nakneker
Gold $$ Contributor
Another LR hunting discussion. It’s such a subjective topic that I rarely stop and read them. In short I feel like you have to keep your shots well within in your limits. All of my kids have taken deer and elk at distances most probably wouldn’t attempt. We have steel set up on the west side of our property with targets at 400 yards and every 50 yards out to 1000. We shoot at them from level ground and from a hill thats also on the property. They were all very good at shooting steel and we never lost an animal on a long shot as they grew up. We did have to track two elk, one for multiple days but we recovered them.
The only bad experiences we had were when the game was close, ironically. One daughter completely lost her composure on a big elk, 390 bull, and shot multiple times at 125 yards and never touched it. There are other examples too. The nice thing about glassing and shooting at longer distances is that much of the time the game doesn’t know your there. You can set up, discuss the shot, make sure of a good rest, double check your dope and coach them much easier than you can when a game animal is aware your there and is trying to vacate the premisses.
It’s such debatable topic, I think you just have to decide what is right for you. Imo the animals deserve the respect and we should do our best to make clean kills. That doesn’t always happen and when it doesn’t I think they deserve an honest second effort to recover them. I’ve known guys who walk away and resume the hunt without any effort after a poor hit, I never have liked that.
On a side note when we went to Africa the first time you pay for a wounded animal the same as a recovered animal it’s funny how the shooting distances tend to shrink.
The only bad experiences we had were when the game was close, ironically. One daughter completely lost her composure on a big elk, 390 bull, and shot multiple times at 125 yards and never touched it. There are other examples too. The nice thing about glassing and shooting at longer distances is that much of the time the game doesn’t know your there. You can set up, discuss the shot, make sure of a good rest, double check your dope and coach them much easier than you can when a game animal is aware your there and is trying to vacate the premisses.
It’s such debatable topic, I think you just have to decide what is right for you. Imo the animals deserve the respect and we should do our best to make clean kills. That doesn’t always happen and when it doesn’t I think they deserve an honest second effort to recover them. I’ve known guys who walk away and resume the hunt without any effort after a poor hit, I never have liked that.
On a side note when we went to Africa the first time you pay for a wounded animal the same as a recovered animal it’s funny how the shooting distances tend to shrink.
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