The long shots

[Brad1974]

When I decided to take the long range plunge I put a swfa 3-9 on my 30-06 and worked up a good load. Practiced a lot out to 650 yards or so. Longest kill with that rifle was 525 yards.

Then I started going smaller. Fast twist 25-06, then 25 creedmoor, now mostly 25 and 22 creedmoor. And practice as much as I can with a .223.

Basically the 30-06 was just too difficult to shoot consistently well. Required a lot of focus on recoil management and not flinching in the moment of truth. And, it was hard to shoot more than 20-30 rounds in a practice session without having a bruised shoulder making the whole flinching thing worse. With low recoil and good bullets in smaller cases, I’ve had way way less rodeos that I did with my 30-06. Never did lose an animal but I made some poor shots (even at close ranges) and spent a lot of hours tracking and sweating it.

There’s tons of experience/info on Rokslide about cartridge and bullet choices for longer range. My experience has led me to lower and lower recoil guns and heavier guns which seem to allow for more margin of error in the moment of truth, and a lot more practice and fun at the range.

I get that for sure. I can handle about a dozen shots without even noticing the recoil, but about 20-30 shots in I'm ready to stop as well. It's a fairly light rifle, so that doesn't help. I have considered building a .280 AI that has a little bit longer & heavier barrel than my 30-06, or buying or building a 6.5 PRC. Not sure how much less recoil either of those would be compared to the 06, but I would think they'd be great cartridges for mule deer and pronghorn hunting, which would be the primary purpose. Unfortunately a new rifle is not currently in the budget.