How accurate do you strive to be?

Depends on how I hunt, all my rifles are zero at 100m, if I'm stalking, most likely the animal is within 100m, I just point and shoot. If I'm sitting & spotting, within 150m I like to take neck and head shot, 100m zero doesn't need adjustment within 150. for 200m+, I take lung shot. animals are more relaxed, I have time to measure distance then dial in my scope, if wind is less than 5mph, I don't touch the windage. lung shot has more tolerance for wind reading.

Either way you have to be confident about where your bullet hits. If you are not, pack up your hunting gear, go back to shooting range.
 
H4831 said:
Well of course that 1/2 inch is holding the world of shooting together! Mind you, in all the shooting I have seen in my life I have never seen anyone who could shoot to half inch grouping under hunting conditions. But now, anyone with a computer can do it on their key board.
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Haahaa yep
I just worry about my short range game and Focus mainly on shots under a 100 yards off hand if I'm under 2 MOA and hitting clam shells or bull kelp consistently I'm happy
I will be working on my 300+ yard game this year and shooting off of shooting sticks but at this time right now I'm not taking shots past 200 yards
 
Dead on 100m. Gun will still be fine to 300m holding on hair. 300m is about my limit. Gun should shoot an into a inch or two off bench. I like to be able to knock heads off of grouse with my deer gun. I feel the 100m zero makes this easier as well with threading a close shot thru brush.
 
Sight in the best you can but your rifle's accuracy on a big game hunt will almost never be a factor. Far more important is knowing "when" to shoot. Get yourself calmed down and zoned in. Lots of time for the shakes after.
Lots of the old boys out here in the waisties still have a rifle in the cab 365 days of the year, and when wylee stops after his third bounce he's a dead dog, no turrets involved.
The boy and I drew muley tags last year so we did some extra shooting. I hung an old propane tank below the house at 360 yards. We took a few cracks every day off the sticks. Practice was suspended when he was gonging every shot and I had the odd miss. Of course I took the credit for sighting in his rifle so well and my old LAW must be shot out.
 
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Great thread so much great info here.

One piece I will add is I love to practice shooting gophers out at the farm with a 22 from 30-125 yards, range estimating, different shooting positions and always striving for one shot one kill.

When hunting now I am comfortable shooting prone, sitting, leaning over back pack, a fence, heck when I shot my deer this last November I was standing behind a large tree using it as a rest as my little buck walked right too me...

Testing loads from the bench always looking for that 1/2" group at 100...
 
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Jonny_Cannon said:
Centre of mass, moving or otherwise. 25 yards into a dinner plate with a pistol, 100 yards with a rifle, open sights. Keep it realistic. I can certainly understand, however, people who strive to be super-duper, professional or otherwise. It would be fun to chase those results.

Cannon
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Centre of mass is not an aiming point for a hunter, it is the aiming point for a soldier. Hunters aim at vitals.
 
Something I've noticed is many professionals tend to sight in bang on at 100 yards or so and will hold a bit high for the occasional long shot that comes up. He's set up for "probably". The sport hunter sights in long and ends up holding a bit under on almost every shot. He set up for "maybe" and consciously decided to say screw "probably."

There might be a lesson in there somewhere; but I refuse to
learn it.
 
Dogleg said:
Something I've noticed is many professionals tend to sight in bang on at 100 yards or so and will hold a bit high for the occasional long shot that comes up. He's set up for "probably". The sport hunter sights in long and ends up holding a bit under on almost every shot. He set up for "maybe" and consciously decided to say screw "probably."

There might be a lesson in there somewhere; but I refuse to
learn it.
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If you hedge for "probably," you get the best of both worlds... which is my thinking... zero for MPBR, but utilize a Small killzone of 4"-6" rather than the standard 10"... in most of our deer haunts a 4" KZ-MPBR will do everything with a dead-on hold (I still use a smidge of hold over/under at the extremes) this invariable ends up approximately 2" high at 100 yards and still allows a little margin for human error.
 
A good shot right now, is better than a perfect shot in 30 seconds. Any shot on game involves open ended timing. Because we don't know how long we have before conditions change, its prudent to shoot as quickly as we can shoot well, under the conditions we have to shoot in.

I habitually zero 2" high at 100. That might be a 150 yard zero with a .30/30 or a .458, a 200 yard zero with a .30/06, and a 250 yard zero with a .300 magnum. Modern rifles tend to shoot very flat out to the zero range, then drop off quickly. For that reason, at distances beyond the zero range, I want to be able to dial in the range, or use hold-off points on the reticle.
 
Boomer said:
A good shot right now, is better than a perfect shot in 30 seconds. Any shot on game involves open ended timing. Because we don't know how long we have before conditions change, its prudent to shoot as quickly as we can shoot well, under the conditions we have to shoot in.

I habitually zero 2" high at 100. That might be a 150 yard zero with a .30/30 or a .458, a 200 yard zero with a .30/06, and a 250 yard zero with a .300 magnum. Modern rifles tend to shoot very flat out to the zero range, then drop off quickly. For that reason, at distances beyond the zero range, I want to be able to dial in the range, or use hold-off points on the reticle.
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Sounds like Jeff Cooper :)

Something I liked about Cooper is his approach to problem solving. First he defined the problem then set about solving
it.

Problem #1

Placing good enough hits as fast as possible in the center of vitals of game animals before they bugger off, or the center of the visible portion of an enemy (btbo) , or changing the course of human history as needed at any reasonable range with an easily carried rifle.

Dang, the problem of rifle shooting seems to be hitting.

Thing is; even for a guy that thought shooting clay pigeons out of the air with a rifle
was a valid shooting lesson, the mechanical precision of the tool was way down the long list in importance,
if it made it at all.
 
Dogleg said:
Sounds like Jeff Cooper :)

Something I liked about Cooper is his approach to problem solving. First he defined the problem then set about solving
it.

Problem #1

Placing good enough hits as fast as possible in the center of vitals of game animals before they bugger off, or the center of the visible portion of an enemy (btbo) , or changing the course of human history as needed at any reasonable range with an easily carried rifle.

Dang, the problem of rifle shooting seems to be hitting.

Thing is; even for a guy that thought shooting clay pigeons out of the air with a rifle
was a valid shooting lesson, the mechanical precision of the tool was way down the long list in importance,
if it made it at all.
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Could not agree more, but I'm often surprised how difficult it can be to get people to stretch out beyond the comfort of the bench and practice to improve their skill at shooting from field positions.
 
The average shot taken from a hunting rifle is at 100 yards, from a bench.

The average shot taken in the field is probably a miss.

The first one doesn't do much to help the second one.



*present company excluded.
 
I zero my iron sighted rifles at 200 meters.
If I have time to range it that means I think it is more than 200 , and I take the scope out of my pack, install it on thee rifle and shoot the critter- the scope is zeroed at 300.
Never had an issue with zeroes on the irons or the scope.
Cat
 
This winter I have almost exclusively been shooting iron sighted rimfire offhand at 50m's at 8 inch paper plates. Results have gone from embarrassing to acceptable. Seems easy, but I have seen a few people who have "given it a shot" fail miserably.

I dream of being able to repeatedly shoot accurately at 200 meters with an iron sighted rifle. My consistency seems to fall apart after 150 meters with aperture sights and 100 meters with irons.
 
conor_90 said:
This winter I have almost exclusively been shooting iron sighted rimfire offhand at 50m's at 8 inch paper plates. Results have gone from embarrassing to acceptable. Seems easy, but I have seen a few people who have "given it a shot" fail miserably.

I dream of being able to repeatedly shoot accurately at 200 meters with an iron sighted rifle. My consistency seems to fall apart after 150 meters with aperture sights and 100 meters with irons.
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Those are good honest results Conor.... and some solid ambitions.....

I consider myself a fairly good shot with irons and never owned a scoped rifle until I was in my mid twenties..... Growing up, dad and the gang all used win 30-30 with irons and I never knew what "bench shooting" was until I started reading the parts of outdoor life I used to skim through... offhand and irons was all I ever knew and practiced with...... it would do some shooters good to leave the scope off once in a while.... the exercise of lining up irons offhand provides a shooter some great feedback....
 
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