How much would your hunting success percentage increase if you were able to accurately and confidently place kill shots on game animals within a 600 yard radius? How about 800 yards? Ever think about 1000 yards? Food for thought!

We have all come home empty-handed from a hunting trip where we saw trophy animals we could not harvest because we could not shoot that far. It is the classic ethical dilemma of hunting--the bull or buck we were praying for, but out of reach. Some of us have been so unfortunate as to ignore our ethics and attempt to harvest that game animal at a distance beyond our known shooting capabilities, only to wound it and never find it. Compounding the problem is the fact that most of us can not afford private land hunts, where shooting opportunities are more predictable. Shooting opportunities on public land can be scarce, so we MUST be prepared to capitalize on every feasible scenario. It is tough enough just to find that trophy animal during the scant few days we have to hunt; getting stymied by a short shooting range limit can make a successful hunt impossible to achieve. The final blow is the peer pressure from other hunters to NOT "think outside the box," to attempt to expand our shooting competency past "standard" distances. What's left? A lot of frustrated hunters, empty freezers, and unfilled tags.

As I write this, my husband and I are driving home from Fall, 2002's hunt in New Mexico, towing our little hunting trailer stuffed with the meat, hides, and racks from our two trophy bull elk. My husband harvested his 310-class 6x6 bull with one shot at 409 yards; I took my 315-class 6x6 bull at 585 yards. There were 5 hunters in our camp; all of us had opportunities at trophy bulls between 400 and 600 yards. My husband and I were the only two hunters that scored; the other three, very correctly, did not attempt to shoot, because they all felt their effective shooting range was 300 yards or less. All three hunters expressed deep interest to us in developing the skills and the tools to make effective kill shots at long ranges. They shared with us the mind set they had all been raised with--effective shooting distance is a maximum of 200-300 yards. They wanted to know where we got the information and training to assemble the equipment and skills we have to effectively and ethically kill game at such long distances. What was our secret?!

Dale and I are NOT trained military snipers; in fact, our only formal firearms training is from N.R.A. shooting programs as kids. We are safe, ethical, ordinary hunters who have managed to develop the shooting skills and figure out the equipment needed for effective long-range shooting from ten years of missed opportunities, trial-and-error, and frustration. Shooting accurately and safely at long range is NOT rocket science, does not cost a fortune, and can be done ethically. However, it DOES require work, time and dedication. What we want to accomplish in this article is to save other hunters the ten-year learning curve we went through, in developing our long-distance shooting abilities. The steps involved do not seem to be written down anywhere, so we are going to lay them out for you.