What got you interested in long range hunting?

[flylo]

Shooting things far away.

 

[GLTaylor]

Shooting things far away.

 

[Litehiker]

1. moving from Pennsylvania to Nevada
2. starting long range competition
3. the new rifles and optics available for LRH

Eric B.

 

[GLTaylor]

I have always liked rifles since I was a kid. Read every article in Outdoor Life, SA and F&S. My gunsmith friend shot benchrest and invited me along. I shot his old 6x47 (the original one) while he shot his new wildcat 6PPC. This was about 1973. Seeing those itty bitty groups lit me on fire!
I have not tolerated an inaccurate rifle since!
Once I saw what rifles are capable of I wanted to go farther. I read all I could and had some excellent coaching. I started going out west to shoot prairie dogs. My first trip was a bust (run home by tornados). My second trip I got 3 over 1000 yds with 2 different guns. I wanted to get in the 1500 yd club from the old Precision Shooting magazine. Two custom rifles later I managed a 1472 shot. My newest rifle is still sighted in for 1500.on the last trip the mirage was so bad after 9:30 whole farm houses and silos disappeared! I may or may not go any more. My buddy died on me and I'm getting too old to deal with the heat. The rifle is ready in case I get that way again.

 

[bdyal1972]

For me: I grew up on a farm and no one in my family hunted or done much shooting. I hunted with a Winchester 1300 & slugs from age 13 to 18 by myself and didn't know anything. Never hardly saw deer and never killed anything. @ 18 years old I bought myself a 35 rem marlin 336 that I saw no reason why I couldn't hit the moon with it, seriously, lol. Had an lot older fellow help me sight it @ 100yds. Finally got a shot at a deer about 300 yards away with the old 35 propped up on a hay bail. Made three shots and the deer still just standing there. I didn' even know to try & hold over, I thought the old 35 rem was a Lazer I guess. Lol, funny I was that green. I was so disgusted. If I would have killed that deer I would have never had the determination that I needed to learn what I should know about shooting at longer distances. It took my failure to motivate me to learn more. Now I'm glad that deer was 300yds away and I missed it. Wouldn't have learned much if it would have been 50yds away and I would have hit it.

1977 I was 5

3x9x42 bushnell scope on a post 64 30-06 model 70 named big boy.

I started reading Elmer Keith, jack o'Conner, learning about ballistics...

All these guys in magazines (but keith) were afraid and incapable of hitting an 18" elk beyond 400 yards!!!

Of course my papa, uncles and mentors were WWII vets, loggers, ranchers

I saw them shoot running deer at 200+ paces

Just like they did men at far off places like tarawa, solomens, mindanao, wake, incheon, Normandy and french and german names I still cant spell!!!

Needless to say at basic training when I was hitting torso targets at 600 meters with an m16a2 WITH PEEP SITES!!!

I KNEW THE FIELD AND STREAM AUTHORS WERE IDIOTS!

THEN

5 of 5

With a mark 248 in Kurdistan with 6" rocks across canyons and valleys

THEN


I got home and learned EVEN MORE about efficient long range bullets

Horus reticles

...............


Next thing you know

Mid 90s built my first fast twist 30" barrel 300win long loaded with 220smks and ssllloooowwww powder

248markII

reinvented for western oregon clearcuts and northeast Washington valley's

A long range hunters journey over 20 years...

But

Those ww2 Korean war gen loggers were shooting roosevelt elk and blacktail deer at 1000 yards without laser range finders back in the 60s and 70s

Know how?

EXPERIENCE

and they had known a great gunsmith and preacher of the rifle...

AND ITS TRUE CAPABILITIES

PO ACKLEY OF ROSEBURG OREGON!!!

 

[rick523]

For me: I grew up on a farm and no one in my family hunted or done much shooting. I hunted with a Winchester 1300 & slugs from age 13 to 18 by myself and didn't know anything. Never hardly saw deer and never killed anything. @ 18 years old I bought myself a 35 rem marlin 336 that I saw no reason why I couldn't hit the moon with it, seriously, lol. Had an lot older fellow help me sight it @ 100yds. Finally got a shot at a deer about 300 yards away with the old 35 propped up on a hay bail. Made three shots and the deer still just standing there. I didn' even know to try & hold over, I thought the old 35 rem was a Lazer I guess. Lol, funny I was that green. I was so disgusted. If I would have killed that deer I would have never had the determination that I needed to learn what I should know about shooting at longer distances. It took my failure to motivate me to learn more. Now I'm glad that deer was 300yds away and I missed it. Wouldn't have learned much if it would have been 50yds away and I would have hit it.

First trip to Wyoming had to pass on what was probably close to a 200" mule deer at 625yds. My max range at the time was 300 yds. This deer did not deserve me taking a poke and pray shot. I told my buddy next time we came back I was gonna he capable of taking a deer at 1000 yds. Went home immediately had a gun smith in my area that builds bench rifles build me a 7mm rem mag.
I shot all summer 3-4 days a week. Right up to the day we left for Wyoming in September. Third day into hunt I took a decent buck at 803 yds. One shot, 3 steps and down. He wasn't 200" but they don't come around often. Not bad for a guy from Indiana where the deer now fear me. Lol

 

[nt7332]

I like to reload as much if not more than I like to shoot. Once I started getting very proficient at reloading it all become a group game to me chasing the smallest groups I could get at whatever distance. Once this happens it is pandoras box continually pushing it farther and farther. Once you start breaking the 2k distance is when everything is exagerated such as form, extreme spread and your ability as a shooter to read wind. Love it. The farther you push yourself on distance the easier the close game gets (700yds and in). Its an expensive hobby for sure but that beautiful ding noise is very rewarding!

 

[oldpilot]

It was a natural evolution I think. I shot my first deer at 10 with a 30-30 saddle gun when my uncle couldn't come close at just over 110 yards in a steep canyon. A couple of days later I shot a coyote at about 140 yards on a dare from the same uncle. The next summer I had been given a 40# bow and a dozen arrows by a neighbor in town and I bagged a little spike at about 35 paces. At 16 my step dad had acquired an old 03A3 and I took a coues deer buck at 350 yards with it. By 18, we had converted a Rem mod 722 in 244 to a 26" barreled medium heavy barrel and turned it into a .25" group at 100 yards with either a 75 grain HP or a 100 grain spire point. By 20 I was banned from using reloads in that rifle in the local turkey shoot. By age 22 I had taken deer, javelina, elk, coyotes and bobcats with a bow, and those plus antelope, bear, a very large muley and foxes with the 6mm. At 23 I headed to the USAF aerial hunting club and learned to fly warplanes. In a few years I could afford to try other firearms, often times loaners in foreign countries. The result was that I found myself changing my mind about a lot of things. I knew I could sneak up close, and tried some really long shots. An AF buddy and I went to Montana with the package permits, deer, elk, antelope and upland birds, and on day two found a nice 3x3 muley buck a little over 600 yards away. He was shooting a 270, and I was using the 6mm. No cover at all between us and mr deer. He wouldn't take the shot but challenged me with first shot at elk. After 30 minutes of getting the best position and waiting for absolute calm and figuring the drop, I put one in his ear canal straight into the brain. 4 hours later I shot a 6x6 bull at 100 yards with the same shot. So distance shooting and hunting just evolved. My buddy kept saying "even a blind squirrel finds a nut at times! My right shoulder was ruined by a slip on a ladder getting out of my jet, so I gave up bow hunting. I admit that I only take the shots beyond 500 yards that I am sure I can make. Same in combat flying, run or gun.

 

[John Klingenberg]

The master of all calibers...the .22 long rifle. Its all I was allowed to have from 8 to about 14. A single shot Winchester. I was Sgt York whenever I went out with that "sniper" rifle. We had some big fields and a couple small gravel pits I shot at rocks or shotgun hulls. Then I kind of naturally had to shoot at it farther and farther. I always had to show up my older brothers too. Dad was a WW2 vet and my Grandpa was a WW1 and 2 vet. He was drafted for 2 because he was a fluent German speaker. They rarely talked of their service and didnt hunt much but they'd tell me what to do. They also never shot for recreation. Guns were serious business to them. One day dad broke out his .300 Weatherby. That rifle never left the gun cabinet so it was a special day. He was going to show me how to hunt deer. We sat on the edge of a big field that had gone to seed years before. We finally saw a big doe way across the field. Dad set up leaning across a fence post and dropped that deer. I didn't close my mouth for an hour. Id never even heard of shots that far let alone seen it. It was completely across an 80 acre field so it had to be pushing 800 yards. The seed was sewn and I was hooked. A man that never shot for practice just whipped out a shot like it was an every day thing. He shot .22s with me a few times afterward and I never saw him miss. He was an amazing shot. We never hunted again together but as I got older I piled up game with big boy guns. Mostly 30-30s and a 30-06. I once had the audacity to ask him what he did in the service and he never answered. I never asked again. After he passed I thought of getting a records search done but then figured that if he didnt want me to know it was none of my business. When I inherited my grandpas things it was another story. Grandpa had campaign metals with names on them like Belleau Wood and Meuse-Argonne. I did a lot of that research. No wonder he didnt want to talk about it. Shooting heritage is an important thing for us Americans. Im proud to be "surrounded" here by like minded fellows!

 

[JustMe2]

Living in Florida, I still don't hunt in what many of you would consider long range, like over 500 yards, and probably never will attempt to shoot a deer nor elk at that distance. Down here you are lucky to be able to see 50 yards into the tangled undergrowth which is why you don't stalk hunt here and we have to bait in small 100 yard cleared food plots. I got interested in long range shooting by a hunting buddy who drug me to a local steel range where we can shoot steel to 875 yds. Then I found this Forum and thought it was interesting, but now I see a lot of repeat questions about which rifle is best, which cartridge is best, ad boredom. Every once in a while I see a post with good information on reloading, the effect of cant, bullet performance, and other instructional information that keeps me coming back. Also, I like the posts about animals you have successfully taken.

 

[ShootinSparky]

My boss's daughter was selling raffle tickets with the prize a Remington 700 AAC-CD chambered in 308 which I won. When I got as good as I was gonna get I started reloading and dropped a new trigger in. That got me out to a 1/2 mile and I haven't looked back.

 

[freddiej]

For me it started with a Ruger BearCat 22LR and a 35 yard target range. also my dad's Rem mod. 12A pump at 35 yards. shooting smaller and smaller items, got down to beer bottle caps, then it was shooting the stems of black berry bushes, and oak trees. shooting the leaves off of them, or pruning the bushes.
after figuring that using a 22LR Mossberg 144 SLA to shoot 100 yards was fun, then it was 300-600 with a 270 Win, after that 1,000 yards with a 300 Win Mag, then it was just practicing 100 to 1,000 yards for hunting. this included 50 to 300 yards with a Win 94 30-30. what really hooked me was my first trip into the field hunting deer in Nor Cal. I was borrowing a 257 Rob when I had no rifle of my own. I shot what I thought was 350 yards. it ended up to be just a touch under 500 yards. the second shot caught the deer just under the chin and made a mess of blood all over the bush he was standing in the middle of. ever since then, I always practice for longer shots. I have shot and cleanly missed a few Elk and Deer at 1,400 yards and farther. I just hope one day I can get back to my roots, my 30-30 and shooting deer at 50 yards to 250 yards. I fear my eyes will never allow me to shoot open sights like that again. if that is to be the case then I have a great plan to rig up a mount for the old 94 with a reflex sight.

 

[Skip Roos]

Hunted most of my life.

The summer hikes with my pack and .264 WM, binocs, the sighting and loads and solitary hunts in wide open thunder basin, Eastern MT & badlands, everything about it was spiritual.

When my boy was 12 and could walk miles, make multiple crawls over sage covered hills, I showed him how it was done.

The stalk to within 200 yards, many under 100 was what it was about...50 deer/antelope over 35 years, haven't hunted in 17 years.

I thought hunting much deeper, why I hunted alone. Peace, quiet, wind, nature, seeing, experiencing moments memorialized my inner hard drive. My boys first deer, antelope, et. al. My preferences, hunting much different from LRH. Different style, choice, that's all.

I was curious about this site, will unsubscribe.

 

[TXAoudadKlr]

About 10 years ago I had a herd of aoudad hang up between 450-530 yards out. I had no idea what I was doing so I sat and watched them the rest of the evening. That stuck with me for several years until I could afford the better optics,rifles and gear. 2013 is when I really got into it after shooting my buddy's custom rifles.

I wouldn't call myself a long range hunter, more just a hunter that's willing to learn and employ all the skills needed to be successful.