Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Long Range Hunting The Modern Rules for Long-Range Hunting

I hope someday to be a Long-range Hunter. Currently having a hard time finding more than 100yds without a bunch of trees in the way to develop my skills, but I'll get there. The "Crippled Big Game from LR Hunters" thread was keeping me up at night this winter, tho. So, I sent away to a company advertised in the back of Sports Afield and commissioned a white paper in the hopes that I might get some answers. Could have bought a new PRS rig for what I paid for it. But, I think I got my money's worth. Figured I'd share it with you guys:

Ol' Willy Esquire sure likes to jack-off Ol' Jack......

Hey, it was a long winter, what can I say?

G1 ballistic coefficient x1000. Oh my

Rules...?

So it looks like the max range rule would be depending on your sight in maybe 450 yards and at that range you are sitting in maybe 5-7 mile an hour wind. I remember reading Ole Jack where he said a holdover where you could see light between the cross reticle and the back of the animal is self correcting as the farther away the higher you have to hold. Seems reasonable to me.

Save up 20 years of points. Draw tag. Spend thousands of dollars on gear. Bull elk at 650….let me get my rule book out…..

By the time you flipped to page whatever, my bullet has left the barrel boys lol

Jackie also shot a 2x Lyman……from a 9 pound “sheep rifle”

The Rules are less than a page. I'll make you up a card you can tape to your stock

Jack was the first to admit breaking the rules including shooting an elk at 600yds with a 2.5x scope with a 4-minute dot reticle by holding 3 feet over his back. The Rules are for the average Joe, maybe not the lowest common denominator but, the average common denominator. And, even masters if their blood is full of adrenaline and Babylon - all those points, money, youtube fame - is giving you an itchy trigger finger.

I notice no one has actually disagreed with the rules. I also, notice no one has commented on how humorous the original post is which kind of hurts my feelings seeing how I was laughing out loud while I wrote it!

You are Wee Willy Esquire? Gawdamm, that IS funny......

Yeah, he's me. I thought my rules were pretty cool but also knew it was pretty ballsy for a guy like me to post Rules about long range hunting on a forum where guys like xphunter, JordanSmith, et al post. So, I figured a little humor was in order.

I don't agree with the ballistic coefficient rule because that ignores the muzzle velocity.

The best rule I could add is never take a shot where the time of flight of the bullet exceeds 1 second, allowing a stationary animal to move outside the flightpath of the bullet. The next rule I would add would be never take a shot which the terminal velocity is lower than the manufacturers published velocity threshold for reliable bullet expansion.

It's satirical humour with a bit of truth mixed in.

I enjoyed your contribution sir. Humor is often a great way to tell the truth.
F01

my favourite, and #1 rule is 'you can't kill it if you don't shoot at it'

Glad you enjoyed it Fury01!


Was wondering what you might think - I'll take that. "Better than a kick in the ass with a frozen boot" as my dad used to say.


Thanks for taking the time, rickt300!


I'm with you on time of flight. I think, you'd bump up against the other parameters before getting into trouble there. BC ignores muzzle velocity but, is relevant to the velocity everywhere else on the trajectory.

Thanks to all who indulged my conceit here!

Not to be taken too seriously, but I enjoyed it. Thank you for taking the time!

Snore..zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!!

Come on, man! The original post was comic and ballistic genius! If Brian Litz got together with Monty Python, they couldn't have done better.

Long range hunting is a thing and there are issues and all we will get again this year from the Petersen's Huntings and Sports Afields is "No more than 400 yards" or "no more than 450 yards" or "no more than 500 yards unless you're me" in the usual crop of "Have We Gone Too Far" articles. And, here we'll see another couple hundred variations on "These flat-brims are ruining hunting and wounding animals" Maybe The Rules are not for the Expert Class but, they'd help the young dude with a new 7PRC without treating him like a child and drawing an arbitrary line in the sand. Read it again and tell me it doesn't work.

Or, use it to put your cranky old ass to sleep at night. Whatever.

Never shoot closer than 1500 yards!