Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Randy Selby on Long Range hunters

Are you crazy shooting that far you should be ashamed of yourself!! JUST KIDDING NICE WORK!!! I'm an old fashioned M.O.A. guy lol.

840 yards in a slight breeze. Buck was facing me straight on and held 1/4 mil.

Gravity is cinch because it's consistent and it's effects are near perfectly quantified. My killer is that invisible wind, and I will never spend the money or take the time to dope 600+ yard shots with my centerfires.

My decision not to shoot cost me a foresure B&C bull in one instance. About 450 yds and a 40 mph crosswind in a snow storm. Maybe I could have hit that bull, but I have no idea where, and I watched him cross the horizon.

I have done literally thousands of rounds at ground squirrels in single seasons with a 22 LR and amaze myself with my abilities in crosswinds out to about 130 yds. Mostly I go by the angle of heat waves and my sense of feel as I'm not sheltered in any way. Ranges are rough estimates based on cross hair hash marks. No calculus involved. At the extremes, I may go off one side or the other by as much as 10 inches and still make consistent kills. Would I bet a month's salary on a given shot though? No way. While a life is a life, I don't equate a wounded ground squirrel with that of a wounded 6 x 6 either.

A lot of the videos I see involve a decision-making team (spotter, wind doper, ballistic calculator, someone with an altimeter and hygrometer, and a shooter) and a lot of time to execute those shots. If the shot if followed by several rounds of high 5's, a coordinated performance of the funky chicken, 5 minutes of screaming, and a round of drinks, I'm inclined to believe the event was not a habitual affair.

Others punch out a dozen or so attempts before connecting. It seems too, that animals are often oblivious of first attempts as they have no idea they're being shot at. I'll just troop around by myself and have fun staying well within my abilities.

If one wants to do the science and practice, that's his business, but don't fu-k it up on big game. It's way too valuable.

Me too. But that was out of necessity. I'm also old he enough to remember a scoped bolt rifle shooting RN bullets that shot 2 MOA was about as good as it got. Lots of hunters at that time were shooting iron sighted rifles that wouldn't do any better than 4 MOA. Hunters have always pushed the envelope on range and have always been limited by the equipment they used.

The most common way big game is shot in my world, and in many parts of the USA is from a heated, elevated stand at 30 yards over bait. IMO the guys who have put in the time and practice and spent the money to acquire the equipment to take 500+yard shot at game are closer to a hunter than the guys who hunt over bait.

With modern ammo, range finders, and optics a 300 yard shot is now no more difficult than a 50 yard shot. I can have anyone making hits at 300 yards the 1st time they ever shoot a rifle. Skill doesn't become a factor until you get well beyond 300 yards anymore.

FWIW, I'm not one of those guys skilled enough to take long shots. I've shot at paper a bit out to 600 yards, but I don't have the confidence in my ability much past 300. But I respect those who can do it.

While taking game at long range isn’t an option for me, the folks that take the time and trouble to become very good long range shooters isn’t something I’ll tell anyone they shouldn’t do. Like previous posts say, I grew up hunting trying to get as close as possible so I’ve not invested any effort into becoming long range proficient. I can compare them to the shooters I see on the wild boar hunting show taking running shots at hogs in thick timber. I haven’t tried learning that either and I genuinely admire that skill also.

I can remember when see-through rings were popular because you never knew when your scope might go tits up. Times have changed.

I agree. And I stand by my earlier statement. I doubt seriously that anyone is pulling these shots off 100% of the time. You only hear about or see the ones that end with a dead and recovered animal. Never the wounded and lost animals. From a benchrest on a range with windsocks lining the shooting lanes maybe. In the field over hill and valley where across a 1000 yard gap the wind might be blowing in 3 slightly different directions and at 3 slightly different speeds at various points in that 1000 yards with no way to precisely know the exact directions and speeds? Naaa, I don't buy it. And the practitioners of it can berate my shooting skills to deflect all they want. I have watched some of these long range hunting shows and online videos by some of the superstars of the long range hunting world and seen them miss by feet with their first shot at those distances. Of course the only reason they showed those shots was because they were clean misses which they eventually followed with a kill shot. But if you can miss the whole animal by a matter of FEET with the first shot then you can easily be off enough to wound and lose the animal. No thanks. I may not ever ascend to hunting website fame and get to sit at the cool kids 1500 yard shooter table but by keeping my shots at a much more modest range I haven't missed or wounded and lost a deer since I was a child and I'm 57 now. I'd rather have that track record than the adoration of a few people I don't actually know on a website.

I've shot long range benchrest for many years. All of that experience confirms that known come-ups at say, 1000 yards can vary by a minute or more from day to day. . . then there's the wind that can be blowing quite differently "out there" than it is from where you're shooting. I do know a few long range hunters who shoot Cheytac's with good optics and rangefinders who have the skill set and the equipment to do it right. The real problem is the creedmore cowboys who think that all you need to hunt at long range is a smartphone.

A lot of my hunting pleasure is picking the perfect place to fool your game into giving you a good shot. If I can go into their habitat and figure out where to be at a certain time, that's half of the sport. I wouldn't want to shoot game at extreme distance.

Time of flight - it's a thing.

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