I' ll disagree.

I shoot long ranges very often, I have a 1200yrd private range, use every inch of it from time to time, and have harvested game at half that range, 632yrd coyote, and a 491yrd whitetail have been my maximums thus far, some people can successfully hunt at long ranges, MOST people NEVER SHOULD!!

An 18" vital area, like you mentioned, is being very gracious, it might be that long, but not that tall, 8-12" being the usual height of the heart and lungs within the body, a full 12" is stretching it even quite a bit...I usually call them 8" --->8" diameter disc at 500yrds=2.0MOA, quite a feat at that distance with a sporting rifle. If you want to hunt with a target rifle, I might just let you, as it would be more punishment than pleasure or advantage, they' re God awful heavy! I now own two ' targets only rifles' [8D], and a few others that probably would do me well in competitions that have hunting denominations in their names, and have handled who knows how many in the past, and comparing them to a hunting rifle is like comparing apples to oranges, yeah, they' re both fruit, but that' s about the stint of it. Most hunting rifles would be lucky to get 2.0MOA at 100yrds, let alone maintain it at 500yrds. Most of the sporting rifles I' ve owned have taken at least $100 in work to drop below 2.0MOA at 400yrds, if they even got there. Also, shooting on a range is constant conditions, exact ranges are known, buck fever isn' t playing in (most br shooters are cooler than ice), the target isn' t moving, there aren' t trees in between you and your target, you' re sitting at a bench over a sandbag or bipod, wind is either minimal or trajectory affect is known, you' re using a 25x glass (too damn close for game-hunting, other than varmints that is), you' re not freezing your butt off or in a tree. Between having very poor conditions compared to range time, and having a rifle that won' t shoot as good of groups at 100yrds as a target rifle would at 3-400yrds, br shooting and hunting are two completely different animals. I can off-hand shoot a factory M-1Garand at 400yrds on 2MOA targets until I' m blue in the face, hit 90% or better, I know, I' ve done it, but I' ll guarantee that over 90% of hunters have never even fired a shot at a paper at 500yrds, most don' t even know what 400yrds looks like, and good they don' t, as they might try something stupid like shoot at a deer at 500yrds because they know their rifle is dead on at 100yrds, 3" low at 200yrds, and the trajectory tables say it should be 55" low at 500yrds, Thank God these idiots plumb miss most of the time.

Also, there are many cartridge/bullet combinations that make outstanding 300yrd or less deer cartridges that are simply NOT good for taking deer at longer ranges. a 400yrd kill shot with a 30-30WCF is unheard of, even if you can lob the bullet out there that far, it' s not going to be in good shape once it gets there to do the job.

No, from a BR standpoint, making a kill zone MOA shot at any range isn' t difficult, but like I said, apples and oranges, I can throw a .308win round out to 1000yrds and know what I' m hitting, I' m 98.2% hits on a 40" target with my sporterized mauser at that range, about 4MOA, and I' d shoot myself, if someone else didn' t, if I ever took a 1000yrd shot on a deer.