Went for a walk in the woods this afternoon with my son. I was packing his sporterized 6.5 x 55 because I just don't like to be in the woods unprepared and my own rifle needs to be sighted in before it goes for a walk.
One of my gripes about all those "other" hunting shows on TV is the dependence on gadgets to make a hunt "successful". "You betcha I couldn't have done it without my Acme ammo warmer, Volt electric socks, this here bag o' C'mere Deer, and my Whamo range finder." Part of being an OYO guy is being able to get along with only ones skill and a few bare necessities.
At one point we came to a place where we could look down the mountain and could see the road bed we had hiked up earlier in the afternoon. I asked my son what he thought the distance was, and after some thought he came up with 400 yards. I thought that was a good guess. A long shot for a brush hunter like me is 100 yards. When sighted in properly any modern rifle will kill a deer out to 275 yards by just holding on the middle of the chest...no range finder needed. Beyond that you just hold a little high, until, of course the distance is beyond your ability. I always figured I could make a good shot out to around 400 yards so I took off my shirt and wadded it up and put it on top of a stump for a rest and found a puddle of water about the size of a baseball in the scope. The angle was about 30 degrees and there was no wind. I figured to kill a deer at that range I'd have to hold about 3 inches over its back and calculated that would be about a foot over that little puddle. It took a long time for the bullet to cover the distance and much longer for the "whack" of the impact on the hard gravel road to come back to our ears, but when I put the scope back on the target there was nothing but a softball-sized crater where the puddle had been. I didn't expect to pull off a perfect shot, but I do expect to be able to put a killing shot into a deer/elk/whatever at a distance beyond what I normally do/expect without any practice. I expect you all could do the same thing (especially you pronghorn hunters), but I had never tried this before so its nice to know that its doable. I find it really entertaining, the long shots people are making these days with their "sniper" scopes and rangefinders, but for the practical guy its more a novelty than what most of us experience during a normal hunt. Beyond my ability to hit something I probably couldn't count the points on a blacktail buck anyway, so a rangefinder is just a gadget I have no use for and my money better spent on a hunting trip or something.
One of my gripes about all those "other" hunting shows on TV is the dependence on gadgets to make a hunt "successful". "You betcha I couldn't have done it without my Acme ammo warmer, Volt electric socks, this here bag o' C'mere Deer, and my Whamo range finder." Part of being an OYO guy is being able to get along with only ones skill and a few bare necessities.
At one point we came to a place where we could look down the mountain and could see the road bed we had hiked up earlier in the afternoon. I asked my son what he thought the distance was, and after some thought he came up with 400 yards. I thought that was a good guess. A long shot for a brush hunter like me is 100 yards. When sighted in properly any modern rifle will kill a deer out to 275 yards by just holding on the middle of the chest...no range finder needed. Beyond that you just hold a little high, until, of course the distance is beyond your ability. I always figured I could make a good shot out to around 400 yards so I took off my shirt and wadded it up and put it on top of a stump for a rest and found a puddle of water about the size of a baseball in the scope. The angle was about 30 degrees and there was no wind. I figured to kill a deer at that range I'd have to hold about 3 inches over its back and calculated that would be about a foot over that little puddle. It took a long time for the bullet to cover the distance and much longer for the "whack" of the impact on the hard gravel road to come back to our ears, but when I put the scope back on the target there was nothing but a softball-sized crater where the puddle had been. I didn't expect to pull off a perfect shot, but I do expect to be able to put a killing shot into a deer/elk/whatever at a distance beyond what I normally do/expect without any practice. I expect you all could do the same thing (especially you pronghorn hunters), but I had never tried this before so its nice to know that its doable. I find it really entertaining, the long shots people are making these days with their "sniper" scopes and rangefinders, but for the practical guy its more a novelty than what most of us experience during a normal hunt. Beyond my ability to hit something I probably couldn't count the points on a blacktail buck anyway, so a rangefinder is just a gadget I have no use for and my money better spent on a hunting trip or something.
