New to long range hunting

[Ian M]

Spades,
I would suggest two of the most important things you will need to find have nothing to do with gungear. First try to locate someone who has the same interest in LR shooting. You need a partner to really enjoy this stuff. The best way to shoot long is to have a spotter and to take turns spotting and shooting. The spotter uses a spotting scope and calls wind, elevation and hits, his job is to get the shooter onto the aiming point. The shooter is therefore free to concentrate on his marksmanship. Second, you will need a safe spot to shoot. Ranges are great but so are big fields with hills or washouts for stopping bullets. Problem is finding a safe place, make sure you get permission. If and when you find a good spot you will need good targets, lots of info here on making target frames and targets. Determine what your practice distances should be, work your way in 100 yard increments to whereever you and your rifle can maintain lethal accuracy. You need to shoot a lot to get confidence with your equipment and build up the knowledge required to work with wind.

Also suggest you accept that notekeeping and math, working with numbers, is going to become important in your shooting. We need to know as closely as possible where each bullet will fly. Don't rely on memory, write it down.

The suggestion to read the archives here is a good one. Also read some of the marksmanship info on Snipershide. Forget about what the gearheads are saying, read about how to handle a rifle, trigger control, follow-through, breathing, natural point of aim, environmental factors that effect the flight of your bullet, data keeping, shooting dialogue, operating the turrets and reticle of your scope - stuff like that.

Going to take some time, read a bunch and then ask questions, most of your questions have been asked and are available here or at snipershide. There is also one more long range hunting site that has good people on it, that would be worth finding and learning from.

Good luck, if you have a question the guys here will help but there is already so much info on this site, just for the finding.

[MarioT]

Thanks a lot for the help Ian. Also i'm sorry guys that I post stuff before looking... for now on i'll look around first.

Thanks again to everyone,

Mario

[Buffalobob]

In one way, long range hunting is much like ultra short range hunting (archery). You need to be an animal phsycologist. Timing your actions is critical. Knowing when an animal is going to step forward, turn left, or just run like hell is very important.

The only way you learn this is from spending time in the woods with animals.

[MarioT]

Roger that [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] I cant really long range hunt in my forests here, but like I said, there might be that occassion.