It depends upon what you are doing.

If you are talking about hunting you start to loose energy drastically past 200 yards. For most hunting situations I would use that as my personal maximum range. That does not mean even with the huge loss of energy you can't kill past that range, it just means you have limited your ability to your shot placement and poking a hole it the right place.

Now, particularly with black powder loads the 45/70 has an extremely low standard deviation which means it can be very consistently accurate out to long distances of the 600 - 1000 yard range.

Yes, Billy Dixon killed an Indian at Cheyenne Wells at around 1500 yards but I think Billy would even tell you he was as surprised as anyone that it happened. That shot has been dissected and studied by many and it truly was against the odds. But it did happen.



600 yard match at Whittington Center, Raton ,New Mexico