For most of my adult life the self imposed limit for big game has been 450 yards unless the rare conditions of being perfectly calm with a very steady rest then 500 is as far as I’d ever try with confidence based on limits set by field testing.
I think it’s fun to experiment and everything we do is easily testable. This year I looked at extending my self imposed maximums by 100 yards with upgrades to everything that might make a little difference including a little more magnification, a little heavier rifle, better rangefinder, higher BC bullets, even a scope level to see how consistently I’m holding. After a season of rock and paper plate shooting in the land of sagebrush and pine trees it’s clear I can’t make 100% cold bore shots in the field past 500 mainly because at the detail I see light wind down range the wind call error makes it impossible. I could either accept more misses or keep my old self imposed limits, so my limits will remain where they’ve been since the last experiments to extend the range a number of years ago.
What this year has also solidified is other experienced shooters around me aren’t gifted eagle eye wind callers, but rather the allure of long range shooting has an assumption of higher and higher mis rates the farther out someone shoots. More blown off legs, brisket hits, gut shots, and animals not recovered that just aren’t talked about. Some well known long distance hunters have outright lied about their cold bore wind call errors on game. An innocent question asked by someone they don’t know, answered in a seemingly honest matter-of-fact way seems believable, but then a few years later when they forget what they said earlier, they know you better as a nit-picker judgmental SOB, and then the story changes dramatically, the honesty of the situation is much more clear.
Everyone comes to terms with their person limits and what they are willing to live with, that’s always be the case since we first figured out how to kill things.
