Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Long Range Hunting Boone and Crockett statement

funny stuff:

http://www.boone-crockett.org/about/LRS.asp?area=about&ID=6B455080&se=1&te=1

Just like anyone else, they can't put a number on it.

What an irresponsible and absurd piece of writing. Next, they should come out and say that because bullet technology has gotten so good at producing fast kills with even marginal shots that guns for hunting isn't ethical. They could add that the average stock out-of-box gun is far more accurate as well, which can't be sporting. Or maybe they could say that if you can't shoot for schit, a firearm is fine, but if you practice a lot, it gives you unsportsmanlike skill, and unfair advantage. And of course bows and arrows have gotten too good as well, that any ol' Joe can make a good shot now, so bows are out. And steel: unfair advantage. Chipped flint and obsidian is the new ethical standard for big game, on a spear no more than 71.6" in length, and then only thrown with the weak hand by someone with a rotator cuff injury who is near-sighted (corrective lenses allowed, for now).

Sling shots for varmints, using only out-of-round rocks!

Most people are just to lazy to put the time into being proficient at shooting longer ranges. Most anybody can make a decent shot at 100yrds, but it takes a lot of practice to shoot "long range"

Perhaps they should give Leupold their money back.

It's very true that no one can put a number on it because skill sets vary greatly. I do agree though with them that one should not be out there intentionally trying to shoot animals at long range without attempting to get closer. Hunting isn't about shooting 1000 yards and killing a elk. If that's the only option you have and you are one of the few proficient enough to do such then go ahead. Hunting is a challenge between predator and prey, why take that part away? It is not a intentional challenge of your long range shooting skills. It is not sporting or ethical hunting practices to intentionally set up to shoot at something from long range and have never attempted to get closer. Just my opinion.

I am not getting into a debate about what the original letter says, and I cannot say I agree with that letter, but you can easily twist your statement around to read:


They're both one-sided statements.

Perhaps the Boone and Crockett club should demand that Leupold re-calibrate their B&C reticle for a max shot distance of about 75 yards.

I don't blame them for taking some kind of stand on the issue.

They are the most prestigious record keeping organization in North America,and even though the book system was supposed to be about the animals,and not the hunter that killed it,a lot of unscrupulous characters will do a lot of things to get their name in "The Book". Bringing to bear as much technology as they can in the pursuit is not above a lot of them.

We play by rules every day in fair chase hunting.....in Alaska you can't hunt the same day you fly, as one example. No doubt there are others. B&C probably struggles as much with defining "long range" as we do here.There is no consensus of opinion here either so I can't fault them for failing to reach a certain distance.

Like others on here, I've killed elk,deer,and antelope at 300-500 yards. I found nothing particularly difficult about any of it. In about every instance, it was a lot easier than crossing the canyon and trying to put a sneak on them to close within a very few yards,which is almost always far more difficult to do.....which (let's face it)is exactly why I shot them at distance. It was easier.

I've killed good whitetail bucks out to 300-350 yards; it was FAR easier than getting down on the ground, snow tracking them, and killing them at distances of a few feet to a few yards. I think LR shooting is a useful skill, but I don't think it deserves as much glory as some people want to give it.

If I put the time and energy into shooting both near and far for practice, I'll do whatever it takes to put meat in the freezer . That's really the name of the game. Guys that don't shoot longrange and are not proficient at it need not apply to the long shots..

Good post Bob. There's no doubt in my mind that at some distance, the animals don't have a chance to know they're even being hunted. The thing is, I can't put a number on that distance and neither can B&C.

Personally, I think it's closer to 200 yards than 1000, and that's the rub. Most hunters would say that 200 yards is within the range that an animal has a "fair chance" to detect the hunter (I'd agree), but that may have more to do with the fact that most hunters can make ( or at least think they can make) a 200 yard shot than anything else.

If I can do it, then it's OK. If it's beyond my abilities, it's not.

I've taken game out beyond 700, and i've been shooting LR for a long time too..But I do not go hunting hoping or looking for a long shot, never will.

I've usually always defended LR because there were so few doing it..Well there still are very few doing it, but every tom and dick is attempting it these days. after seeing lots of guys come to my range I can tell you that joe average has ZERO business shooting LR at a critter, and by LR for these guys I mean beyond 300 yards..

its pathetic and pisses me off to hear all the big talk from these types, they always have the latest POS that Vortex is pimping, a few boxes of cor-loct (cuz the good stuff is expensive you know..) they cant hit [bleep], are stumped by the scope, have no idea how atmosphere,BC,Velocity,wind or anything else works. But they are all ready to roll out to 1k, cuz their scope goes up that far-thank goodness for BDC, Eh Burns ?

It is absurd to me because they invite the kind of competition that leads to unethical behavior by being what they are: an organization that quantifies and qualifies 'trophies'.

Since the long-range hunting philosophy has been around for several years now, they are a bit late to the game as well. A significant sector in hunting equipment is dedicated to long shots. They didn't chastise those businesses.

I recognize that many don't have the desire to shoot well enough to be ethically equipped to take long shots at animals. A narrow focus on the skill of shooting also detracts from the satisfying experience of hunting for me, but I only speak for myself. A still narrower focus on the specialized long range equipment has little, if anything, to do with hunting, IMO.

I don't plan to chastise anyone in the near future for how they hunt, as long as they are successful, safe, responsible. I also have no plans to even look at the B&C books in the near future. Hunting will never be about a third party for me.

B&C was never intended to be a competitive record keeping organization,so in that sense it does not invite competition,and never did.

It's original intent was as a conservation organization,since it was founded by prominent sportsmen of the time (Teddy Roosevelt, George Bird Grinnel and others)concerned with the wholesale slaughter of game animals as we came into the 20th century.

Modern game conservation and management were "new" at the time and the listing of mature, record class animals was supposed to be evidence of the success of these new management programs;not as recognition of the hunters who killed them. That's the reason even "pickup" heads had a category and some folks were listed only as "owners". I have an old friend with a whitetail buck fitting that category. The "Hole in the Horn" buck from Missouri is one such animal.

The Club has also long set standards for "Fair Chase";and I think it will only allow a hunters name to be associated with the animal if it's shown that the animal was taken within fair chase standards.As another example, no animal taken in a high fence area is allowed entry...it has to be a free range animal.

But, over time,this simple record keeping got corrupted,not by the B&C Club itself, but by some hunters with large ego's for whom having their name in "The Book" carried great stature and was an end unto itself.Over the years a fair number of "hunters" have attempted to gain entry with outstanding animals that were not taken within those standards and have been disqualified. The competitive aspect has been engendered by the participants, not the organization.

There is at least one bull elk (think it may be the new world record),that was literally hounded by a hired mob from Utah and shot by a wealthy "hunter" who stroked a big check for the permit and paid for all the scouting, who coasted in for a few days to pull the trigger. I'd have a hard time recognizing that animal as any kind of a record,except the big checks help game departments pay for all this management....those are the times we live in but I still think the Plute bull from the old days deserved higher ranking.

That we still keep records,and set standards for entry is good because the harvest of mature animals tells us a lot about how successfully we are managing a herd or population, but competition is not among those objectives and this is not much understood today by some folks who regard the whole process as a "contest" among egocentric "trophy hunters"to be avoided....nothing could be further from the truth, but like many human activities it gets corrupted now and then....and the original purpose and intent of the organization gets lost in the mix.This is largely the fault of a certain segment of the hunting population, not the Club itself.

In the end it's understandable that they are watchdogs for what constitutes "fair chase" because it is easy with today's technology to outstrip an animals natural defenses,scout them remotely,even shoot them remotely from a set gun and computer prompt....millions of examples where the technology makes us better and more efficient killers, but not necessarily better "hunters". The standards get squishy around the edges and hard to pin down, but I think many of us know when we have crossed the line.

This about sums it up for me. I don't blame them for taking a stab at defining "fair chase," that's a part of what they're all about. Better for hunters to have these discussions than non-hunters.

But when you're talking about long range, it's damn hard to pin down and put a number or a range on it. A hunter who uses a modern scoped rifle to make a 300-yard shot is without a doubt using superior technology to defeat the animal's senses. But that capability has been with us since most of us were born so we all accept it without a thought. The guy who makes a 1,000-yard shot uses basically the same technology, just much better than most can.

Maybe we just accept the fact that as humans, using technology is what we do. Then again, if you take it too far, everyone has a line somewhere.

Pretty funny reading through the reply's to this topic on the various forums. 3 to 500 is OK , but 1k is too far , Boone and Crockett are saints , Boone and Crockett sucks , It shows the open door to the anti hunting establishment.
1. Divide the hunting community.
2. Turn them against each other. (most likely they will do it without any help from us)
3. Use any "ethical" arguments supplied by them against them.
4. Create new laws in the name of "ethics" and "conservation"
5. Use these laws to limit their activity.


IMO B&C is playing right into this with their "Statement" . Fair has always been subjective, always will be. However, "fair" ALWAYS involves taking something away from someone.

Exactly, "Fair chase" to some extent is subjective. Start throwing in feeders, bait, hounds, food plots with box blinds, cameras and many other things and the line can get a little fuzzy.

Bob, as always, you clearly delineate fantastic points. I didn't and don't mean to come across so militantly in my viewpoint. It is part of my way of seeing things that I examine their philosophical and socialogical implications. Disconnecting from a historical view is short-sighted though. I have many, many thoughts on this subject, and they are disjointed, to say the least.

When I was younger, and rather limited in my understanding of the politics of hunting, I knew of the B&C organization, but nothing about how it functioned or how animals were classified. As I got older, I was exposed to a different way of seeing animals: by their 'score'. In popular hunting culture, this dialectic has spread to the point that animals generally are their score when they're referenced. It has always repulsed me in my gut.

This approach arose from B&C and other organizations that score animals, and give a trophy value. The very language of it came from these organizations, and each time it is used, they are validated. I'm sure those involved want to keep this classification and its popular use in place, to promote the validity of their organization among hunting culture.

Every sport that validates competition has to have a sort of governing body, and B&C has become one of those, if also a showcase for conservation. Those who consider hunting a sport likely give more weight to the B&C scoring system than those who hunt for zen of it, or those who hunt more for the meat than anything else. I have always been a zen hunter.

There will aways be those, as long as there is a perceived gain in cheating the system, that will go to whatever lengths are necessary to obtain the accolades they desire though nefarious means, whether illegal or unethical. It seems that one possible approach would be to keep names private and unpublished, while giving every other particular. This would remove some of the motivation to get an animal into the books using whatever means possible. It is, unfortunately, impossible to legislate ass holes and sociopaths.

We humans have reached the pinnacle of the food chain (on land, anyway) through the use of technology. We defeat and harness our food sources though the progression of technology to greater levels of efficiency. This has also been the progression of hunting animals for food. It also makes sport hunting an ethically narrower window, because we've been able to defeat animals' defenses and senses so well for so long, and it becomes easier and easier with scent blockers, camo clothing, cameras and optics, and efficient guns, bullets, cartridges, computing programs that take the guesswork out of most of the variables.

The problem, as I see it, for B&C is that there is no specific line that they can draw in regard to distance for ethically taking game. Denigrating the LR approach nowdays is far less defensible for them than it was, say 30 yrs ago, because the chances of a hunter making ethical kills on distant animals have increased exponentially since then. So it seems to me that their statement regarding LR hunting is a blanket vilification, and a political one, rather than an ethical one.

Put it this way: With some practice and the proper equipment mostly anybody can make a decent shot at 700 yards...

But some people will never learn how to put a stalk on a hunted-wary animal.

Some will not have the talent or the patience, and some will simply not be interested.

I feel sorrow for the latter as, in my opinion, they are missing the best part of it.

For me, the satisfaction of a well executed long shot exists. It is only that I dont think that it can compare with the satisfaction of a well executed stalk, specially in a mountain hunt.

Alvaro

B&C has no problem accepting mulies that were shot in the middle of winter range on a Governor's Tag...I think long range is the least of their problems.