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Mountain hunting here traditionally did not involve long range, just brutal terrain and thick timber with shots of about 125 yards or less. Heavy clearcut logging for the last 20 years has changed that combination quite a bit and offered many more long range opportunities.

However, as the replanted cuts grow up, they now present new challenges....super-dense jungles of pines and firs which are effectively impossible to cover on foot, leaving lots of good cover for game to hide in. As natural and planned thinning takes place where these plantations exist, we are in many areas seeing the need for the old closer-ranged cartridges.

I never gave in to the really long range game. The problem is one of simple ethics and effort. A shot taken at say, 500 or 600 meters in spotty timber may indicate no hit at all and be lethal, leaving an animal to walk off, sometimes not too far where it beds down and dies, unknown to the shooter. WILL every shooter climb down that canyon and back up to the other side and once there even be able to FIND the spot where the game was hit?

I some years ago was able to get the law changed in Idaho to allow a blood tracking dog but unlike some places in Europe, it is not required and few use them, tho they are gaining in popularity. Mine has been extremely useful in finding game hit well that, even tho it goes less than 100 meters, would very possibly never have been found, running zigzagged and switchbacked in that dense new growth timber.

I hike a lot and am in good shape, so rifle weight has never been a deciding limitation for me, but as the tooth gets longer, I do appreciate my Sauer 100 in 9.3x62 which is very light and handy and with a double biathlon sling, of no great bother even on skis.

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