The months leading up to hunting season, I'm constantly out at the local range practicing or helping buddies get their rifles set up. When someone else pulls up to the range, a lot of times they'll come over and spark up a conversation that inevitably leads to talking about the rifles they have, and what they're doing with them. Inspired by Backfire's videos on Youtube, I've gotten into the habit of asking what their maximum, cold bore, "hunting in the field" range is. Any time someone has replied with a number of 500 yards or more, I've taken out a $20 bill and asked if they wanted to bet on a first round impact using any rest they wanted to use other than the bench. (Note: I don't act like a jerk about it, I offer it as a friendly wager and say that I have a running experiment going with it). The range has steel targets that are about 3 MOA, which to me is a reasonable size given that moose are the main animal people are hunting around here.
I've had four or five people decline, probably 10 take me up on it, and only one that made the impact and took my money. His range was 500, he pulled out a bare bones Tikka in 7 Rem Mag with a Vortex Diamondback BDC scope, and smacked that gong as dead center as could be. What made it even more awesome is the $20 bill I gave him had come from a guy that tried on the same target 5 minutes prior, with a rifle setup worth more than the truck he was driving.
So, to answer the question, yes I think 500 yards is a lot harder of a shot than most people realize. There are people who have invested the time, money, and effort into becoming capable enough to do it ethically, and then there are significantly more people who slap the gong on their 3rd try after shooting less than a box of ammo through their new rifle, and decide they are ready to start slinging lead. There's really no way of preventing the latter, other than encouraging all of your buddies and relatives to spend the money on an extra case of ammo and get out practicing more.
Full disclosure: Once after collecting money on a 600 yard shot attempt, the guy asked me what my max was. I had been shooting at 6 and 700 yards that day practicing positional shooting, but based on the previous practice I had and the rifle's impact velocities, I had a hard cap of 500. He offered double or nothing, and I whiffed (zero excuses) on the 12" gong using my pack as a rest. We both had a laugh, I handed him his money back, and we both learned a lesson. After some more practice I learned that my pack wasn't stable enough, and limited myself to only shooting past 400 if I was on a bipod. Later that season I took a black bear at 495, and I was only comfortable with that because conditions were perfect, I had plenty of time to make a super stable shooting position, and I had spent a stupid amount of money feeding my rifle to practice preseason.
