What is a 100 yard rifle??

[petemi]

I put a new scope on my .357 Handi and just finished dialing it in.  Last shot rang the 300 yard gong just fine.  NO!!! it is not a 300 yard deer rifle......but it is ACCURATE to 300 yards.  I'm sure it would dump a fox or even perhaps a coyote at that distance.  Again, It is sighted in for 100 yards, I know the drop and it hits every time.  You've got to practice with instinctive shooting as you would with a long bow.  Try it, you'll like it.

I guess the problem is most of the folks on this forum never used a long bow.  They grew up on compounds.  They use this pin or the other or the scope.  Or, they shoot very flat shooting calibers like my .22-250 Handi and expect the bullet to go exactly where the crosshairs are.  Anything you own will shoot 300 yards except shot.  You can shoot a .22 LR 300 yards if you can hold it high enough.

I get ticked off when people tell me my .45-70 is only a 100 yard rifle.  It will hit wherever I can see to point it.  If it misses, it's not the rifles fault, it's the driver.  I KNOW it will kill whitetails out to 400 yards.

Pete

[Lazermule]

That sounds pretty neat!  What is your drop or hold over with that combo?

I like to do the same types of things things in practicing beyond the practical range of the weapon. I shoot 6 inch balloons at 100 yards with my Taurus Titanium 6" tracker 357.  I actually prefer to use 38 special loads as it seems to be more consistent.  The pistol has open sights.

I also like to shoot my 50 cal muzzle loader at a 6 inch gong at 250 yards.  I can hit it reliably with about 24" hold over.  It has Williams Fire Sights on it.

It is fun, like you say inputting some instincts can be fun.  That's when you can be assured you really know your gun.

LAZER

[skifastchad]

Funny isn't it?  The guns that almost made bison extinct 100 years ago aren't big enough to shoot deer at 100yards today.

[petemi]

Lazer, thanks for the comment.  I can't begin to tell you what the holdover is, 'cause I just do it, I never measure it.  If it looks right, shoot.  If you're wrong, adjust.  That's how you learn.  They were talking here a week or so ago about measuring ranges with a rangefinder, and adjusting sights accordingly.  My thinking is get a good idea of what your target looks like at various ranges, learn to estimate distance, and go with instictive shooting.  The end result is "Bang Flop", without 1000 bucks worth of geegaws.

Pete

[petemi]

Funny isn't it?  The guns that almost made bison extinct 100 years ago aren't big enough to shoot deer at 100yards today.

 

I'm not going to hazzard a guess as to how many they wounded, but they shot them beyond a quarter of a mile at times, and that was with Vernier sights.  A 1500 lb or better Buff is a lot more than even a 200 lb. deer.  Do the facts speak for themselves? 

Pete

[Badnews Bob]

Kentucky windage. It made them famous couple hundred years ago, still works today. I've always hunted that way, especially when I was a young wood rat who didn't know you could drift that front sight.

I think I was a better shot before I learned how to shoot correctly.  I knew where my rifle hit and thats where I aimed.

BTW I'll be taken the ole smoke pole out tommarrow for the last weekend of gun season here, hope for some good luck.

[petemi]

Bob, I'm glad to hear you're able to do that.  Hopefully this new year will be better for you.  All your friends here did what we could.  Everyone here is special.  I hope it helped.  I guess we're all having a bad year.  Good luck hunting.  Don't forget wind drift too!!!   Pete

[Badnews Bob]

Thanks Petemi, I have a place that don't require much walking and I'll be useing a ground blind,That is if I don't just hunt off the front porch of the cabin, I sure aint gonna do nothing to hard.

[petemi]

If ya need help draggin him in, give a holler.

Pete

[Graybeard]

A .38 special handgun shooting HB wadcutters might not shoot 300 yards. I still recall a story told by my best friend Billy Doss (now deceased). There is a nice size lake up in the Talladega National Forest where he used to fish and hunt on the nearby NF land. One day he was there with his Ruger (I think) shooting factory loaded 148 grain HBWCs and wondered how high he'd have to hold to reach the far end of the lake. Having been there myself several times I'm pretty sure it's a tad less than 300 yards.

He first aimed up on the bank a little ways and the bullet dropped into the water. He kept shooting and aiming higher and higher until finally he aimed at the top of a dead tree on the mountain above the lake. The bullet still plopped down in the water and failed to reach the far bank. He gave it up as hopeless. Those slow bullets with near no SD at all just don't have it in them to go that far. Maybe from a rifle it would but not from the handgun he used that day.

[FW Conch]

According to "rem-shoot"   405gr  45-70,   0 @ 100yds,   @ 400yds is 169" low (14 feet),   MV 918 fps,

ME 758 ft/lbs, bullet drift in 10mph wind   19.5 inches .

JMHO- "I" would not take that shot @ a deer .

[dpe.ahoy]

Good shooting with the 357 Pete.  The kids and I love shooting the 5 rifles I have in 357.  Keeps me busy at a single stage reloading press, that's for sure.  DP

[Saloon slug]

I am with ya Pete.
 I love shooting my 94 in .45colt at 200 yards and beyond. I have done it enough that I know what notch to put the rear sight on to get it out to 250 from there out its all hold over. Now I wouldnt shoot deer with it at those distances but it sure is fun to bust milk jugs way out there

[Default]

 I agree with ya there Pete ,

  I enjoy long range steel banging (100 to 125 yrds) with my springfield mil-spec 1911

    Default

[Wakaba]

...why not, I have dropped targets with an M4 at 600yrds.  It's all about knowing what you are doing!

Good job with the .357, I may just add that to my list when customer service calls for the payment for my .44 and huntsman barrels

[petemi]

According to "rem-shoot"   405gr  45-70,   0 @ 100yds,   @ 400yds is 169" low (14 feet),   MV 918 fps,

ME 758 ft/lbs, bullet drift in 10mph wind   19.5 inches .

JMHO- "I" would not take that shot @ a deer .

That's not a Hornady LE at 2050 fps, or a Buffalo Bore at 2000 plus either.

Pete

[FW Conch]

  Now, steel plates & milk jugs is a different story !  I once had a 94, chambered in 44 mag, got stolen,

  that I did that stuff with - great fun !   Jim

[greg916]

the 45-70 is definately accurate at long range. However I do not consider it a long range hunting cartridge. Misjudgement on the yardage at long range,such as 400 yards, just by a few feet can mean the difference between a clean kill or a wounded animal. That is the reason the 30-30 put the skids on the 45/70 in the 1890's.

[coyotejoe]

the 45-70 is definately accurate at long range. However I do not consider it a long range hunting cartridge. Misjudgement on the yardage at long range,such as 400 yards, just by a few feet can mean the difference between a clean kill or a wounded animal. That is the reason the 30-30 put the skids on the 45/70 in the 1890's.

Agreed! I have enjoyed busting rocks with a Blackhawk .44 at ridiculous ranges but on game, and I don't care if it is "just a coyote" I don't squeeze unless I'm sure. Guess work and hunches have no place in ethical hunting. Even in the blackpowder era people like A. C. Gould were experimenting with lighter bullets loaded to higher velocity to flatten the trajectory of the 45/70 by just a bit. When Teddy Roosevelt got his first smokeless, high velocity rifle he raved about how flat it shot and how fast it killed. That was a 30/40 krag and he immediately put aside his 45/75 Winchester.

[Singleshotsam]

The best way i can think of rifle ballistics is to take a water hose and put your thumb over the end of it.  You can vary the flow of the water to increase the psi, and alter the distance that water will travel.  You'll soon learn that the water, no matter how much you restrict the flow, will only travel so far, and that's it.  You can also observe that the higher psi, restriced flow will saturate less at long distances. 

Rifle ballistics work in the same general definition.  As far as long range hunting is concerned, I myself question the ethics of bow hunting.  Yeah, you can kill a deer w/ a bow, like folks did in the 14th century, but there are much better way of going about it than stabbing them.

Consequently I'm reading a book written by Teddy right now called "The Wilderness Hunter."  Which he highlights his game hunts in north america from his ranch in the Dakota's.  One of the most interesting books I've ever read.   Teddy was quite an ethical hunter.

[petemi]

We're missing a couple of points here.  First I said "I know it will kill whitetails out to 400 yards."  I did not say I would try it.  Secondly, Teddy's trap door cartridges are not necessarily ours today, some shoot them,  I certainly don't.  Our modern loads are pushing three times the performance of those relics.

the 45-70 is definately accurate at long range. However I do not consider it a long range hunting cartridge. Misjudgement on the yardage at long range,such as 400 yards, just by a few feet can mean the difference between a clean kill or a wounded animal. That is the reason the 30-30 put the skids on the 45/70 in the 1890's.

That is interesting.  I have a lot more faith in my .45-70 to kill cleanly at distance than I ever had in my .30-30s.  Again, in the 1890s, they weren't shooting modern cartridges.  I think everyone here should go shoot a box of LEs or Buffalo Bores and then come back and talk.  There's a new .45-70 out there.

Pete

[Singleshotsam]

The context in which you said it mad me think that you woudn't hesistate to hammer a deer @ 400 w/ the ol' gov't.  Thanks for clearing that up.

[FW Conch]

greg, joe, sam, pete, that's what I meant .  I have never hunted the long distances of the west, but

IMVHO, east of the Mississippi if we can't get inside 400yds , we ain't huntin,  we shootin  !   

Good Luck  &  Good huntin & shootin  to  all  -  Jim

[petemi]

Most of us cart out rifles out to the range, punch five or ten holes in a piece of paper at a hundred yards and go home happy.  They never LEARN their load.  Where is it at 50, 200, 250, 300 yards.  I have the good fortune to be able to shoot any and every day from 25 to 400 yards, and I do it.  I find a load each rifle likes and I stick to it and learn it.  The other advantage I have is that I hunt my own land and know the yardages.  

I've got too many guns to remember the ballistics for all of them, so I print them on a 3x5 card, plastic laminate them, and tuck them under the buttstock cartridge holder on my Handis.  That works well for the rifles I shoot infrequently. (7mm-08, .30-06, etc.)  The .357 and the .45-70 I shoot almost daily and there's no need for that.  I just know where the bullet's going.  The .357 is sighted in for 60 yards and everything else 100, but I still shoot them all (including the .357) accurately at 300.  The .45-70 is going to a 500 yard gong as soon as the snow goes out this spring.  I'll probably raise the sights to dead on at 300 and see what happens from there.

I shoot the .45-70 at obsolete 20 lb propane tanks at 300 yards.  The Hornady LEs make about a 3/4 inch hole going in and a half dollar size hole coming out.  Those tanks are tough, and there's plenty of down range energy there.  The tanks are also pretty close in size to the vital area of a deer or bear.  I try to smack them in the center shooting various positions as I would in the field..

[Lazermule]

I shoot the .45-70 at obsolete 20 lb propane tanks at 300 yards.  The Hornady LEs make about a 3/4 inch hole going in and a half dollar size hole coming out.  Those tanks are tough, and there's plenty of down range energy there.  The tanks are also pretty close in size to the vital area of a deer or bear.  I try to smack them in the center shooting various positions as I would in the field..

That sounds fun as heck!!!

LAZER

[FW Conch]

petemi , I'm a former "long bower" from the 50's , I'm all for Kentucky windage & hold over  &   sometime I'll

talk about the " instinctive shooting exploits" of my late Father.  But the 400yd deer statement was a little

out of my comfort zone .      Jim

[tykempster]

I would take a shot at a 400 yard deer with my 45-70 no questions asked.  Of course I don't use "kentucky" windage, and I wouldn't take the shot with much wind blowing.  If it's just drop and not drift, I could hit a deer with my 45-70 first shot 400 yards every time.

[FW Conch]

THAT, is good shottin !  shootin  ?  whatever

[petemi]

I would take a shot at a 400 yard deer with my 45-70 no questions asked.  Of course I don't use "kentucky" windage, and I wouldn't take the shot with much wind blowing.  If it's just drop and not drift, I could hit a deer with my 45-70 first shot 400 yards every time.

petemi , I'm a former "long bower" from the 50's , I'm all for Kentucky windage & hold over  &   sometime I'll

talk about the " instinctive shooting exploits" of my late Father.  But the 400yd deer statement was a little

out of my comfort zone .      Jim

Jim, you didn't read it.  I said IT would take a deer at 400 yards, not that I would try it.

I can shoot south off my porch 1000 yards.  I'm not out west, I'm in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, farm and deer country.  I shoot distance for two reasons, First: I can.  Second:  Sometimes I have to, and I'd better know how.  I have woods also, and have killed a doe with a head shot at 5 yards with my Blackhawk.
I just have to be ready for both possibilities.

[FW Conch]

OK pete !  I'm learnin here !  But Michigan's pretty far west for me !      Jim