The "Tallest" Tale.

[anodes]

The longest shot thead got me thinking, "Jeez, I remeber that one guy who needed two shots from a 30/30 on an already down cow (beef) from 1 pace! The point being he was the same guy who before hand told me about his shots in Wyoming, like; We used to make 700 yrd shots on elk with the 7mm Mag. As though it was "regular" for this. Well after his shot placement from 3 freakin' feet, I had trouble with his "story"!

My geuss is most people can't estimate distance very well. At my house in Flagstaff I have some distance to work with; I'll be sittin' on the porch and ask company to estimate the distance to the high tension poles in the NE corner of my 40, I get anywhere from 300 to 500 yrds! Closer to 250!

Surely, there have been taller tales!
anodes.

[Art Eatman]

"I used to shoot'em so far off, I had to put salt on the bullet so they wouldn't spoil before I got there!"

"Tracking deer? Son, I tracked one old mossy-horn all the way back to where he was born!"



My uncle was a gunsmith. One guy for whom he had mounted a scope and sighted it in came back complaining. He had missed a deer at "300 yards". So, off to the benchrest and the 100-yard range. "Yeah, that's how far he was! 300 yards!" My uncle first tried to explain it was only 100 yards. Argument, sorta, stopped by, "If you're gonna argue, leave." Anyway, the first shot printed 2" high, just like the original sight-in...

Later, Art

[Art Eatman]

Gee, I hate to win the "tall tale" deal by default. Here's one on me, about distance; this is "no stuff".

I saw a buck meddling around with a doe, off a fair distance across a valley. I figured him for a bit over 400 yards. I sat down, got a good rest, held two feet over his back in line with the shoulder and touched it off.

Four times! Didn't faze him at all. On the fifth shot, he lifted his near hind foot and sniffed the toe. Otherwise, he was still unconcerned about anything but the doe.

I held some four feet into the wind, and held a bit higher. Six, seven and eight! Nada!

By mutual consent, the doe wandered south, and the buck headed calmly down the hill toward me. After maybe 100 yards, he stopped and posed prettily, looking straight at me.

I held just above his horns and let go with number nine. I center-punched him in the lower chest, right through the heart.

I guesstimated that my first shots were hitting some 5-1/2 feet below the crosshairs; the final shot, 3 feet. So, my first efforts were at around 550 yards; the final shot had to have been a good bit over 400.

The toe sniff? The bullet had gone between the toes, barely grazing the skin.

Estimating distance across a valley can be quite self-deceiving...

Art

[Dogger]

Hmmm... Well... the only tall tale I have involves a "hunt" in Germany in 1984. Tank Gunnery. Range 112 at Grafenwoehr. I am in the upper tower, controlling things. A tank crew (not mine!) was at the end of their night battle run and facing their final engagement. Degraded mode. Supposed to engage troops with the coax machine gun and a BRDM with the Caliber 50. Illumination rounds overhead -- no use of tank thermal sights. Illum popped -- made the night as bright as day. Gunner identified the troops and blasted them with the coax. All well so far. Tank Commander attempted to engage the BRDM with the caliber 50 and had a stoppage.

Things started heading south.

TC started to panic. Over the intercom you could hear the loader dropping the breech and slamming a 105 HEAT round into the tube. Gunner could not identify the BRDM. TC screaming "There he is! There he is!" Gunner shouting "Cannot identify! Cannot identify!" Loader shouting "UP!" With the illum overhead we could see the turret traversing to the far right, out of the range fan. I started reaching for the handmike to call a "Cease Fire Freeze". Too late. Tank Commander announced "From my position, On The Way!!!"

KABOOM!!!!! HEAT round slams into the ground at "something" and then richochets towards Czechoslovakia. Red tracer went up and away forever it seemed.

The Sergeant in the base of the tower, who was using a thermal site to watch and score the engagement, comes running up the steps two at a time and bursts into the upper tower: "HE SHOT A PIG! HE SHOT A PIG!"

The tank commander had hammered a big german wild boar with a 105mm HEAT round. The splash of the hog completely filled the thermal site display with a brilliant flash - then darkness.

Took a drive out there the next morning to look for the hog. Needless to say, he (or she) was atomized. I figured the range was about 600 meters or so. NCO said it was a "Big Fat One". They do get big at Grafenwoehr. Big enough to put saddles on.

Needless to say, the tank crew bolo'd the engagement. Sorry, but I don't know how many grains a 105mm HEAT round weighs... but it is plenty.

[Al Thompson]

Having spent an inordinate amount of the best days of my life at Graf (Range 21 anyone?) I concur with Doggers story.

Dogger - was that the old Calfex range on the west side? They re-numbered the ranges in '85 or so..

Giz

[Dogger]

Gizmo99, Range 112 was a very narrow range on the upper Northeast side of Graf. Odd choice for Tank Table VIII, but we lived with it. I think you might be thinking of Range 300 on the upper west side, which is now a fully automated range for platoon battle runs and such. At least, that is the way it was back in 1987 when I last saw the place...

[Keith Rogan]

I'll tell two stories, one of which is pretty ugly but they both illustrate my own stupidity in attempting long range shots.

About ten years ago I was hunting deer in late december on the south end of Kodiak island. I was using a hyper-accurate .243 that I had entirely too much confidence in - using 100 (105?) gr federal "Classics".
Spotted a deer lying right on the crest of a ridge above us and watching us. The terrain was totally open and there was no way to approach closer without him nipping back over the ridge.
I layed down and using a frame pack for a rest put the cross hairs between his ears figuring no matter the bullet drop it would be a neck shot since the neck was perfectly verticle - right.
At the first shot he jumped up obviously "hit" and began trotting down the hill more or less towards us and I began firing away with no apparent effect - I don't know how many shots I fired but I did reload so...5-8 shots before he dropped.
I didn't pace off the distance but it was a LONG ways up there. Gray sky, white ground, brown deer - no visual cue at all to distance. When we dressed him it was obvious that none of the bullets had expanded, just punched through like fmj's. The initial shot did punch through the meat of the neck and the other shots (3 or 4) just hit him randomly all over - stupid. Started reloading premiums and foregoing long shots after that.

Several years ago I flew into the mulchatna to hunt caribou with two friends. Residents can take up to 5 caribou but because of weight limitations, we only planned on two apiece.
We were sitting in a valley that funnelled caribou right past us and had only been seeing bands of cows with a few young bulls until late evening when a band of really big batchelor bulls came in on us. We let them get within two hundred yards and began knocking them down. They milled about for a moment, making good targets and then retreated back up the valley. My partners had taken two each and I had only taken one. I was shooting a 7mm Mauser and didn't trust it much beyond the range we had shot at so when those bulls began making an arc around us at long range I was just prepared to watch them go - BUT, a really HUGE bull came out of the back of that herd and took the lead and were watching him through our scopes and my partners were egging me on and I was getting excited but refused to shoot at that range with that rifle.
So, one guy grabs my rifle and shoves his .30/06 in my hands and INSISTS that I shoot him. He's got a bi-pod and I know he's using good ammo so my adrenaline gets the best of me and I get prone, put the cross hairs about three feet in front of the running bulls nose and squeeze off a shot - and its like a train wreck! The bull flips completely over his nose in the most dramatic fashion possible, turf flying up, legs waving in the air, everything except smoke and flames.
The bullet had broken both his front shoulders and his own weight and momentum had flipped him ass over tea kettle. We paced it off as 355 yards - a running shot too. I'll admit I just got lucky, my lead was just a guess and I could have hit him anywhere or not at all. A tremendous bull though, probably 600 hundred pounds and the rack is just short of B&C

Whenever I get cocky about that shot I just think about that bullet riddled little buck in the snow and get over it.




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Keith
The Bears and Bear Maulings Page: members.xoom.com/keithrogan

[Al Thompson]

Dogger - Range 201 was our big platoon range (Mech Inf) and the Calfex Range just down the road from the church (west side) were the two ranges we spent time on. I think I've been on R112. IIRC the Brits were shooting 155s in the direct fire mode one day and I drove over to watch.

C/1/6 1st Bde, 1st AD

Giz

[beemerb]

dogger;
Do you remember what unit the tank was with?I spent a lot of time in Graf in the mid 60s.Was wondering if it was my old unit.2 sqdn 2 A/C

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Age and deceit will overcome youth and speed.
I'm old and deceitful.

[Dogger]

beemerb, naw, it wasn't the Cav. It was an outfit out of the 3AD. I had the misfortune of being the night OIC for the entire division -- 42 days at Graf. As I recall only about a dozen tanks in the ENTIRE division qualified that Graf -- the tank tables had been toughened up considerably, and the M60A3 was not up to the task. Or... I should say the crews.

C/1-32 Armor Bandits.

[Art Eatman]

Keith, your two stories remind me of the bit about the optimist seeing a glass as half full; the pessimist sees it as half-empty; and the engineer thinks you have too big a glass for the booze you got.

So every time you kick yourself about the bad shots, you have that exceptional shot to remind yourself that you ain't all bad.

, Art--the optimistic engineer

[anodes]

Keith, Your great stories reminded me of a friend who was bow hunting elk in AZ. He sees a great elk and let fly. Well he nailed it, IN THE EAR! The elk turned to run away and... CRACK! Busted his foreleg. This big boy starts running as fast as he can into the trees and just disappears and... CRACK! So my bud starts hoping and running, sure enough there he is just laying there with two broken fore legs! All that weight, under a run, and the remaining leg couldn't take it. He got his elk with an ear shot! He still has an elk ear with an arrow hole in it!
anodes.

[Keith Rogan]

The absolutely weirdest shot I ever saw was similar to that elk story.
I was about 16 and jump shooting ducks along sloughs in Michigan.
A flock of wood ducks came over that were WAY out of range - up in the sky traveling to distant places.
And one of my companions tosses up his shotgun and takes a shot - and of course while we're busy sneering at him, one of the ducks drops from the flock and begins making wide circles around us until he finally gets low enough to run smack into the top of a huge dead cottonwood - the only large tree for miles around.
And when we cleaned that duck it had taken a bb in one eye. That was the only mark on him.
Lucky shot or unlucky duck?



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Keith
The Bears and Bear Maulings Page: members.xoom.com/keithrogan

[BadMedicine]

You've shot big deer??? Son, When I was you age we used to shoot 'em so big we'd have to quarter the antlers to pack 'em out.


My uncle was hunting in an archery buck competition when he jumped a doe, she tried to clear a log pile but got a back leg in it and snapped it. You had to bag a buck for this ompetition but my uncle knew she was gonna die so he went and killed her with his knife. and put her on his tag. Pretty honest thing to do

[DorGunR]

BadMedicine,
Sir, your uncle was a true gentleman!

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"Lead, follow or get the HELL out of the way."

[Art Eatman]

One for the "weird shot" category: Jumped a buck; scope set on 7 power; mostly saw brown and then he was gone into the brush. My father wandered up, and figured the buck would circle into the wind, and exit the valley through a saddle about a half-mile away, upwind. So, I cut across, got on the more favorable crosswind side of the saddle and waited.

Sure enough, here came Bucky. He stopped to check out the world ahead, maybe 40 yards from me, and I put the scope on his heart--broadside shot. There was a prickly pear leaf right in line, but I figured that it was close enough to him to shoot through it. I fired; he fell stone dead.

I walked over to him to gut him out, and looked at "the" pear leaf. I had shot through five pear leaves! No three holes were in line; the bullet had curved up and to the right. The remains of the bullet entered his head, just under the ear.

.243; 85-grain HPBT.

I'll take luck over skill, anyday.

, Art