Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters "Aiming in the 21st Century"

I couldn't say it better than 1234567 just did.

read the article this weekend while at my boss's house over south of Missoula while he and my wife went over P&L reports.....thought it was a good article and really liked it.....course i also liked my reading spot....sprawled out on a couch, next to a wood stove with a kudu and leopard watching me from their spots on the wall of his living room

Jeff_O: In highpower and CMP matches the standing is done at two-hundred yards. The target we shoot at has a 7" ten ring, 13" nine ring, and 19" eight ring. Based on my scores and my practice I would not shoot standing at game at two-hundred yards. Maybe if I could always keep them all in the nine ring I would think about it. For me a score of 85 is about average, 90 is exciting and 80 is disappointing.

As a side question, I notice that unlike other positions my standing shooting improves hardly at all when using a scoped rifle. Is this the same for the rest of you?

I practiced a lot shooting with a tight sling and an M1a or AR15, thinking I wanted to shoot some highpower matches.

I concur that scope vs. no scope isn't the determining factor for ME. It's that I'm so damn wobbly. I have to "grab" the shot as it goes by. Either way 4 MOA is about the best I could hope for offhand standing for say 10 shots.

-jeff

MuleDeer,I really liked that article.I guess getting close is more impotant to me than a long chancy shot.I have more respect for the Game animal than that.If I feel the need to shoot long there is always prarie rats!!!To me 95% of the hunt is the stalk.Checking the lay of the land,reading its features and trying to get as close as you can.Sometimes you do the stalk and take a pass on the animal.Hell I am not looking to end the Hunt early.Keep up the good writing!!!!!Huntz

I just finished reading it, and thought it was well done also. Funny how it seems that the more i play with ballistic and rangefinding reticles, complex as well as simple, i still consider the plex reticle itself to still be the best of them all due to it's simplicity.

Youper: I can't speak for irons,since it has been years since I used them very much. But I can say that I do far better off-hand with a low power scope than a higher power one(no more than 4X).While wobble is still there, I "notice"it less and do not fight the rifle as much trying to correct for every little movement. So groups turn out better.

If you're a decent off-hand shot,shooting from a locked-in position with a rest of some kind is child's play.

John thanks for the article.

Two thing I'd like to comment on that go hand and hand with your article. First you often hear the reasoning, more so on these "hunting" forums, you should know your limits and what is a long shot to one is not so long to an other. Well this is a lot of #$%^. 500 yards is not a sure thing doesn't mater how often you practice or how often you go to the range and hit a target 10 for 10 at 500 yards plus. The only way to know what the winds are doing over the bullet's path at any given time is to be physic. That cuts down on the people qualified to be shooting those distances.

Second, you touched on the generation Y. Well I think all of use that are coming to the end of our "working" careers and looking forward to longer hunting trips in our retirement are having issues with dealing with the new members of the work force. This is especially true when we are suppose to be "mentoring" them. If you can get their attention long enough to teach them something before their cell rings or a shiny object attracts their attention. When on the rare occasion when you can hold their attention and have to try and teach them something, God forbid you don't pat them on the back and rub their feet before you correct them. To tell them they have done something wrong or something unsafe, well it's like you just dropped the whole world on top on them. All this when we are getting older and have less and less patience. Hopefully there is enough guys between Gen Y and my age that still have the patience to teach them. The game we hunt deserve to be more than just a live target to practice on.

Jim

I also shot some steel targets with an M-14 with open sights.

I used an 18 power scope on my rifle, but I could hit almost as good with the iron sights as with the scope, except when the glare and mirage was so bad that you couldn't see the targets with iron sights. In early morning and and late in the evening, the targets were visable without using optics.

I never competed in a match with iron sights. I just did it because it was fun to be able to hit a target that appeared to be about the size of a pea.

I like good iron sights and prefer fixed-power scopes to variables. I also prefer less magnification to higher magnification. My all-time favorite big-game scope is a 1x.

My .220 Howell has a Talbot mount, which always returns the scope to its zero, and my current program is to use four interchangeable scopes � 8x, 12x, 24x and 36x � at four different major spans of distance (depending on how far away the prairie-dog town is).

I like to slowly and carefully read an article,if it's worth while,so I haven't read it yet.I just got it yesterday.

I practice a lot more than I bench shot when I go to the range.My favorite is a restocked P-14 with a peep battle sight,which I shoot offhand at 100m. The only problem with battle sights,is to regulate the load ,you have to file the front blade,so you are stuck with one load,the full power hunting load and it's a full power 308 180RN one.

At 200m I kneel.

But at 300yards,I lay sand bags down like a log and shoot prone off it.More than one guys has said,I was on to something.

I'll take an intermediate range sniper-style match shooting the long-range handguns off bipods like this 1--

http://specialtypistols.infopop.cc/...056864&m=2041028335&f=4246004005

...if those handguns aren't state of the art i don't know what is. IMO that's the best teacher of practical range effectiveness.

I have read a few books about Vietnam. There are snippets in them that can apply to this subject. One in particular, "A Sniper in the Arizona: 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines in the Arizona Territory, 1967" by John Culbertson has some interesting insight on this very subject. Nowadays snipers are taught to use the turrets and dial in + all the other hi-tech gadgets. Americans pride themselves in long range shooting as well. "How big - how far?"
However the Marine author of this book recalls how "low-tech" NVA snipers would get in very close, using incredible camouflage and patience to make sure shots on the unfortunate GI. He didn't normally try for the long shot - there was no ego involved either. The NVA simply used what we would call good stalking skills to get his Mosin Nagant and low-power scope to where no range and wind reading or math skills were involved. Mr Culbertson has a lot of respect for their abilities.

Also mentioned was a WWII vet Marine Gunny sniper who was a terrific shot with even the low-power scope of the Garand M1D. He, too, eschewed our modern penchant for twirling dials in favor of holding off. The book mentions how this gentleman remarked that there was rarely enough time for all that fiddling around when the enemy was sighted. This applies to much of the big game I have seen on public lands as well. I have also seen people just plain lose track of where their dials are set on the scope whilst PD hunting with that method. Then they can be truly lost as to POI. This old gunny is so reminiscent of the traditional hunter like Milo McLeod that the article refers to.

So I would agree with Mule Deer that our reliance on technology and fascination with (or ego associated with) long range shots on game substitutes a technology with iffy and random results for a centuries-proven method of getting close to the game and using our skill and patience instead for a more sure result.
I also can plainly see that the high-tech writing is on the wall and that many of the "Y-ers" are going to fuel demand and are conditioned to use the newest gadgets. Also many returning vets are used to using gadgets because of their war experience in the Middle-East with its open terrain that caters to such devices.

Did not read the article, but think the coming generation will use rangefinding/projection systems that render an image of the target on a screen with the corrected elevation dialed into the aiming point.

Already exists, but quite pricey. Advances though will eventually overcome the price issue. Might be a tough one to push through states not allowing battery powered sighting systems though.

When that gadget breaks down or battery failure occurs, one will be dead in the water.

There's an area i hunt during the winter for coyotes. On one of the bigger ranches it took me several years before the rancher finally warmed up to me enuf to allow me to hunt more often than a couple times a year. What happened was 1 day he was driving thru one of the pastures i was hunting in and saw me crawling up to the top of a sandhill ridge to get a shot on a coyote. He mentioned it a couple years ago, and now the other local ranchers refer to me as the "crawling coyote hunter." I have a big portion of the county now.

As an archery hunter I love the spot and stalk approach because of the challenge that it provides me, but i also want to go afield prepared for every eventuality possible, therefore i've also put a lot of time and effort into the study of reticles/turret systems just in case i need to pull it out of my hat sometime. And it has happened, not for long-range shooting but for the intermediate ranges that sometimes present themselves. For awhile i had a turret-equipped optic on my .17 MIV XP-100 handgun that i normally use for coyotes and sundry vmnts. A buddy of mine once killed a crow with the rig at extreme range with a single calcd. turret-twisted shot. It might have been an ego trip for us, but we all have to have a little bit of that sometimes.

Excellent article really. Attaches a true hunters perspective to technical shooting.

Hey Bob, Good post, shows you're not just thinking about bass! The clicking in elevation is not new, a number of hunters used to estimate the range to the game and add so many minutes of elevation to their Lyman 48's and hold dead on. I suppose the same thing can be done with a range finder and then add elevation to the scope's turret. The only time I was involved with a range finder was in Namibia when the PH pulled out his trusty Leica and whispered to me that the range was 247 meters. So what! It was a point blank shot anyway. I agree with what some people here have said:that practice in getting into a solid position quickly and taking the shot as fast as possible is the way to go. And leave the battery operated stuff at home.
John

I finally got to read the article yesterday, it as usual shows JB's expertise revealing common sense.

Thanks again JB.

There are times and places here in Washington State where the long range rig is thee only way to go. Shooting from the top of a ridge basin to the other sometimes stretches way out there. It's impossible as the crow fly's to get to the other side because of steep and impenetrable growth. This requires a long drive, if you can, then hike to button hook into the hunt or kill area after the shot. To try and hunt these deer, sneak up on them is near
impossible. Long shots are usually the only option.

There is a place for the long range rifle as a hunting tool.

It's all about terrain.

"There is a place for the long range rifle as a hunting tool."

I think where most people are missing the point of this thread is, for it to work, whether ranging, guessing, interpolating (fancy name for guessing) turrents, holdover or whatever, you have to have the ability to make those long range shots, no matter what equipment you use.

From my many hours spent at shooting ranges and also in shoulder to shoulder competition, most people can't do it.

I am not a guide, nor have I ever been on a guided hunt, but some of the posters on here are (and have). Maybe some of them can join in and give first hand experience of the marksmanship abilities of people they have guided who buy expensive guns and go on expensive guided trips and safaries, never having fired a gun until their first shot at a game animal.

I never will forget the time a hunter was asking how to sight in his rifle. I volunteered to do it, and his next remark was, "okay, but if I miss a deer, it will be your fault."

I handed his rifle back to him and let him do it his way.