Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Long Range Hunting Long range kill photos show dramatic results!!!

Lately I've been watching more and more hunting shows and videos during these winter months and with the Chinese flue restrictions. Some of the videos on the long range kills show animals dropping and almost bouncing when hit at these extended distances of 500-1000 yards. I find the "put down" effect impressive and yet many of these animals are taken with 6.5 CM, 7mm and other somewhat moderate calibers.

I remember shooting elk at 100-150 yards with hot loaded .270's and 30-06's and 300WM's and not seeing this "bang-flop effect". Is that because those animals I shot at those closer distances where most of the time spooked by me before being shot and when pumped up with adrenaline; and the animals taken at 750 yards usually are not aware of hunters around and are calm???

Interesting to watch and wondering what is the most likely reason for those impressive long range kills.

Where ya hit 'em......

High shoulder puts them down in a hurry

Don't believe everything you see on tv.

That ain't hunting.

I tend to agree. It's more akin to target shooting than anything else.

There's plenty of video of far worse results but people only post the stuff that makes them look good.


Okie John

Nonsense.....

Truth, absolute truth.

Yep. These guys are usually selling or representing some sponsored product. Schit goes wrong when hunting. Lots of variables, and sometimes they don't line up in the hunter's favor. It's no different with "long range" hunting.

I am friends with several hunting and fishing show “celebs” . Surprisingly many of them don’t care for the long range shooters because of what they are doing to our sport. Similar to what Duck Dynasty did to duck hunting. Now every young man is required to grow his ugly ass ZZ Top beard and shoot ducks. Now, every kid on the block is a long range sniper special ops specialist. Two of my friends video those shows. In short, don’t believe everything you see according to them. There are, naturally, a ton of misses and sadly, wounded animals, when they try the 1000 yard shots. Guides hate like hell to see them set foot on the ranches.

I don’t particularly love the LR only sorta killing but to me a fella that prepares and is ready to take the shot he’s given isn’t a bad guy in my book.

I practice out to 800 quite often and feel like my gear and myself are capable but to be honest I’d rather shoot an elk or buck where it’ll feel the muzzle blast but being an out of stater that hunts public land I wanna capitalize on what the good Lord puts in front of me. I’m pretty fussy past 400 but if it’s a good set up and no chance to get closer I’m going to make the shot.

TV is horseshiit most of the time anyhow.

I have thought about this a bit. I personally would not dial a scope and take a really long shot based on that because the tracking often seems to be a bit off. I saw a video posted on here recently about a 12-yr-old boy with his father’s guidance shot an elk from the prone position at about 1,350 yards, and it went down. Thing is it was his second shot. The father had dialed the scope, and the first shot went under the elk’s belly. So, he redialed it, and the boy shot it again—that time successfully. But the first shot easily could have ended up with a lost gut-shot elk. Not for me.

If I draw this year for the Colorado unit on which my property sits, I could see taking a shot out to 600 yds or so under the right conditions.

For example, in the first pic below, I am standing in a spot on my property where I have seen elk congregate. The top of the rock is about 600 yds away. That photo was shot looking E-W, the way the wind generally blows, so that shouldn’t be an issue. The second pick is the reverse view. My cabin is about 150 yds on the other side of that rock. If I’m laying on the rock with, say, my .340 Wby, which shoots three-shot groups inside of a dime; and if the wind isn’t doing something really weird; and I have a steady hold in the prone off of my bipod on the top of that rock; I know to shoot that rifle 9 MOA reticles high at that range and elevation. I easily would do that because no one is going to be able to sneak up on any elk across that meadow to get any closer.

They don’t show videos of the ones who run off crippled is probably one of the reasons. I doubt any of those animals hit at long range would drop any faster if hit the same from a shorter distance

I have seen several shows where the animal is shot in the daylight on an open hillside and the recovery is filmed with the animal in the dark at the bottom of a draw or in the timber with a bloated belly.

There is some evidence that bullets heat up significantly the longer they are in flight, as in what Hornady found when testing long-range BC and noting that the plastic tips on their bullets melted at ranges typical of longer range shots. I've noticed that bullets like Bergers seem to do more damage at longer distances, rather than shorter. That could be because their temperature is several hundred degrees, and they are softer. I don't know, but I've experienced and seen it quite a bit.

+1

Some scopes track reliably, and some don't. If a guy is interested in LR hunting (not necessarily exclusively), it pays to figure out which models almost always track correctly, and then use one of those scopes. In the video you're referencing, the boy easily could have pulled the shot a bit, wind could have shifted, the wrong elevation could have been dialed for the first shot, etc, any of which could have caused the first shot to miss. I agree that it's a good idea not to dial scopes that don't have a reputation for tracking correctly (and/or are verified to not track correctly), but there are certain models of scopes that are nearly always mechanically very reliable.

Interesting I hadn’t considered that.

Agreed. I'm not saying that other hunters don't have the right equipment and correct approach. I was just saying that "I personally would not dial a scope and take a really long shot based on that ..." I may or may not have a near-perfect tracking scope. But it just seems easier and more certain for what I have and do to aim a certain number of reticles higher.