What's Your Longest Kill?

snake284

I killed a deer, well two actually, at about 400 yards once while helping a farmer friend cull out some does. Those were some very long shots. It was out in an open field and I shot 5 rounds and killed two does. I didn't have a very good rest.

What is your longest kill you have made? P-Dogs count. They should count double because of their size.

Jayhawker

A raccoon in a stubble field at 426 yards (lasered).....300 WM - 165 grain SST.
Several deer out near 400....

SirGeorgeKillian

30 yards, a squirrel with my bow. Damn near cut him in half. Little punk was raping my corn pile.

Buffco

175 yards, coyote, .270.

JerryBobCo

440 yards on a prairie dog with my .204. In some circles, this is a chip shot. For me, it was quite an accomplishment.

wildgene

...black bear @770yds w/ a 7mm RM, one of the stoopider things I've done, had to drive 4.5mi. back down the rd. to get under him & crawl a 1/4mi. straight up thru old logging slash to recover it...

Varmintmist

425 (est) on a groundhog. Might have been a bit more but the drop doped out real close to that. No way to step it out, hill to hill with 3 fences and a creek between.

Most challenging was probably the deer at 88 yards (est) with a flintlock and PRB's with the wind howling and snow blowing.

Longest time wise was my first archery kill. Took years to get one in front of me.

Ernie Bishop

Prairie dog 1800 yards. 6.5-284 XP-100 140 A-Max
Big game: Buck Antelope 1037 yards 7WSM XP-100 162 A-Max

timc

I took a coyote once at somewhere in the 600 - 700 yard range but it wasn't really good shooting. He stood there on the crest of a little rise on the far end of 2 plowed fields and let me shoot a half dozen rounds at him while I walked them up using the dust where the rounds were hitting to get the right hold over.

My real best shot was a deer at about 375 yards. He walked out just past a trail wherel I have shot at, Or I guess I should say (missed) pigs many times so I had it figured out pretty well.

If I had to say confident shots they would be 300 yards or less.

bullsi1911

200 yards on an Axis doe. Single shot from an NEF .308 with a Leupold Vari-X II 3-9x40
http://forums.gunsandammo.com/showthread.php?3992-Final-harvest-of-the-season-Axis

BigDanS

A spotted sow at 65 yards with irons sights on my SKS.... yeah I know...

D

Teach

My longest kill was about 12 feet- - - - -ran over a King Cobra with a Jeep in Thailand- - - - - -backed up and did it again- - - - -several times- - - - -to make sure it was dead!
Jerry

bisley

All my deer hunting has been in the woods - my longest is 118 yards.

I've made some lucky shots on jack rabbits and coyotes during my teen years in the Texas Panhandle, and recently a 35 yard head shot on a walking feral hog, with an XD45 Compact - it didn't kill him, but knocked him cuckoo and I was able to finish him, up close.

Buffco

BigDanS wrote: »

A spotted sow at 65 yards with irons sights on my SKS.... yeah I know...

D

No worries. These western hunters don't understand the meaning of the words "thick brush". :tooth: I feel your pain brother. I usually hunt with an iron sighted .30-30, just because its all I need in most cases.

wildgene

Buffco wrote: »

No worries. These western hunters don't understand the meaning of the words "thick brush". :tooth: I feel your pain brother. I usually hunt with an iron sighted .30-30, just because its all I need in most cases.

..."thick brush" don't really mean much. Not when you grow up hunting where phrases like "black timber", "alder thicket", "cedar swamp", "reproduction", "shiny leaf ceanothus", "clearcut" aren't ground descriptions, they're topography, then you add elevations that are measured in thousands of feet & distances between "here" & "there" that are farther than a lot of people commute...

Ernie Bishop

As mentioned, not all western hunting is "open."

Linefinder

Prairie dog - 796 yards, 6mm Rem, 75 grain VMax.
Antelope - 440 yards, 6mm Rem, 95 grain NBT.
Whitetail deer - 379 yards, .270 Win, 130 grain NBT.
Jackrabbit - 528 yards, .223 Rem, 40 grain VMax.
Elk - 110 yards, .270 Win, 160 grain Partition.

But, I think the "coolest" thing I ever did was killed 3 pdogs with 4 shots at 721 yards with my .223 Rem shooting 55 grain VMaxes at a slow MV of 3050 fps. The elevation turret took a lot of cranking.

Mike

Linefinder

knitepoet wrote: »

:worthy:

Thanks, but there was zip-zero wind that morning, a highly unusual condition in a dogtown. When pdog shooting, I load single-shot instead of from the magazine. Had I been a little bit quicker on the reload, I think I'd have made it 4 for 5, but the last one finally developed a little situational awareness and made it down the hole before I could launch my fifth shot.

I credit it entirely to a complete lack of wind. As JeffInTexas once said...."Distance isn't the issue, but the wind can make it interesting". It certainly can, and lack thereof can make you impress yourself sometimes......until you remember the wind wasn't blowing.

Mike

NN

50 yds on a rabbit with #6 shot from an 11-87.

It died from laughing 'cause it took 3 shots.

Linefinder

Paul, that reminds me of another aspect to that story that I've never told. Aside from the lack of wind, I give Dan Johnson the lion's share of the credit for it even happening.

This was during my hey-day as a pdog shooter. I was going through 1500-2000 rounds a month over the dogtowns, and my hit rate was probably hovering around 90%, with some days even higher. Keep in mind during this time, though I was rotating between three rifles each trip, I managed to burn out the first 8" of rifling on my first .223 in 14 months. It was a rare week that I wasn't over a rifle in the middle of nowhere two days a week, and sometimes as high as four. I was a pdog killing machine, and while I'm sure there were better out there, I never met any of them.

Anyway, it was about this time that DJ had his article run in G&A that's jist was that LR shooting of pdogs was somewhat unethical. Apparently he'd been on enough pdog shoots to "know" that a high percentage of LR pdog shots resulted in wounding of pdogs instead of outright kills. My immediate thoughts were "What does a guy that lives in South Carolina know about shooting pdogs other than what he's seen on the few and far between trips out west", and..."apparently he doesn't know that a VMax that collides with a pdog usually results in an explosion, rarely a wound".
Those were my thoughts but Scooters response was more direct and public.....He posted, "Dan, your experiences tell me that you need to hang out with a better class of shooters". God bless 'em, if Scooter was nothing else, he certainly could be direct.

Anyway, in spite of Dan's advance warning to me in PM before the article was published that "this ones going to upset a few pdog shooters", I took it a little personal.

A couple days later I posted something about a pdog trip and mentioned a couple 600ish yard shots I'd made. Though Dan rarely posted, he did post to that thread, saying in effect that he was 100% certain that I couldn't do it on demand (to which I agreed at the time, and still do....distance is only one condition, others come in to play that affect the shot more than mere trajectory). But, then he added that he was almost as certain that I couldn't do it twice in a row.

Two days later found me over a perfectly situated dogtown under perfect conditions. Thinking about what Dan had said. Taking it personal. With four pdogs sitting at 721 yards and nary a breeze in sight. With me in my shooting prime.

The first shot missed by such a small amount that I made no subsequent correction (Dan and I agreed I couldn't do it on demand, and we were right...the first shot missed). But the next three shots resulted in thinly spread pdog anatomy decorating a three yard square piece of dirt. And if I'd been a little faster......I'm pretty sure it would have been four consecutive.

I remember thinking as I surveyed the damage, "I'll be damned. Not a single one flopping. Scooter was right".

Mike

snake284

snake284 wrote: »

I killed a deer, well two actually, at about 400 yards once while helping a farmer friend cull out some does. Those were some very long shots. It was out in an open field and I shot 5 rounds and killed two does. I didn't have a very good rest.

BTW, this wasn't my .270, it was my Model 700 BDL 6 mm Remington with a handload of if I remember right 45 grains IMR 4831 under a 100 grain SGK. I didn't have a Chrony then, but as I best remember that powder charge was for a 105 grain Speer Bullet which the book gave as 3037 FPS MV, so I figure my 100 grain Game Kings were doing at least 3050 FPS and then some.

Buffco

Linefinder wrote: »

Paul, that reminds me of another aspect to that story that I've never told. Aside from the lack of wind, I give Dan Johnson the lion's share of the credit for it even happening.

This was during my hey-day as a pdog shooter. I was going through 1500-2000 rounds a month over the dogtowns, and my hit rate was probably hovering around 90%, with some days even higher. Keep in mind during this time, though I was rotating between three rifles each trip, I managed to burn out the first 8" of rifling on my first .223 in 14 months. It was a rare week that I wasn't over a rifle in the middle of nowhere two days a week, and sometimes as high as four. I was a pdog killing machine, and while I'm sure there were better out there, I never met any of them.

Anyway, it was about this time that DJ had his article run in G&A that's jist was that LR shooting of pdogs was somewhat unethical. Apparently he'd been on enough pdog shoots to "know" that a high percentage of LR pdog shots resulted in wounding of pdogs instead of outright kills. My immediate thoughts were "What does a guy that lives in South Carolina know about shooting pdogs other than what he's seen on the few and far between trips out west", and..."apparently he doesn't know that a VMax that collides with a pdog usually results in an explosion, rarely a wound".
Those were my thoughts but Scooters response was more direct and public.....He posted, "Dan, your experiences tell me that you need to hang out with a better class of shooters". God bless 'em, if Scooter was nothing else, he certainly could be direct.

Anyway, in spite of Dan's advance warning to me in PM before the article was published that "this ones going to upset a few pdog shooters", I took it a little personal.

A couple days later I posted something about a pdog trip and mentioned a couple 600ish yard shots I'd made. Though Dan rarely posted, he did post to that thread, saying in effect that he was 100% certain that I couldn't do it on demand (to which I agreed at the time, and still do....distance is only one condition, others come in to play that affect the shot more than mere trajectory). But, then he added that he was almost as certain that I couldn't do it twice in a row.

Two days later found me over a perfectly situated dogtown under perfect conditions. Thinking about what Dan had said. Taking it personal. With four pdogs sitting at 721 yards and nary a breeze in sight. With me in my shooting prime.

The first shot missed by such a small amount that I made no subsequent correction (Dan and I agreed I couldn't do it on demand, and we were right...the first shot missed). But the next three shots resulted in thinly spread pdog anatomy decorating a three yard square piece of dirt. And if I'd been a little faster......I'm pretty sure it would have been four consecutive.

I remember thinking as I surveyed the damage, "I'll be damned. Not a single one flopping. Scooter was right".

Mike

Thank you for that story. What was Dan's response to your shooting?

Linefinder

Truthfully.......I posted the results obliquely (IOW, not in a confrontational "call-out" manner), and he didn't respond at all. I've never known if he simply didn't read the thread or just didn't care to respond.

Mike

Teach

I've taken several crows and a couple of groundhogs at 400+. Here in Tennessee, walking shots in from dust plumes isn't possible- - - -we've got this green stuff called "grass" that usually keeps a miss from giving any visible reference of where it hit. Groundhogs in particular are usually a one-shot proposition. Once they hear the shot, they hightail it for their burrow, and it's usually no more than a few yards away. Occasionally, a crow will stick around for a second attempt, but not often. Early in the spring, the young, dumb groundhogs usually don't survive the first hay cutting. Once the grass is short enough to see them, they make very good targets.
Jerry

Linefinder

Teach wrote: »

Here in Tennessee, walking shots in from dust plumes isn't possible- - - -we've got this green stuff called "grass" that usually keeps a miss from giving any visible reference of where it hit.
Jerry

You pretty much nailed it. Here, if I know the range, a 400 yard shot under almost any conditions makes me yawn. Back in Louisiana, forget about it. It's hard to learn about LR shooting if you don't know where your misses land. You learn more by your misses than you do by your hits. A vertical paper target immediately followed by a backstop doesn't yield the same learning experience that a coke-bottle size target against a flat, dusty background yields.

Mike

snake284

Around here, I don't have even a 400 yard range to practice on. And unless it's pretty dry, and that's not all the time, you won't see your misses. The bullet will go into the black clay ground undetected. So the only real practice would be a range and there are none within 80 miles of here longer than 200 yards. So 600+ yard shots are iffy for me. Even 400 yard shots are a big challenge. Practice makes perfect. However I used to get some long range practice, though the distance was totally by guestimation Back in the 70s and 80s I used to shoot Sand Hill cranes off the crops for this same farmer hunting buddy. In the plowed fields you could see the dirt fly and you shot and adjusted your elevation and windage and shot till you got close enough to hit them or scare them off. Sand Hills are very destructive to young corn and milo plants.

Bigslug

Prairie dog at 513 yards - Ruger 77VT .22-250

gator

Not my longest but the one that I'm most proud of was a one shot kill on a coyote with a single six with the LR cylinder at 75 paces.

bklysen

Linefinder wrote: »

...I credit it entirely to a complete lack of wind. As JeffInTexas once said...."Distance isn't the issue, but the wind can make it interesting". It certainly can, and lack thereof can make you impress yourself sometimes......until you remember the wind wasn't blowing.

Mike

I recall one observation from Scooter years ago, that I'll always remember. Mike, you guys had just come back from a very windy day over one of those towns, and he chuckled a bit about how many of his shots were made at the far end of his optics' field of view. IIRC, he said there were a few he had to pass on because, while he knew what wind doping to use - at the range for that shot at full zoom - he just couldn't see the dog. A little tongue-in cheek?

As one of those 'surrounded by grass' guys, it is still difficult for me to picture that. But my thoughts definitely wandered to your Pdog threads from years ago when I recently drove through that part of CO coming back from AZ. I miss those threads. :tooth:

Edit: Any chance you have the link to Dan's article?

jaywapti

X ring at 1000 yds. 30-338 200gr MK, 30-06 & 308 168gr MK.
Pdog at 880 with .50 BMG 750gr A-Max, doesnt count cause it blew up the mound , dont know for sure if I hit the dog or not.
About 500, 22-250 55gr HPMK.
Elk about 300 .300 H&H Mag. 180gr Rem Bronze Point

JAY

wddodge

Groundhog at 384 lasered yards. Used a Ruger 77 Mk11 in .220 Swift with 55gr Nosler ballistic tips. Not much left of the hog when hit by one of those.

Denny