How accurate should a deer rifle be?

[kodiakbeer]

You make comments of what I have done. I just told you what I have done. I would never take a shot at 500 yards. But, there are guys who can and only the hunter has the ultimate decision to take the shot or not depending on his skill. You have no idea what that is.

Are there places you can hunt that are level as a table, with range markers and wind speed indicators? I don't think so. I can consistently ring the 500 yard gong on a given day at the old military range down the road - a day with no wind or a low consistent wind, and a handy print-out from a ballistics table. I think most good shooters could, given the right rifle, optics and data.

However, shoot off an impromptu tree limb rifle rest at an estimated distance with terrain features that funnel and change the wind directions and it becomes a very different matter. There's some military snipers that could dope all that out and be pretty consistent, but even they have a trained spotter with them and often resort to walking the rounds onto the target - and if they hit the guy in the knee, it's no big deal since he's still out of the fight.

I've heard about these great long range shots all my life, and even made some when I was younger (and stupider). What you don't hear about is the misses or... were they misses? The animal ran into the brush, so who knows if it was a hit? People don't talk about those - they only talk about when it all comes together and they make the shot. So now, when I hear about that terrific shot at 500+ yards, I no longer think of what a great shot it was. I just wonder how many crippled animals led up to that one braggin' shot.

[ZeroJunk]

I agree with you in general. Two hundred yards is my self imposed limit and that is with some kind of rest. It's about one hundred yards if I have nothing to lean on.

But, let me give you an example so you can understand the scenario that others have. One of the guys I hunt with has a tripod stand on the edge of a bean field with a nice cushioned rest on the front rail. He routinely kills 6 or 8 deer mostly doe out of it every year and fills his freezer and others who want some venison. We really need to kill about 100 doe, but that is another story.

Typically the wind doesn't blow to amount to anything most days. Zeroed at 200 he is down about 16 at 400 and he routinely kills deer coming in to the field on the other side about 400 yards away. He has a perfect rest knows the exact distance and hunts the same stand most days.

Now if he was walking around still hunting would he take such a shot. No.

He makes no claim that he is doing anything other than filling his freezer.

Personally, I don't like sitting in stands but some do.

The last day I hunted this year I saw 16 deer. I walked right through group of them because I was too lazy to walk around them on the way to sitting on a bluff over the river hoping for a good buck. When I came back out they were right back in the field where I had chased them out. I never fired a shot this year because I still had a freezer full of elk and deer.

As far as hunting in the Rockies which I do a lot, it is not unusual to have a 30 MPH wind, and you can't guarantee which way it is blowing between you and an elk 400 yards away. And, sometimes it doesn't blow at all. You can find a nice rock, lay your jacket on it, pull out your rangefinder, and see if it is something you can do.

[kodiakbeer]

Well, I suppose a place like a bean field with known ranges and a sturdy blind/rest pretty much qualifies as a shooting range and so, yeah, I guess that would be in the ethical category. That's really outside my experience so such a scenario wouldn't have occurred to me.

[coloradosherpa]

"thought you did."

No, I did. Period. Nothing I said was inaccurate in any way.

Secondly, this was never a trash talking session about you or your abailities. You stated in your first or second post that you personally did not take these shots, there was no need to restate it. So this has nothing to do with you.

Also, I have taken those long shots (I'm probably not as seasoned as some of you, but I'm learning). My last long shot was 448 yards at a WY pronghorn in a nasty cross wind. I made the shot, and got my goat. However I shoot ALOT. I know I can make these shots in most cases. But I just don't believe that it is right to do so anymore. On top of that I watched a road hunter nail one from a LONG way out and botch the shot. I helped him find it and I ended up putting it out of it's misery. Very heartbreaking. The bullet can't be called back and the hurt can't be undone, so please think very carefully before you send that slug down range.

The point is this: I dont care one bit what kind of super sniper 5000 death bringer marksman you are (or in most cases, THINK you are). I don't care if you can hit a silver dollar at 1000 yards. You have no business taking shots at a living breathing critter that feels pain at anything over a couple hundred yards. Kodiak beer is correct about the support (or lack of it), the wind, the terrain, & other factors that normally don't matter on the range. And even in the field they may not matter all of the time, but you NEVER know which time it is going to matter. Maybe some people are OK with the risk, I would prefer not to take it though.

It comes down to morals and ethics. Just because we can ( or THINK we can) doen not mean that we should.

As for the beanfield "hunters", that is just target shooting with live targets. Calling it hunting is a stretch at best. It's more like going to the super market with a rifle. And to be honest I'd bet many folks doing this kind of hunting botch shots too and just don't talk about it. However, if someone knew the range precisely and shot at the range alot, I don't suppose I would have a problem with it. But you have to admit that is a completely different scenario from normal hunting.

[ZeroJunk]

You have no business taking shots at a living breathing critter that feels pain at anything over a couple hundred yards.

It is unfortunate that you had a bad experience with a road hunter and base your philosophy on that. But, 200 yards is a little ridiculous.


Hell, I can do that. And, I'm not a good shot at all.

Calling it hunting is a stretch at best.

He doesn't care.

[telemark]

My last long shot was 448 yards at a WY pronghorn in a nasty cross wind. I made the shot, and got my goat. However I shoot ALOT. I know I can make these shots in most cases.

If you don't have the skill to get close enough to hit the damn thing 100 out of 100 times, then don't shoot it

I don't care if you can hit a silver dollar at 1000 yards. You have no business taking shots at a living breathing critter that feels pain at anything over a couple hundred yards.

So it is OK for you to shoot antelope at 450 yds in a strong crosswind, a shot that you can make in most cases, yet, for other people, if they can't do it 100% of the time they shouldn't shoot it? And define a couple hundred yards, are you referring to 200 yards or just a indefinite distance that you can tweak if you aren't able to get any closer?

As for the accuracy of a deer rifle. Some of the time I hunt thick timber where a 200 yard shot is really stretching things and a 50 yd shot is most likely, I am fine with my 30-30 that shoots 2 MOA out to 300 yds, but most of the time, I am hunting areas that a 400+ yd shot opportunity is very common. Even though I usually try and stalk to <100 yds, I want to know that if I want to shoot it at that distance, my rifle will hold MOA at that distance. No sense in trying a long shot with a semi-accurate rifle. I spend a bunch of time practicing out at 400+ yards, but it is the bowhunter in me that usually decides to get as close as possible.

[Daryl]

Ah, I see this has turned into a "How far should we shoot at deer" thread.

Sad, but no further comment on either topic from me.

Daryl

[kodiakbeer]

So it is OK for you to shoot antelope at 450 yds in a strong crosswind, a shot that you can make in most cases, yet, for other people, if they can't do it 100% of the time they shouldn't shoot it?

Taking his comment out of context is a poor way to argue a point - especially when his ACTUAL statement is a few posts above.

What he said was:

My last long shot was 448 yards at a WY pronghorn in a nasty cross wind. I made the shot, and got my goat. However I shoot ALOT. I know I can make these shots in most cases. But I just don't believe that it is right to do so anymore. On top of that I watched a road hunter nail one from a LONG way out and botch the shot.

[Hawg]

Some of y'all have never hunted a bean field. There is no such thing as getting close. If you can't make a 300 yd. shot you better stay at home and eat french fries.

[jgcoastie]

I voted for the 1"-2" category for how accurate should a deer rifle be, which was the actual question...

The topic of "How accurate should a deer hunter be" is another topic entirely...

As for the "new" thread topic; I don't view it as my place to judge others for their hunting tactics any more than I view it as their place to judge me for what TV show I watch tonight... To each their own and we all have the right to make our own choices, good or bad, at least for now...

[kodiakbeer]

Some of y'all have never hunted a bean field. There is no such thing as getting close. If you can't make a 300 yd. shot you better stay at home and eat french fries.

I don't think 300 yards is much out of line even in real hunting, much less bean field shooting at known ranges. If you ever get an opportunity to go hunting, you'll see what I mean.

[telemark]

He told about a long shot, defended it with

However I shoot ALOT. I know I can make these shots in most cases.

and then called it unetical. He seems like a guy that has developed a good respect for animals, but still takes pride in things that he now believes are wrong. It is his whole I didn't wound him but this idiot over here did, I am a better hunter because I can take a 200 yard shot instead of a 300 yard shot, holier than thou attitude.

Heck if he was a real hunter, he would leave his gun and bow at home and kill the deer with his bare hands, remember it isn't called shooting.

-I'm out.

[kodiakbeer]

"He told about a long shot, defended it with

Quote: However I shoot ALOT. I know I can make these shots in most cases.

and then called it unetical."

Note the word MOST, which is why he feels it's unethical for him to do so again. This is not about how good a shot you are or what kind of rifle and optics you have. And it doesn't matter if we're talking about a 150 yard shot with a iron sighted .30/30 or a 450 yard shot with a 7 mag with good optics - or a novice shooter vs a very experienced shooter.

Ethics is a gray area that each person has to decide for himself. One guy might think a 90% probability on a particular shot is good enough. Another guy might only settle for a 99% probability (there are no 100% certainties in hunting). A third guy might just take any shot and hope for the best.

For me, 200 yards is no problem. I'll do 300 with a good rest and little or no wind. Beyond that, I just won't do it. That's me with my rifle, my scope and my 50 year old eyes. For you, maybe it's different.

I hope we all can agree that with our particular rifle and our particular skill level, we need to draw an ethical and moral line at some point. The higher the line, the more respect I have for that hunter.

[animal]

Just because they can does not mean that they should. I think this is called morals or ethics or something like that

OK, I wasn’t gonna "brag" but now I feel insulted. My longest shot on a whitetail was about 600 yards. There were two hills between us and He was standing still and broadside. The shot hit him at the top of the heart and cut arteries, which was where I was aiming. I fairly regularly use the same rifle to pop field crows at slightly longer range. If you haven’t guessed, it ain’t a run of the mill off the shelf deer rifle, I shoot it way more than sighting it in every season, and it weighs over 12 pounds with a 6.5x 20 scope on it. I don’t know how many deer I’ve killed, but I do know that thus far, I haven’t lost one (knock on wood).

I figure I might be in the negative numbers of "lost deer" … Since I usually carry a beat up old Marlin 30-30 in the truck for one purpose. I take it with me to use when tracking down deer that other people have wounded, and I do it whenever I hear of one.

I was a little surprised that I wasn’t the only one that clicked sub-MOA yesterday. If it had asked "does it need to be" I would say 4"-6" at the farthest range you will be use it.

My stupidly heavy, ridiculously priced rifle was built-up sub-MOA for the express purpose ... of accuracy to get a clean, quick kill.
Every once in awhile, I guess I suffer an ethical lapse and settle for a 4"- 6" group.

[kodiakbeer]

My longest shot on a whitetail was about 600 yards.

How did you know it was 600 hundred yards before you made the shot?

How did you know what the wind was across that entire distance?

[telemark]

Ethics is a gray area that each person has to decide for himself.

For me, 200 yards is no problem. I'll do 300 with a good rest and little or no wind. Beyond that, I just won't do it. That's me with my rifle, my scope and my 50 year old eyes. For you, maybe it's different.

Agree 100%, everyone has their own limits and ethical limits, but unless they are obviously shooting out of their ability/experience limits and aren't wounding animals, I am not going to look upon a guy that decides to shoot from 600 any less than a guy that decides to shoot from 100.

Note the word MOST, which is why he feels it's unethical for him to do so again

I read MOST as a justification for taking that shot, and found conflict with that and him saying he wouldn't do it again. If he wanted to say that that was why he wouldn't do it again, he really needed to use different words. If he wants to correct me on that, I will let him.

[animal]

sigh … none of our local ranges are long enough for me … to play the way I like sometimes.
So I have to "settle" for target shooting on the same land (and places) where I hunt. That shot was over "cutover", btw… cutover is what we call it after they cut the pine trees down on a tree farm … not sure if it is a regional term or not. It had baby pines and 2’ tall brown grass growing all over it, and as I said … 2 hills between us. Of course, I don’t know what the wind was like … EXACTLY and over the ENTIRE distance, but apparently I had a pretty good idea.

I don’t regularly shoot at that long a distance (at deer)…. 90% of my shots are inside 300 yds with that rifle. I’m not confident beyond 100 or so with the 30-30.

Oh, the range was checked months before I took the shot on the deer with a laser rangefinder (can’t remember the exact number it was a long time ago)…and … where he dropped was within about 15 feet of one of my target stands. I’ve played with the rangefinder to "calibrate my eyeballs" under different terrain and light conditions, and have gotten pretty decent at estimating. Sometimes, if it’s a shot on one standing still, I’ll "double check" by moving my eye from side to side slightly to check for parallax…after dialing in the objective to my estimate (usually done when the rifle is still in my lap and I first see bambi.)

[kodiakbeer]

Oh, the range was checked months before I took the shot on the deer with a laser rangefinder

Then you're shooting at a known range with a good rifle and optics in low or no wind. A great shot, but not really what we're (or at least "I") am talking about.

If I was dialed in at the range and it happened to be deer season and a buck wandered out on the 500 yard berm on a windless day, well... he might just find himself in my freezer.

The same deer out in the field at a guesstimated 500 yards is safe from me, or is until I can sneak in another 250 yards. a 50 yard range error at that distance means differences in bullet drop measured in feet. Any breeze over 1 or 2 mph means bullet drift measured in feet.

[ZeroJunk]

That's the problem with these discussions. You have one guy sitting in a Taj Mahal stand on the edge of a 500 acre bean field with stakes driven every 100 yards. And, the other guy has just climbed 1000 feet up the side of a 9000 foot mountain with the wind blowing40 MPH, snowing, and 10 below zero.

[Crankylove]

Acceptable hunting accuracy for me is 3 quick shots kept in the bottom of a paper plate at 200 yards, while shooting off hand. Its worked for the last 20 years, but to each his own.

[animal]

And that’s why each has to judge the ethics of his shots himself. … no ?
Unless you want book-length posts describing every detail of, or pertaining to, every shot. I admit the 600 shot was a bit of a "set-up", but I have taken several 400+ and one 500+ shots in the same area without lasers and stuff. I’ve also passed on many shots inside 200 when I didn’t feel confident.

There was a guy in my hunting club that used to regularly nail deer at 400+ yards with an old Model 70 and a 3x9 Tasco. I didn’t bother me, but I wouldn’t be comfortable doing it … but he was, and could do it.
I don’t recall him missing or wounding either. He was one of those old guys with one rifle and his skill with it was way beyond my skill level.

If you don’t know exactly what he’s talking about, his skill level, etc. etc. You can’t say his shot was unethical.... Them’s fightin’ words, boy !

[reloader28]

Not meaning to fire up the argument again, but I will. I suppose everyone would think my 500 or so yd shot on a bull elk a few years ago would be completly unethical and I should burn in Hell.

The last day of season, and it was the only group of elk we had seen for a couple days. They were trotting thru some trees at what I guessed about 500yds. I have my own rifle range and do alotta shooting and can guess pretty close.

I guessed it at 500 and took 2 shots at that trotting bull before he would have disappeared out of my hunting area and I had an empty freezer. We paced it off at close to 500 (I dont remember exactly). When we finally got there and found him in the trees, he had two 30-06 holes about 6" apart thru his heart and lungs.

I guess I can see what was unethical about it. If I would have judged the range better, the bullets would've gone in the same hole.

Some people can shoot long range and some cant. I'm not calling people [color=#FF0000]█[/color][color=#FF0000]█[/color][color=#FF0000]█[/color][color=#FF0000]█[/color][color=#FF0000]█[/color][color=#FF0000]█[/color][color=#FF0000]█[/color] cause they cant, thats their individual choice. I dont make it a habit of doing that, altho my wife saw me do it to a whitetail doe running flat out about 5 years ago at the same distance. I forgot about that till just now. Bullet went perfect thru the heart. Thought I better add that to fuel the fire. Anyway, I dont make that a habit, but sometimes it might be nessicary for some of us.

The most fun I've had is sneaking thru the timber (and I do this every year) with a 30-30 and getting to within slingshot range of deer and once, the 2 biggest bulls I've ever seen, even in Yellowstone.

I swing both ways.

That being said, I'm done with this subject.

[Crankylove]

Not meaning to fire up the argument again, but I will. I suppose everyone would think my 500 or so yd shot on a bull elk a few years ago would be completly unethical and I should burn in Hell.

I will be there beside you........

I took my Antelope in '08 with a single shot from a measured 525 yds.......with a slight crosswind. Took out heart and both lungs, and dropped like a rock. Of course, last year, the first of two antelope I shot was at about 70 yards.............so maybe there's a chance for me in heaven yet.....

[moosemike]

I've shot four Pronghorn. My longest shot was a touch over 200 yards. My closest was 90.

[coloradosherpa]

I really thought I was done with this thread, but I guess not. Look, alot of good points have been brought up here. Alot of not so good points have also been brought up.

As for telemark, I was not bragging about my 448 yard pronghorn shot. I was young and stupid and I really should have known better. As a preface I was a USMC rifle range coach and we shot iron sighted rifles out to 500 meters all the time, so I am a fair hand at estimating range, wind, etc at that distance. So I thought it was fine. I have since learned that even though it worked out that it was wrong. Kodiak beer understood and explained my meaning perfectly.

As for the bean field guy in MS, what you are doing is not hunting. It is going to the supermarket with a rifle. Which honestly I have no problem with. I know it's unrelated, but I also don't have a problem with high fence hunting as long as it's done right and the hunter doesn't try to pass the experience off as anything other than what it is. But thats another discussion for another time. Another way to look at the bean field "hunting" is to call it target shooting at live targets. You know the range precisely, you know where the bullet will go, precisely. So in all honesty there is very little that is unethical about it. I may not agree with it, but I don't have anything against it either. It's just not my cup of tea. But to take those kinds of shots at ranges you are unsure of, at a place you have never shot before, and with an improvised rest is just asking to wound an animal. These two scenarios are NOT the same thing. And I think that's the point here.

Also when I said a couple hundred yards, I was thinking more like 300 than 200, since some folks want to split hairs.

"The last day of season, and it was the only group of elk we had seen for a couple days"

A very good chance at going home empty handed does not give you an excuse to abandon morals and ethics. It should be viewed as a learning experience. I am glad (for the elk) that it worked out that time, but it very easily could have ended up badly. Try to imagine how bad you would have felt if you had wounded it and never recovered it. Would it have seemed worth it then? If you would be OK causing that kind of suffering just to fulfill your ego, then I pity you. I am not being mean spirited, I am just being honest and blunt. A sharp knife cuts the cleanest and hurts the least, they say. So don't take it the wrong way.

And for the guys who are habitual long range guys, I saw a funny poster once. It was a picture of a tree that had been felled by a beaver. You could see the stump with the tooth marks all over it and the log laying on the ground beside the stump. Then if you looked closer you could see the beaver smashed dead under it. The caption said "Just because you do something all the time does not make it a good idea" or something like that. Just food for thought. Ok now I'm done (I hope).