Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Long Range Hunting Opinions on 400-600 yard Calibers for Deer.

Anytime you are picking a cartridge to serve a purpose you must look at what is more important to you. When you are looking at close range such as 600 yards and in super high speed flat shooting cartridges can trump slow moving high bc bullets. From 600-800, 800-1000, 1000-1200 yards and further all get exponentially harder to make shots for each step requiring a different thought process and different cartridges depending on what you are trying to accomplish. But for close range shooting 600 yards and in can be done with about any over the counter rifle and centerfire cartridge capable of killing a deer. Just some are better than others.

A hunter must decide what is more important. Shooting a point and shoot laser making hits very easy at 600 yards and in or a slow moving bullet that makes hits difficult with trajectory holdover. Inside of 600 yards windage is going to be a trivial difference however when you must get off a quick shot at a deer the lazer can have you on it and a dead deer quickly. Instead of fooling with trying to figure out clicks or holdover while the deer gets away. Shooting at targets you use one set of rules when you have plenty of time but shooting at wild game animals requires far more variables to enter your decision.

We often use a 257 wby shooting 100 grain barnes ttsx bullets at 3860 fps here in windy Wyoming for deer and antelope to 600 yards. I own over 150 rifles of all kinds and for this purpose this is about the best thing we have found for getting on animals quickly and killing them. If you are shooting deer back east where you have much less wind to deal with than us it may even be a better choice. I have been modifying my hunting skills for about fifty years all over north america and building long range rifles for about 40 years. I have rifles for many uses in all calibers and wildcats to kill stuff from point blank to a mile and test them all at those ranges regularly.