So there I was sitting in a bit on my youngest son's hunter safety course. Instructors are volunteers, and doing a GREAT job.

But... one of the guys throws out how when he's elk hunting in Colorado at 7000 ft altitude with his 7mm Mag that he has to be very sure of what's beyond what he's shooting at, because that bullet can travel 15 miles!!

Oh my. Naturally I kept my mouth shut since the last thing an instructor needs is to be undercut during training. But does anybody know the actual maximum range? Did some googling and found what seems a reasonable calculator that puts it at around 6000 yards for a 160gr doing 3100fps.

Gonna talk to the guy on the side tonight after they finish giving the kids a test, figure he might want to correct that number for future classes. It's not like 3.5 miles is anything to sneeze at, but no reason to send kids out thinking they're carrying an artillery piece.

If it was true, it would save a lot of transit time to the hunting areas. Just set up a hammock and spotting scope with in camp, next to the beer?

JW

We could change the came to the 7mm Redneck Magnum?

Wonder how far a 7mm RUM will shoot? Nebraska to Colorado?

3 miles----15 miles---whats the difference??????? Wonder how far a 30-378 Wby will shoot?

15 miles? Heck, I though it was more like 20 or 30.

When I was a youngster at our deer camp I had someone tell me that the bullet out of the 7.65mm Mauser I was using would rise for about the first 7 miles before it leveled off for a few more miles and then start dropping. I was dumb back then (some say I still am) and believed him. Went back to school and told all my buddies about this wonder rifle I had.

Maybe if the kids think the rifle will shoot 15 miles they will be a little extra careful when they decide to shoot. I bet your buddy miss his physics class

Generally speaking, if you shot most modern centerfire rifle rounds at a muzzle elevation of 45 degrees you'll see about 3 miles out of it.

That 45 degree angle was my thinking, even from back in my physics classes in college. Turns out that somewhere around 33 degrees gets you better distance than 45 degrees according to what I googled up. Exactly the best angle varies by specific BC/velocity/etc.

For "no air resistance" simplified case and a parabolic trajectory.




Drag taken into account.

Just looked in Oregon's Hunter Safety manual (which is a multistate publication), and it's graph suggests about 5.25 miles for a 7 mag. Obviously there's quite an array of variables to affect things. Going from memory here, but I think a 29 to 30 degree angle is optimum for distance.

They watched the old Pennsylvania hunter safety video last night, and it quoted 4.5 miles for a 30-06.

The 7mm guy even spoke up and said, "Well, they didn't say what elevation he was at.".

Like being at 7000 feet allows your bullet to fly 3 times as far.

If it hits the ground at 3.5 files, then I don't have a problem saying that it's dangerous out to 4 or 4.5 miles. Might have a good tail wind.

Maybe he thinks he is going to the top of mount everest and shooting to who knows how many feet below see level.

7000 ft would reduce drag about 20% -- so range would be comparably longer. FWIW, Dutch.

If you shot it off the summit of Mt Everest,you might get close,if you measure the total arc that the bullet travels. .

The guy was consoling a young tyke who didn't pass the test, so I let it go. Felt bad for the kid, could tell he was tore up by it, but I think he was just a bit too young to grasp that much new vocabulary that quickly. Like I said, good guys teaching the course.

But it looks like the stories of the 15 mile range of 7mm Mags will continue to be told to new hunters for a few more years.

bet if you shot a Barnes it would penetrate several trees and still go 15 miles

When I was a little boy ~ 6, my father, the chief engineer gun designer, told me that a 30-06 went 3 miles, but one of his howitzers would go 20 miles with the same velocity, because the wind resistance goes up with the square of the diameter, but the mass goes up with the cube of the diameter.

53 years later, Google agrees with my father:
http://www.rangeinfo.org/resource_library/facility_mngmnt/design/design_criteria.htm