EP426 Long Range Hunting 101

Now, before we get too far into this subject, I want to begin with something that you may not expect.

I want to ask the question, why do you want to do long range hunting? Why do you want to take shots at game at long range? I think there are good answers and there are bad answers to this question, but I think the hunting community has been suffering from too many people trying to hunt at long range.

People that are trying to hunt at long range when they don't need to, or they're not skilled enough to do it, or they don't have the right equipment to do it, or they're just not mature enough to do it properly.

But the big question is why? Why do you want to do it? Because I believe that there are situations and circumstances when taking long range shots is appropriate.

And there are many, many more where I completely recommend against it.

Just don't do it.

Don't try it.

Don't even think about it.

Don't plan for it.

Don't practice for it.

Don't think about it as an option.

And I feel pretty strongly about that.

Now that said, I'm still going to talk about how to do long range hunting in this episode.

But first, I think we need to examine what the motivations are.

And maybe a good step would be to talk about what is long range? How do you define long range? Well, various people have various definitions.

So I'm going to go ahead and just give you my definition.

My definition for long range hunting for this particular episode, I'm not saying it's overarching for everything I've ever done or ever will do.

But in terms of the conversation that I want to have right here and now, I'm talking about pretty much anything beyond about 150 yards.

That's where I'm going to draw not a line in the sand, but a dotted line.

About 150 yards, I'm going to call long range.

Now, when I say that, when I think of a 100-yard shot, I think of that as a long shot.

I don't think about it though falling into a different category of hunting.

So for me, 100 yards, 125 yards, somewhere around there, basically 100 yards with some margin for error is what I think of as a little bit of a poke.

It's a longer shot.

But when you get to about 150 yards, I'm considering that not just a longer shot, but a different kind of hunting, a different approach to hunting.