WTG,

Before you try speaking for all of us, I'll note that I've hunted WY since 1979. Snowies. Bighorns. Black Hills. T-Basin. T-Basin is the only place I've consistently found the terrain open enough to take shots beyond 300 yards on antelope. But, since I've never had to take an antelope at beyond 150 (the game is where you find them), I've had no need to engage in "long range hunting". I hunt public land exclusively, and while you'll find the rancher's fields in the Black Hills open enough for long shots, I can't say that for the National Forest. The Bighorns and Snowies are absolutely too thick - the last elk I shot in the Snowies was at point-blank range.

I can only speak from my own experience. Are there opportunities to hunt at longer ranges out here? Sure there are. Maybe my style of hunting is just incompatible with that method, though? I stalk. I've no opportunity to set up a spotting scope and pick animals up on a hillside that I can't see anyway through the trees. I watched guys in the Snowies sitting in their trucks on the open meadows,drainages and clearcuts. Yeah, I'm sure those guys could engage in some long range hunting if an elk happened their way. I'm not that patient, though. I'd rather look for sign and find the game, rather than let the game come to me.

I've hunted for 29 years now, and only once lost an animal (a doe in 1980) that I'd hit.Are there seasons I've come up empty? Sure. Sometimes I'vefound myself eyeing an animal in country just too rough for meto pack 400 lbs of elk out by myself and passed up theshot. Sometimes I just don'tfind anygame. But, I can never say that I was so desperate to fill the freezer or an empty space on the wall that I've risked crippling or losing an animal by taking a poor shot again.

Unfortunately, I've filled my freezer with four animals that someone else DID take a poor shot on. One antelope, two deer, and an elk. The elk was heavy enough that I'm sure someone was pretty disappointed to have lost him, but reading posts like yourskind of makes me wonder what would happen if you took a shot at an elk 700 yards away, not realizing that I was watching the same elk from 150. He breaks toward the stand of timber I'm in after you hit him, and I finish him off. Whogets to tag him?

Sorry guys, I won't bejoining the long range spotting-shooting club. As I said before, I'm fine punching holes in paper as far out as I can, but I've never been forced to shootbig gameat more than 300 yards and therefore concentrate mypractice at shorter ranges. You can do what you want.