About 25 years ago, well before I needed glasses, I noticed a couple mounds in the field behind my house. The soybeans had just been taken off exposing a couple of groundhog homes. Using binoculars I verified groundhogs as the animals I was seeing on the surface near the mounds. Next I got my Colt SP1 and a magazine of my handloads (Sierra 55gr. spitzer bullets over 26.1 grains of H335 with magnum primer). I had a martin house at the top of an 18' 4X4 post which was bolted between 2 more 4X4's sunk in the ground each with about 5 feet remaining above ground. I rested the rifle on top of one of the 4X4's and braced it firmly against the vertical post. I framed the groundhog in the sight and waited for it to stand up. When it did, I raised the front sight a couple inches and fired. The hog dropped dead. I wasn't really expecting to hit it having never taken a shot that long on such a small target. I paced off the distance at about 280 yards and found the hog had been hit in the head. I was convinced I'd just made a lucky shot. I walked back to my firing position to get my rifle and noticed that another hog had come up from his burrow. So I repeated my previous actions and dropped the second ground hog with a head shot, this time at about 260 yards. I felt like quite the rifleman that day.

I should add that since then I've missed ground hogs at much closer range.

Then there was "Boss Hogg" who I tried to get for two years and never did. Old, grizzled and huge for a groundhog, he had a great location for seeing trouble coming through the farm fields for a couple hundred yards to the south, east and north. To the west was the tree line where his burrows were. Beyond that was a substantial stream. I tried every approach, including belly crawling through a young bean field, to get a shot at him. I swear he toyed with me as if he knew how far away I could hit a target. He'd tantalize me by showing himself and then drop and run when I'd shoulder my rifle. Eventually, I'd walk up to where his burrow openings were and he'd be waiting there, standing on his hind legs. As soon he knew I'd seen him, sometimes from just a few feet, he whistle and "ker-plunk" he'd drop down his hole. Never got him. My white whale.

Was hunting with a friend that gets buck fever. He missed a deer standing still broadside at 50 yards. He called me on the radio and said it was heading for my area. It was running wide open. Saw brown fur in my scope and swung ahead of it and fired. It went down and slid 15 feet. 220 yards in a full run.

Shot a bumble bee out of the air with a BB gun maybe 20 feet away.

Was telling that story to a friend at his backyard cookout. He didn't believe me. I told him I could shoot a clothespin on his clothesline in the backyard backwards with a mirror. He promptly went and got his sons BB gun and a mirror. We stepped off 10 yards. The whole party gathered to watch. I had no idea if I could do it. Hit the clothespin first shot. He couldn't believe it. (Me either!). All the other guys tried without success. My friend spent the next 2 hours trying and finally hit it once.

quote:

Originally posted by RHINOWSO:
^^^^^^
Wasn’t that a night too?

And Jones's boots were still in 'Nam.

Only really great rifle shot was a muley buck about 300yds offhand heart shot 270 rifle. All the rest were just regular great

Killed a deer without making an entry hole. Was at a run dead away from me about 50 yards. Field dressing was a real dirty job, guts were shredded, but no loss of meat. It was also my only hide ever that didn't need stitching up of any holes.

Many years ago, I sighted in a friend's black powder rifle for him. It was an old Hawken style rifle with the set triggers, and was a good shooting gun. He wanted to shoot it and see how it was, so we went up to the dirt pile where everyone shot at.
He walked off 100 steps and sat up a 2 liter drink bottle full of water. I laughed and told him that wasn't much of a challenge, so I was going to shoot the lid off the bottle. He bet me $20 that I couldn't do it. I pulled the set trigger and then sighted in, and proceeded to blow the lid off the bottle just like I called it.
He tried a half dozen times to replicate that, but couldn't. Considering the open sights on that rifle, I probably couldn't do it again either.

No best single shot can I remember. There was always the odd one. My best over all result was 69/72 (approx 1.5MOA) in the Swiss 300m service rifle completion. It was shot prone from bipod with a SIG550 with an adjustable iris inside the diopter and 5.6mm GP90 ammo. The course is 18 rounds, without sighters. My average score of the last 10 years is 64.4/72.

I saw my dad make several long shots at steep angles in poor conditions over the years that resulted in 1 shot kills on animals. I always try to practice those shots but I’ve never really had to shoot like that myself.

quote:

Originally posted by P250UA5:
A coached X-ring at 1k, having never shot further than about 130yds.
NikonUser called the wind for me, while I was behind his F-TR rifle. Have the target somewhere at the house.

Yeah, you did just fine; handled it like a pro. It was fun, wasn't it?

quote:

Originally posted by NikonUser:

quote:

Originally posted by P250UA5:
A coached X-ring at 1k, having never shot further than about 130yds.
NikonUser called the wind for me, while I was behind his F-TR rifle. Have the target somewhere at the house.

Yeah, you did just fine; handled it like a pro. It was fun, wasn't it?

Quite, would love to go at it again. Wish I had the budget to get into it for real.

When I was about 12, I shot a Dove with a .22 LR rifle. It was an almost vertical shot. It dropped dead instantly. We never found a bullet hole. My uncle teased me that it died of a heart attack.

During the 1997 deer season in Minnesota, we had a huge snowfall during Halloween. It was a pain to get around anywhere as you just tended to go in thigh deep.

My wife gave me grief about buying a license and not wanting to go out, so at about 8:00 in the morning, I reluctantly got dressed, put on the snowshoes and headed out.
I was walking the fence line behind our yard, when I saw three deer enter the field below me. I sat down against a fence post, rested the 870 on my knees and fired.
I saw the 3" magnum slug hit the snow, high.
Confused, the deer came to a dead stop and started looking round. I aimed a little lower and saw the snow fly a lower.
I split the difference and fired again and one of the deer dropped, shot through the spine.
When paced off it was 268 paces. Just sheer luck, I guess.
A friend was driving by and saw the whole thing. He pulled up close to the deer, we slung it in his pickup after I tagged it and he took it straight to the meat locker (which was also the registration station).

When I walked back in half an hour after I left the house, my wife didn't believe that I actually got my deer.

If I had to guess, it would a +/-300 yrd kill shot on a mule deer buck uphill on a ridge. 30-06 Rem BDL with a 165 Hornady BTSP handload.

My most satisfying shot was when a buddy and I were driving back to our hunting camp on an Elk hunt and we saw a couple of Grouse on the side of the dirt road and he got out of the truck with his 12 ga. and I got out with just my 44 mag Ruger Blackhawk on my hip. One of the birds flushed and flew to my left and I did a quick draw and dropped him with a single shot. My buddy looked at me and his jaw dropped and said he didn't ever want to get in a gun fight with me, ever! What I didn't mention to him was that I had 2 CCI shotshells loaded in the cylinder and even then it was shithouse luck. To this day I never told him about the shotshells.

Jim

A few years ago was the 50th anniversary of the family’s deer camp, Camp No Buck. There was a huge party thrown the Sunday before buck season. All the surrounding camps and townsfolk were there.

I showed up late to the party nearing dark and had yet to shoot my rifle in. Someone had set up a small container of tannerite near the creek. The crowd wanted a boom and here I Come walking in with my rifle. Open the case, load a round, rest on a rickety ass white plastic lawn chair and double BOOM!

It wasn’t a terribly far shot but the pressure of a hundred or so guests watching and then the pride of my grandfather as he gloats to all about his eldest grandson made it my best shot ever.

A prairie dog at 1092 yards in South Dakota two years ago.

nothing crazy, but I smoked this 35# coyote at a stepped off 290 yards a few years back.

Killed a mangy coyote at just under 200 yards (measured it with a rangefinder after the kill) using a 22lr henry carbine (16’) with open sights. It was running broadside while a few of my friends were out on a property doing some plinking. I had a scoped 10/22 hb on me when we saw it running. I tried to quickly chamber a round and it jammed. So I grabbed the lever action, and yelled at the cayote. It made the mistake of stopping to take a quick look.

Just as one of my friends was saying “there’s no fu**ing way you are going to hit…” I fired off the shot. I recall aiming about two and a half feet over the shoulder. Luckily there was no wind and the damn thing fell dead without moving an inch. I was just as shocked as they were, but played it off like that was simply part and parcel of my sniper skillz. They still talk about it to this day. I’ve made other impressive shots thought my life, but never in front of so many spectators.

White Tail in the Rio Grande Valley at 300 yards down a sendero at dusk. By dusk I mean the very end of dusk. This was back before I put illuminated reticles on my hunting rifles. Tikka 270 with Zeiss glass. Federal Vital Shock 130 gr Sierra BTSP. DRT - animal didn’t take a step.

as far as having an audience, I was out duck hunting with a buddy a few years ago on some ponds in N Ga. well, our duck season overlaps some with dove season and both happened to be in at the time. I had grabbed my friends' backup Beretta to go check out a pond but there were no ducks. we were standing around talking at the edge of the pond when 3 doves flew towards us. I had 3" steel #2's in the gun and as the birds came over I promptly dropped 2 of them, and then the third circled back and I completed the trifecta with my third shell. He tried very hard to sell me that gun but I told him it had nothing to do with the gun but everything to do with the shooter...

I was hunting red stag in the Las Pampas region of Argentina a couple of years ago. Shortly after I'd arrived, I discovered that I'd (stupidly) brought the wrong box of ammo for my Ruger #1B (single shot) in 30'06. Fortunately, hosts had some very old Remington Corelokt 180 grain (RN) loads that would work, but the ballistics were quite different from the rounds my gun was set up for. The estancia only had a 75 yard target for sighting in purposes, but I sighted in the Ruger as best I could and used the internet to find and record the holdovers.

A couple of mornings later, I was sitting along a two strand fence line when a nice stag appeared some distance away. My guide had a range finder, but he wasn't with me at the time. The animal was further than I cared to guess, but between us were ten stakes, supporting two strands of wire about three feet high, intended to deter cattle from crossing one parcel to the next. I figured that about 30-35 yards was the distance between each stake, estimating the range to be roughly 330 yards. Then I estimated my holdover on the stag after considering that they were larger than a mule deer, but smaller than our elk. I pressed the trigger and momentarily lost my view of the stag during the recoil, but heard the "whap" of the bullet strike and saw the animal rear back and fall.

The stag hadn't gone six feet from where it had stood and when the guide returned, we used the laser to determine the shot had been taken at exactly 327 yards. This isn't very far using a long-range rifle sighted with modern ammo, "dial-in" optics, and laser ranging, but considering the relatively basic equipment I was using, my unfamiliarity with the size of this species of deer, and the necessity of coming up with a reasonable estimate of the distance between us, I was very pleased with the fact that I'd scored an "X" ring hit with my single shot rifle.

I'm posting this pic with the understanding that members interested in this topic aren't going to be offended.

Years ago, I introduced a guy at work to shooting. Within a few days he went out and purchased a Remington 788 in .22-250. He also wanted to reload and bought and old fashioned Lee reloading kit, the kind that you use a hammer to resize the case.

He brought that over to my house and we used some powder and bullets that I happen to have on hand and loaded up 20 rounds.

Took this guy and his new gun to the range, quickly zeroed it in and shot a ten round group you could cover with a dime at 100 yds off the bench.