ORIGINAL: Badger_Girl93
ORIGINAL: leben_sie_gut
I think I'd have to stick with the school of thought that considers not eliminating anything that could lead to an wounded and unretrievable animal unethical....I've done enough shooting at 400-500 yards to know it doesn't take much of a breeze or movement on the part of the shooter to push a bullet out of a animal's vital zone.
It falls more under using animals for targets than it does hunting. Just MHO.
That school of thought means that all hunting is unethical. Anytime human judgement and behavior is involved, you CANNOT possibly eliminate everything that could lead to a wounded animal. Eliminating everything that can lead to a wounded animal eliminates hunting all together....because hunting CAN lead to a wounded animal. Pretty simple logic.
I think you're misunderstanding what I'm getting at. I'm not sure if you've ever attempted shooting, either at a target or an animal, at a range over 500 yards. As RR said, the majority of the guesswork can be eliminated with proper equipment and some fairly simple math.
HOWEVER....deer don't always show up on shooting ranges...shots can be on an unknown angle, the direction and speed of the wind at the shooters location can be quite different, or constantly changing, from such at the location of the target. These aren't things a shooter has any control over. From an average "long" hunting distance of 100-300 yards, these facts don'tdeliver as much of an effect as they do further downrange.
So,derived from that logic, it seems to be irresponsible to target an animal at such an extreme distance. I'm in no way challenging RR's abilities as ashooter, I can tell fromhow he speaks here that he's more than knowledgable. It's just my opinion that taking game at the distance isn't hunting in the classical sense, and the ethics of it are debatable.