New long range shooter

[Muledeerfanatic]

First thing you need is money
Second is lots of practice

 

[PC356]

What’s the twist rate on your Howa .223? Lose the Leupold, consider a SWFA 3-15.

 

[Castle Rock]

Sure, I do the same with kids and adults all the way out to 1000. Pulling the trigger without disturbing the rifle is pretty easy to learn, on a suitable mild recoiling rifle.

But, it is misleading to say even a 450 yard shot is easy. Your son doesn’t make the shot without your gear, knowledge and experience.

Yes, 450 is long range per my definition, because beyond MPBZ takes into account ballistics and environment, and it requires ranging to effectively hit.

Yep, anyone can pull a trigger if they are set up to do it, it is nonsense to think that it will happen like that in the bush

 

[Castle Rock]

Easy is relative, but within 15 minutes the other day I had my young teen son easily hitting an 8” gong at 450 yards 100% of the time. And he’d never shot half that far before. That’s getting into LR territory to me.

It’s an old debate. You aren’t wrong and I’m not wrong. We can still be friends.

We can always be friends (maybe?) but you get so much wrong
You came into this thread with a bad attitude trying to derail it, as you usually do, what are you trying to achieve?

 

[SDHNTR]

We can always be friends (maybe?) but you get so much wrong
You came into this thread with a bad attitude trying to derail it, as you usually do, what are you trying to achieve?

You could not have read me more wrong.

 

[TaperPin]

Budget?

 

[LeeMaster99]

Where is the happy medium between buying a rifle system that is capable of .75 MOA on a large enough group (10-20) versus getting something now and spending more on ammo and practice? If you’re practicing all of that with a 1.5 MOA system doesn’t it limit how good that practice is for you? Or rather what’s the point of practicing at distance if you know that will never be good enough for hunting at any distance?

 

[Castle Rock]

A 1.5 MOA system will never cost you a game animal
What you are supposed to be practicing is shooting under field conditions, not group shooting

 

[El_bosque]

Buy a 223 bolt gun, put it in a properly designed and well made stock, put a reliable scope in solid rings on it. Then go put several thousand rounds through it in different conditions, from different positions, at different ranges, and learn to read wind and call misses. Assuming you have proper mechanics and solid fundamentals already this will be the best thing you can do for the lowest price and lowest recoil to learn “long range.”

Signing up for a Shoot2Hunt class would also be a great idea to go with that.

Came here to comment, left with knowledge and a plan! Thanks!

 

[SDHNTR]

Where is the happy medium between buying a rifle system that is capable of .75 MOA on a large enough group (10-20) versus getting something now and spending more on ammo and practice? If you’re practicing all of that with a 1.5 MOA system doesn’t it limit how good that practice is for you? Or rather what’s the point of practicing at distance if you know that will never be good enough for hunting at any distance?

A 1.5 moa 10-20 shot group will do all you ever need for hunting. That will not be the reason you miss. Multiple studies have proven that the hit increase/decrease from a .5 to 1 to 1.5 moa spread is minimal.

 

[TaperPin]

Where is the happy medium between buying a rifle system that is capable of .75 MOA on a large enough group (10-20) versus getting something now and spending more on ammo and practice? If you’re practicing all of that with a 1.5 MOA system doesn’t it limit how good that practice is for you? Or rather what’s the point of practicing at distance if you know that will never be good enough for hunting at any distance?

I’m the opposite of SDHNTR, not that he’s wrong, but the feedback and confidence of an accurate rifle has been worth the price to me. With a steady shot if the bullet is just to the side I know it’s the wind and not just part of the normal dispersion for that gun. Compared to a nice tight three shot 1/2 MOA group, a 1-1/2 MOA rifle looks like it’s spraying bullets at any distance and larger groups are needed to sort out what’s actually going on.

Every group on paper it’s easy to tell the effects of a slight wind, or minor change in how the rifle is held. I’d go as far as saying many shooters with 1-1/2 MOA rifles never learn many subtle lessons because there’s too much static and so much time is wasted with large groups that the effort isn’t worth the lesson. Such as:
Grip the forend vs hands off the forend.
Light vs heavy shoulder pressure.
No bipod vs bipod.
Short bipod vs tall bipod.
Bipod loading.
Firm grip vs light grip.
Strong vs soft cheek weld.
Heavy vs soft downward pressure on rear bag.

An extreme example is my 1/2 MOA rifle that usually made nice round 3/4” groups at 200 yards, and if you stacked enough of them would open up to 1/2 MOA. Every friend that ever shot it was amazed at how easy it was to shoot the smallest group of their life. Every bullet hole was within 1/4 MOA of true center and that makes life easy.

 

[SDHNTR]

I’m the opposite of SDHNTR, not that he’s wrong, but the feedback and confidence of an accurate rifle has been worth the price to me. With a steady shot if the bullet is just to the side I know it’s the wind and not just part of the normal dispersion for that gun. Compared to a nice tight three shot 1/2 MOA group, a 1-1/2 MOA rifle looks like it’s spraying bullets at any distance and larger groups are needed to sort out what’s actually going on.

Every group on paper it’s easy to tell the effects of a slight wind, or minor change in how the rifle is held. I’d go as far as saying many shooters with 1-1/2 MOA rifles never learn many subtle lessons because there’s too much static and so much time is wasted with large groups that the effort isn’t worth the lesson. Such as:
Grip the forend vs hands off the forend.
Light vs heavy shoulder pressure.
No bipod vs bipod.
Short bipod vs tall bipod.
Bipod loading.
Firm grip vs light grip.
Strong vs soft cheek weld.
Heavy vs soft downward pressure on rear bag.

An extreme example is my 1/2 MOA rifle that usually made nice round 3/4” groups at 200 yards, and if you stacked enough of them would open up to 1/2 MOA. Every friend that ever shot it was amazed at how easy it was to shoot the smallest group of their life. Every bullet hole was within 1/4 MOA of true center and that makes life easy.

Well, there’s a huge difference between 3 shot groups and 10-20 shot groups. In most cases, 3 shot 1/2 MOA guns usually do 1moa+ large shot groups. Yes, confidence is king and if chasing perfection builds your confidence (I can relate) by all means fine tune as much as you want. But rest assured, 1.5 moa large shot groups are perfectly adequate for big game hunting.

 

[Macintosh]

Obviously a 1/2moa large-group gun/ammo/scope is going to perform better than a 1moa or 1.5moa gun. It's not that mechanical precision doesnt matter, it's just that at "longer range" (say 400 yards out to 1000+) the portion of the error caused by the gun itself is much less significant in the context of all the other sources of error (such as the gun not being well-zeroed, ranging errors, wind call error, shot angle not taken into account, variable wind at distance, inconsistent ammo, positional instability, etc). If you are shooting F-class or one of the real precision disciplines that probably matters more, but in field-type positional shooting the actual hit probability isnt affected nearly as much by increasing rifle precision as it is by other factors.

my take on what's needed to start and learn the basics (other than standard stuff like ear pro):
*A reliable, dialable scope that functions properly and is mounted well. To me that means FFP, probably Mil and not moa, with an evenly-hashed reticle. I think a reliable scope matters more than the gun, and I'd budget more for a scope than the gun in a heartbeat. To me this is much more important than whether its a 1moa gun or a 1.5moa gun. To me this is the single highest priority piece of equipment, and not having it will be the single worst thing that holds you back from learning and improving the most.
*a REASONABLY accurate gun that you can comfortably and affordably shoot a significant amount. If you know your actual cone of fire that's more important than whether it's a 0.5moa or 1moa or a 1.5moa gun, becasue even with 1.5moa precision the gun itself is only responsible for a small portion of the error in longer range positional shooting.
*a place to shoot regularly that 1) has both shorter (100 yd) and long range and 2) gets you off the bench
*a rangefinder to accurately measure range
*a ballistic calculator phone app--not critical but so easy and inexpensive it makes sense for everyone.
*a notebook to record info as you go for future reference.
*a class or instruction from a reputable instructor (becasue most of the people I see helping out buddies seem to cause more problems than they solve)
*a data-driven approach to the process.
*a boatload of ammo

 

[Choupique]

What’s the best advice/piece of equipment one should have to be successful?

Don't worry about the equipment as much as the practice. Any decent rifle, a reliable scope, a rangefinder, and a mountain of decent ammo would be the best way to start out.

At least that's what I told myself and what I am doing