy to get closer so we did.

One dall at 280 out of necessity.

Sometimes Mike cross canyon is as close as you can get. Also sometimes the rams are leaving. I always get closer if I can which is usually. Sheep aren't hard to kill they are hard to find. I think in long range shooting you have to be brutally honest with yourself what you are capable of. It's kind of like hunting Dall sheep in the glacier country. It isn't for everybody.

1 Rocky - 100 yards
1 Dall- 250 ish horizontal yards. 400+ angled yards. Jake Jefferson captured it on video for me.
2 goats- 200 yards and 18 yards.

For years we have been listening to news about Banks Too Big To Fail. Well, sheep hunting should be governed by the phrase To Close To Miss. With 30+ sheep hunters that I have personally guided not one sheep was taken at over 200 yards and many so close that I was worried the hunter would alert the sheep before the shot. Any sheep guide that tells his hunter to shoot a sheep at 500 yards really needs to learn how to hunt .
Good Hunting
Lj

The son of a friend got an enormous muley buck this year at 600. He does a lot of long range shooting and had a good rangefinder. I've hunted where he got it and I know for a fact that he couldn't have got closer. He shot across a draw into a burn with piles of deadfall. A closer approach was impossible.
Then came the realities of long shots. It took him 2 hrs to walk that 600 yds and 2 days for 2 of them to pack the deer out. He told his dad that shooting it was about the dumbest thing he'd ever done.

A good illustration of why some of us are against long range shots at game. In the scenario above I doubt he would have found that deer if the shot wasn't just right. He might not have even known it was wounded. When it takes you that long to get to the area the animal was standing when the shot was taken it would be impossible to locate the exact location to look for signs of a hit; and forget about any follow up shots. In two hours that deer could be in the next county.

There's nothing wrong with going home empty, sometimes getting into a position where an ethical shot is possible doesn't happen....thats why its called hunting...

I think you're confusing "ethical shot" with your own personal ethic. Plenty of ways to ensure you find an animal that's hit, including having a spotter stay put and guide the hunter to the animal. And since we're talking about sheep chances are the hunter and/or guide will see where it goes down or be able to find it easily out in the open where they live.

And as far as "the shot having to be just right," no more or no less than than any other shot. I once shot a buck at 30 yards, right behing the shoulder, double-lunged. He still ran over 200 yards and I had a hard time finding him. Was that more "ethical?"

On sheep I've gone 200, 450, 450, 560. Only one goat, and he was 165.

My buddy did get one sheep at 125ish, others were 375 - 450. Generally in the area that we hunt (and find rams) there are large stretches where there is no cover. That is one of the reasons rams hang out there. Of course we could have let any of those rams walk, or we could have just walked straight at them and hoped for the best. Sometimes that works, sometimes not. I'll leave the ethics questions for the those more qualified.

IMO, for most guys, the "range" that matters most for sheep hunting is "Price Range". I doubt I'll ever be able to shoot that far.

I disagree. I've spent enough time looking for blood when an animal was shot at moderate ranges to know how hard it would be at 5-600. I've also hunted sheep long enough to know how fast they can disappear. They live in rough country, and although it is usually more open country ( not always) they can still be hard to find. If were talking guided hunts then its a moot point anyway because chances are very high your guide wont let you take long shots to begin with. Theres a reason for that too.

What I meant when I said the shot had to be just right was that if the shot isn't good, you're in for a long day. Your chance for a follow up go way down, and if it takes you two-hours to get to where the animal was ( like in the story I was commenting on) a wounded animal could be a long ways away by the time you get there; making the tracking job that much harder.

I dont think anyone would disagree with the fact that long shots are much harder to make, so yea you can still lose game or make a bad shot at close or moderate ranges, but for all of us the odds go way up if the distance is kept reasonable. IMO the high rough country where sheep and goats live is the last place to try long distance shots. The winds and downdrafts are just to hard to dope.

Thanks for the response yukon, good points. I'd agree that in a situation where recovering the animal is dicey, then ethics do come into play.

But I still think that has a lot more to do with factors other than the distance of the shot, and there are lots of situations where a long shot is just as ethical as a short one.

1 Rocky Mountain Bighorn- 95 yards

When I first spotted him, he was 385 yards. Pretty sure I could have made a clean kill as one of spots I place my steel plates is 387 yards from the bench.

I spent the next few hours closing the gap and would not trade that experience for anything.

The whole LR debate reminds me of a quote I heard in my bowhunter education class many years ago. "An archer sees how far he can be from a target and still hit it, a bowhunter sees how close he can get before he shoots"

It is certainly easy to use that same line of thinking with firearms. Your personal preference dictates what you want be. It becomes an ethical issue when the shooting ability does not match up to the distance. No matter the distance.