Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Long Range Hunting What is your definition of 'long range'?

I used to practice quite a bit out to 1200 yards. Will be practicing out to a mile possibly soon. But at this point only out to 800 yards when I can. In any case the farthest shot I've taken on big game is 125 yards and I like it that way. 500 yards is what my set limit is and I'm not excited about pushing it out that far. Just too many variables. On varmints I'll push it as far as I can get a clean 1st shot kill. I consider my 400 yard coldbore headshot on a rock chuck with my M4 the best shot I've made.

This is classic....

Moves at animal speeds? Does the fact that some animals are slower than others mean you can shoot the slow ones further away? Remember, the LR gang are not advocating shooting LR at animals that are moving.

Please go into further detail on MOVES AT ANIMAL SPEEDS.

Before you completely act the fool, let me give you a tip. There are people out there that can do things you or I can't, and there always will be. Some can hit a 100mph fast ball, while all you would know about it is the slap of the ball into the catchers mitt. Some can play golf on the pro level and comparatively you can only do mediocore on the silly golf range. Some can shoot and obviously as of now you are not on their level.

But I'm interested in your MOVES AT ANIMAL SPEEDS knowledge....

Good luck...... he doesn’t answer simple direct questions.... only waves his pompous shame finger at you.

LB hasn't hunted very much, quite obviously.

He can wave it all he wants but it doesn't change anything. I'm no LR shooter, but there are those who are. He obviously isn't either, but it doesn't change the reality of those who are.

Wal, I'm an animal, an old one, and I can move 15 feet in one second, starting from sitting in a chair. I submit that as an example of animal movement speed. Cut that in half if we want, and it is still a miss or badly placed hit from a bullet with an eighth of a second flight time between barrel and target.

I just happened to wander by this forum and see that the same denial (of the possibility of wounding an animal) from SOME long rangers never ends. And critics are still voicing the same two basic problems: ethics and physics. I will leave the ethics to my betters. What I can never understand is that some long rangers refuse to admit the possibility of gut shooting a critter at long range due to inexorable physics.

Do people who shoot at moving animals get to ignore inexorable physics also?

You’re as big an idiot as the other one.

Have you dudes ever read body language on an animal. What are the real chances of movement while making the shot? I’ve never had an animal move while making a long range shot.

I made this comment based on LB's assertion that he never has missed hitting an animal in the vitals that he was shooting at. Only those who've killed relatively few animals can make such a claim.

Were those rocks already dead when you started shooting at them and were the the first three shots of the day? At sun rise?

To join the fun, I can honestly say I've never missed an animal that I've hit in the vitals at any range I was shooting at.

They don't refuse to admit the possibility of something going wrong any more than the close range crowd refusing to admit something can. Show me once were they refuse to admit it can't happen.

Last Deer I killed was running at perhaps 30yards and it wasn't the first. Can something bad happen the next time? Most definitely. The one before that, standing perhaps 10yards and he was looking at me on high alert. He also could have bolted at the wrong fraction of a second. But to say the LR people don't have a handle on wither an animal is about to bolt or not, on wither the odds are highly likely that when the bullet is on the way the animal will still be in the same position, is not giving them credit for knowing how to play their game. From what Ive seen over the years, perhaps more Deer are shot badly by MR Average and up close, than by the dedicated and skilled LR crowd. Dedicated and skilled being the defining qualifier. Do some shoot past the range of their skill level? Most definitely, but that is not grounds to say those that have the skill shouldn't.

Some can, some can't and everyone should try to acknowledge where they are signed off.

I was cruising for coyotes with a grizzled old professional wolfer in Central BC one winter when we met a fellow in another pick-up coming our way. We stopped and did the chat through rolled down windows for a bit. The fellow mentioned that he had never missed a coyote. When we drove on the codger with me said, "He's either a liar or he ain't shot at many coyotes."

Something similar happened to me over a decade ago.… at under 100 yards.

I had drawn a special license for an area that came with 3 MD doe tags. I located a feeding herd and got to within 100 yards. I selected a doe that was alone on the edge of the herd. I got a steady rest, and got set up behind the rifle. In the time that it took me to ready a perfect shot, because of my scope magnification setting and the limited FOV at that range, I didn’t notice another animal rushing in from my strong side toward my targeted animal, where my support eye couldn’t see it. It was just as the trigger was breaking that the animal came into my FOV in the scope, as it lunged in front of the doe I was targeting. As the trigger broke, I wished I could take back the shot, knowing that my targeted animal was no longer separate from the others. My bullet struck the “lunger” in the ear hole- an instant kill. Luckily for me, I had three tags.

I maintain that if the shot had been at 450+ yards, my FOV would have been large enough that I’d have seen the rogue animal coming before starting my trigger squeeze. So I’d argue that in some circumstances, it can be easier to make a bad shot at close range than far, due in part to the increased FOV at longer distance, and also, because LR shots are not rushed, the calmer situation to assess.

The hard, fast statements of critisicm that some guys like to associate with LR shots on game can often be applied to close-range shots, too. Hunting has risks. It’s up to us to mitigate those risks, but we can never truly eliminate them.

Yessir, they det, been det since the great volcanic explosions that formed that mountain put em there, those were the only shots I fired yesterday, spent the day in town around idiots and needed a little release, stopped by the shop on the way into the house and hauled in a quart of homemade muscadine wine.

And to add to the fun, hunting Africa last year, as I broke the set trigger on a monster blue black Sable bull at 101 yards with my 50-90 Sharps he began to walk, I near chit down both legs, nothing I could do but hope for the best, got VERY lucky, that big 50 cal flat nosed 750gr grease grove bullet chit-canned his liver, WHEEEW!!!!!, first and foremost I didn't want him to suffer, secondly, that big sombitch carried a 6500 dollar trophy fee!

Nothing goes far without a liver. Plus there are some major arteries there. Nice shooting....

LOL Thanks, I guess the set trigger is less than 6 ounces, I was pressing on it when he began to move down my front sight, BOOOMMMM, then . was so very glad to find him.

JW, thanks for confirming your membership in the emotional long range cult. FWIW I am considered exceptionally good at reading animal body language and at predicting what an animal will do as we watch it, from coyotes to cougars to moose to mice. But I admit that I am not perfect, which confirms my status as an idiot, compared to you who has NEVER failed to read animal body language perfectly.

Here's a recent anecdote: I was watching a young bull moose as it fed in a quiet pond, nose down in weedy water about a foot deep. Peaceful evening, no wind, glassy water, silent... and suddenly the bull leaped up and backward, flinging water high and jerking its nose way up. It looked funny and I assume that something bit or stuck the bull on its nose.

Any expert body language reader would know that the bull was going to suddenly change from standing still to a violent quick leap, and that the leap would be backwards, not forward. Easy read. I'm sure you would have read that one correctly, and had you been aiming at it would have known not to go ahead with the trigger.

Anyone who has never misread animal body language has not watched many animals, close or far.

The key phrase you use is "chances of movement while making the shot." Yep. It is chances, not sure thing. That's my point, and saying that all else being equal, the chances of a good hit go down as range increases makes me an idiot.

Jordan Smith gets it. He posted "The hard, fast statements of critisicm that some guys like to associate with LR shots on game can often be applied to close-range shots, too. Hunting has risks. It’s up to us to mitigate those risks, but we can never truly eliminate them."


We can never truly eliminate the risks. All else being equal, the risks are higher at long range. That is mere reality. Oops. That is idiocy.

Exactly, but those that don’t theorize and spouts BS