Caliber less important than hunting skills(I think magnums are overrated)

[garryc]

I have to ask the more experienced hunters out there: At what point does shots become ethically/morally questionable? Can you really shoot game at 500 yards while minimizing the risk of only injuring the animal?

Actually the problem lays in shooters thinking that if they can hit that target on the range they can also do it in the field. The problem with range shooting is you know how far the target is. Even if its placed at random on a range you often use your estimate will be far more accurate than it would be in the field. The great teacher of field shooting in my experience is the lowly woodchuck. For some it might be the prairie dog. Nothing teaches field shooting like actual trigger time in the field. Put it this way, if you can consistently hit a chuck at unknown ranges, a shot at an elk or deer at those ranges, provided he gives you a decent presentation, is a chip shot. Proficiency with all your firearms and related gear, including a laser, can be acquired by varmint hunting with it.

[Pointer]

I have been checking distances with a Leupold Lazer range finder...

Upward and downward and level...

In the light breeze...

In perfect lighting...

Anyone... and I mean the BEST of riflemen... who will take a 500 yard shot on a deer or elk has doubtful judgment and questionable honor... unless it is under the most perfect of conditions... with a very good rest... and especially if he could stalk closer and cut the distance to a couple of hundred yards instead...

Yet I am always hearing of some jackass who shoots at running deer at 400 yards with grand pappy's trusty-thutty-thutty and dumps him with one shot...

I doubt most shooters even know what 400 yards looks like in the woods, much less be able to put a rifle bullet through a car's passenger window at such a distance... and that's an area twice the size of the broadside kill zone on a elk.

I also doubt there are a dozen hunters on the TFL who can read cross winds at 400 yards and then place the round in a zone 8" high and 10" wide...

The great majority of hunters would have trouble seeing the damned animal at 400 yards and, more than likely, wouldn't be able to judge the distance with any degree of consistancy... and then wouldn't have any damned idea of where the bullet is... on it's trajectory to 400 plus yards!!

[Art Eatman]

Pointer, overall you're absolutely correct. Just realize that there are folks out there who are surprisingly competent.

"I also doubt there are a dozen hunters on the TFL who can read cross winds at 400 yards and then place the round in a zone 8" high and 10" wide..."

I've done it. I haven't tried it anywhere near what you'd call "often", but it's not that hard to do if you've been doing a fair amount of shooting away from a range and its benchrests.

But I'm lucky (well, I planned it that way, really) to live where I can drive out in the back country and shoot at way-over-yonder rocks and then (nowadays) check with a range-finder and all that. In my work-at-it hunting days, I'd go out and run through a box of shells every couple of weeks, just to see if I could hit what I was aiming at.

In other words, long-distance shooting when hunting is like any thing else: You have to go out and practice under similar conditions to a hunt. You can't read the Sierra book, or read Ol' Art's advice on TFL and then happily go out and Bust Bambi at 500 yards.

It's an old, old deal: Nobody was born an expert anything. Me, or anybody else.

Art

[garryc]

I've done it. I haven't tried it anywhere near what you'd call "often", but it's not that hard to do if you've been doing a fair amount of shooting away from a range and its benchrests.

Me too, but only twice in all the years I've hunted have I shot at 400 plus yards at a deer. I keep turrets on my scope so I can adjust to the range. And If the critter isn't hanging around long enough to set up the shot to my liking I won't take the shot. If the wind is such that I have to hold out of the kill zone I won't take the shot. Put it this way, if a deer has a 9" zone I still want to hold in that zone, maybe to the back or front of it, but the cross hairs are in the zone. Let the wind carry it in. So we are talking a pretty much flat wind. That?s why I would pass on 85% of the shots at that range. "I might get lucky" just isn?t good enough!

[Pointer]

ART and garryc

YOU DON"T COUNT!

YOU have the discipline to hold off and wait for the conditions to be right...and pass on the shot if they aren't...

I also can do it... But I WON"T because there are just too many variables involved and I can't live with myself if I make a crappy kill...

BTDT once and that was once too often...

I know several shooters who can do that kind of shooting and they have too much respect for the quarry to take unecessary chances. Even if there are 12 shooters on the TFL and those 12 get clean kills 9 out of 10 times at 400+ yards...

It ain't good enough to justify the risk...

Someone on another thread said "WE" aren't responsible for educating the newbies and trash shooters...

I submit we are responsible for "educating" them incorrectly...

[Art Eatman]

Yeah...

Responsiiblity for teaching is tied in to the threads we get into, here, about clean kill and hunting ethics.

The full package sure ain't somethin' that can be learned in a few weeks.

Art

[MeekAndMild]

Back on the subject of magnum versus reasonable rifles, I agree with folks who don't see the point of magnums. Why shoot a bullet which travels through the deer plus another quarter mile of random air at any angle up to 30 degrees from its original trajectory?

[garryc]

Why shoot a bullet which travels through the deer plus another quarter mile of random air at any angle up to 30 degrees from its original trajectory?

I don't see why it makes a differance what a bullet does after exiting a deer as long as it did its job inside.

[Magnus]

"I don't see why it makes a differance what a bullet does after exiting a deer as long as it did its job inside."

-Provided you're sure of the target and what is in front of it and beyond it.

[Art Eatman]

Magnus, once in a very great while you get a "twofer", but a bullet exiting a deer isn't going far enough to matter to other people, at least not from any historical standpoint. That's a "can happen" in a world of "never happened".

Worry a lot more about a miss--but with all cartridges, not just magnums. That's why you don't shoot a trophy buck on a skyline...

Art

[Wild Bill Bucks]

Where I hunt here in Oklahoma, about the only thing on the other side of my game, is a tree, so I don't worry to bad about it.

You go to the RANGE to shoot, and sight in. You go to the woods to HUNT.
No situation at the range will prepare you for situations in the field.

[BUSTER51]

And what is even better is good hunting and shooting skills and a MAGNUM. case in point last year we hunted in up state Arizona (Williams area) we glassed down a canyon and up the other side and spoted a heard of elk .I checked the distance it was 415 lazered yards I shot at a big cow (only had a cow permit) hit her with my 338/378 Weatherby mag Accumark with an IOR scope on it ,she fell dead where I shot her.my friend Scott shot at another cow with his Winchester model 70 in 3006 with a Lupey varix3 and did manage to hit her but she ran off and left a blood trail that we followed for a long while but it stopped and we never found her .he is a very good shot and rarely misses.I can't help but think if he had a hard hitting magnum we would have had to winch 2 cows off that ridge instead of one that day .so flame away on mags all you want but the work for me .

[Art Eatman]

I've seen that country around Williams.

What'll likely work on a 200-pound whitetail with an '06 probably shouldn't be tried on a cow elk. Your friend should have known better. Some shots, common sense says to pass 'em up.

The world is full of incurable optimists...

Art

[prime8]

1 Buster... Well put.. 450 yds cross canyon, is what they are designed to do!

[garryc]

Provided you're sure of the target and what is in front of it and beyond it.

If I'm not sure I have a back stop I'm not even firing a 22lr, or a pellet gun for that matter

[DobermansDoItGoofy]

I have a 375 H&H and it's a fine performer...but 400 yd. shots at elk are difficult shots. More power to you - if you can accurately hit an elk with a 375 H&H or a 378 Weatherby from 400 yards... My 375 H&H causes less meat damage than a 257 Weatherby or even a 270 Win... However, the issue I have is not so much the performance of 'magnums' - but the underestimation of other calibers and the over-reliance on 'magnums' - instead of hunting skills - to make a clean kill. Personally I try to avoid 400 yard shots... Oh, I can make'em...but there's a difference between what I can and ought to do... In most circumstances I try to be within 200 yards of the game. Pronghorns are for me an exception - and for a Pronghorn 300 - 400yds. is common...but it doesn't take much to kill a Pronghorn. Elk? I try to make it within 200 yards...and 300 yards would likely be my limit(a great deal depends on the specific situation ie. a broadside presentation in an open field at 400 yds...might be a lot more tempting than a not-so-broadside shot at 275 yds..) The problem I run into more frquently is the one of the novice whitetail hunter banging away with a 300 Win Mag. in fairly heavy timber at a small buck that is less than 100 yds.away...while I am in my stand with my 30/30 worried about where that 300 Win bullet is going after it has missed the little whitetail or gone through it... :barf: