Long Shot?

 Shooters seem to be obsessed with long range shots, and it is great to have an accurate rifle that can hit small targets at multiple hundreds of yards, but I like to think practically about hunting. This photo is one of our resident mother deer, with her two babies from last year, at 200 yards across our pond. There is less than 50 feet of woody vegetation between the deer and the pond's edge.  It's an easy shot for a rifle with a trajectory of the 30-06 or 308. Sight it an inch and a half or two above the crosshairs at 100, and 200 yards will be right on. You just have to be steady and pick a shot that won't tag any branches.  Any good marksman can make a heart shot with an off-the-shelf rifle and factory ammo if they are serious about their marksmanship and know their trajectory.  

But, if you are hunting in the woods and don't have unobstructed hundreds-of-yards, the latest whizz-bang rifle caliber isn't going to do you much good. Things get in the way and deer are usually moving, making brush deflection ever more likely with distance. I've shot many groundhogs over the years and the farthest was just 100 yards out. Most of them have been around 25 yards.  A deer was on one side of the barn, and I was on the other, shooting through the barn, just a little more than 50 feet. Another, in the woods, was only at 30 feet. High quality factory ammo and modern barrel forming makes heart shots the norm for today's woods hunters. Rifles that can bang steel at 500 yards and farther must be a lot of fun to shoot, but really aren't a necessity for most of us,