Forums.NitroExpress.com

This following is not a rant, but just my opinion...

This whole topic makes me incredibly nervous for a few reasons.

Mostly because technical discussions about long range cartridges encourage long range shooting and while there are many many effective cartridges for long range shooting, there are infintesimally few shooters who can actually make use of any cartridge at long range.

The shooting of game at long range {for most hunters probably over 100 meters

but for our purposes here say over 300} includes so many variables that IMO, generalized discussion is more or less ruled out of the question. Caliber considerations {except for interesting, esoteric ballistic discussion} leave me pretty bored because from what I've seen over the years the nuances don't matter for the lion's share of hunters who shouldn't be shooting past the point blank range of a 100-meter-zeroed rifle. MANY calibers will kill cleanly at 400 meters. Very few hunters will.

Before anyone howls, I readily admit that various parts of the world and country possess game, terrain and conditions of shooting that not only encourage long range shooting, but may demand it. And there are shooters who understand just how to get it done. I know some. They train for it under the conditions in which they later hunt, understand the rifle and caliber they are shooting, have spent enough time on the range in {including tough weather} and shoot lots. I have a friend over in Montana {for example} who has the opportunity and actually spends the time building the skill to use his rifle at +300. And he avoids long range shooting if at all possible.

But those fellows are very few.

Generalized discussions of long range shooting always seem to hover around the stereotypical American reliance on technical solutions to skill problems. And everyone knows that generalized long range game shooting discussions get lots of popular discussion off-forums also. In my county hunting is embedded in our culture. Unfortunately, shooting skill is not. Yet based on public discussion here and everywhere I've ever lived {various US states and southern Africa for that matter...}, long range shots are common, poorly followed-up and I suspect must result in a tremendous loss of game. Bars, fraternal organizations, churches and schools are chock-full of daily conversation about this long shot or that, this one made or this one missed, with debate as to the merits of this caliber or that. But I cannot ever remember a conversation involving extensive discussion of techniques and training involving the preparation of the shooter unless I dropped a turd in the punchbowl of the conversation by asking about it.

There is a lot of world out past 300 and it changes fast. Wind is the single greatest enemy of the good shot, and its effects are incredible past 300. Range estimation has in recent years been made easier by technical devices, but when +400 is reached even then minor variations can {will} result in a wounded animal, tough follow up or a "miss" {read: "gut shot"}. Movement of an animal before the bullet gets there is very difficult to calculate and adjust to by the shooter.

As for the technical, any deer, elk, gemsbok, oryx or pronghorn that ever lived can be killed cleanly at 400 yards with appropriate bullets and a .30-06 or .270 {or 7x64, .280, 7mm Remington Magnum or anything in that class} by a skilled shooter. Past 400 the demands on shooter and cartridge {primarily wind bucking & bullet performance} demand a lot of discussion about range time and training methods and ONE-SHOT GROUPS. By the latter I mean, a shooter must be able to make, on demand, a single shot into a kill-zone-sized target of his intended quarry every time and he should train this way. "Hey Joe; I stuck this target out at "guess-what yards". You have 15 seconds to shoot it. Go!"

I have a 500+ meter range here on the ranch and we have shot enough of that method for me to make every effort to shoot inside 200...

So the guy flubs a shot at "over 400" and next year he scraps his useless .30-06 and gets a .340. Two boxes of ammo later {"Darn that stuff is expensive..."} he'll be ready. He read it on a forum. Those shots outside the KZ?? Just "flyers".

Worse yet, he'll make a lucky shot at 400 and then proclaim that whatever piece of hardware he just skipped a pickup payment to buy is the Grim Reaper and everybody should buy it.

I don't buy most of it.

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