I’m not 100% sure what the rage is about. I can guaren-damn-tee there’s more than a few members who have taken three or more shots to take down an elk or similar sized animal at 1/5th the range (read the hunt reports). If you don’t like long range hunting, that’s fine, but this brings us back to the “if it’s legal” debate.
I guess my concern with longer range hunting is this. There is an element of luck involved that can be the difference between a clean kill and a wounded animal that no amount of skill or training can overcome.
There are always factors outside the shooters control that can effect the fall of shot. Wind, terrain, temperature, elevation, minor inconsistencies in ammo, movement of the animal etc. At 100yds, the influence of these is minimal. Maybe a sudden and unexpected gust of wind or a slight variance in bullet bc shifts point of impact by half an inch. Maybe in the 1/10 of a second between pulling the trigger and bullet impact the animal can move an inch or two. Doesn't matter.
But at 1000, it's a different story. I used to shoot F class at 1000 fairly regularly with some pretty good shots (and some not so good ones such as myself). You could watch some of those guys hit v bulls three shots in a row printing only a couple of inches, then, on the same point of aim suddenly put one in the 3 or 4 ring nearly a foot away from the rest of the group. Why? The wind swung around and changed a bit, the ammo was slightly different, they changed their posture slightly, or a myriad of other factors. Just a 30fps drop in velocity at the muzzle is roughly 10" elevation change at 1000 with a .308win for instance and that sort of variance might be a difference between working out your drops at 60F and hunting at 40F. Most commercial ammo is +/-30fps or so across a 20round box. Even good hunting hand loads might be +/-10fps across 20 rounds. Or it's a couple thousand feet of altitude change between your practice range and the place where you make your hunting shot. Not much really and not something you can really account for in real time.
Then it's going to take the bullet over a second to reach the animal after you pull the trigger. Maybe in that time the animal can decide to take a pace forwards and moves a foot. You can't predict that behavior 100% and you can't recall the bullet, so you're relying on luck. A foot is the difference between a clean H/L hit and a gut shot, and if you're a thousand yards away, you're not gonna find that animal quickly if at all.
It's even harder if it's a cold bore single shot you've got to get right first time. Plenty of those same F class shooters I RO'd for might put their first sighter a foot or even a couple of foot away from v bull on the first 'no data' SWAG for point of aim. Skill can of course influence that, but you're a better shooter than any I've seen if you can walk out on any given day, plop yourself down on a target at a distance of 1000yds with only minimal info on wind direction across the bullet path, temp, elevation etc and have 100% confidence that their first round will be within 5" of the center of a target.
Hell, the v bull on a 1000yd F class target is 5" across and it was so unusual to hit it with the first shot that we used to give out key rings to folks who managed it. In a field of 30 or so shooters over the year, we'd typically hand out 5 or 6, and that was across roughly 10 calendar fixtures, so 300 attempts. A roughly 2% success rate for a single cold bore shot, at a known 1000yd distance, at the same range they zeroed at, with a 20lb F class rifle off a machine rest, with wind flags every 100yds, into a 5" target. Not great.
I personally think the animal deserves better.
www.africahunting.com
