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It's time to define max distance to shoot.

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Emu

Emu

Member
Jan 15, 2020
3,643
2,387
Queretaro, Mexico
There's a lot of difference among knowing at what distance you should be able to hit your target and a best guessing.

10, 20, 30 yards more can make a lot of difference.

I am of the idea that everyone should know the top distance at which it can be responsible to shoot. It will also depends on the pray.

  • Small birds, rabbits, rats (ground and tree).
  • Coyote, javalina.
  • Deer.

Trying to make shots with pcp's at 200 yards is aleatory, it depends on many factors to hit correctly on target.

It is very difficult to give a general rule for anyone, but everyone should know his shooting skills.




 
I agree. I remember when I got my first deer rifle for Christmas in my early teens and it was a 30/30And the furtherest I would shoot was 200 yards. Then I got a .308 And would shoot a deer 300 max. Although you could accurately hit a deer further with the 308, I just didn’t feel comfortable with it. It is all about getting to know your gun and what you’re capable of with it. But with pellet guns it’s also about how many foot pounds of energy it’s going to have at further distances to Ethically kill the animal.
 
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most people can do 100 with alittle practice and a good setup .. when it comes to airguns 'most' have a similar trajectory and in the real world it takes skill to shoot outside of a guns sight-in point blank where you got to compensate in a dynamic and fast changing environment ... id say for most people thats going to put a limit on small stuff at about 60y 'with' a good accurate gun .. i know you can hit accurate targets to 100+ .. but grabbing that shot on a nutter, not unless he's right in your presighted area and your set up ... thats my take speaking for myself, been shooting for 50 years .. and with real skill and a tsck driver i know it can be further ...
 
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I think a lot of people in the airgun community get the wrong impression about ethical range from certain YouTube channels promoting 250 yard shots with FX guns. I was just having this discussion with a friend the other day. Its a huge problem. I don't promote long range hunting with airguns or powder burners. To me 300 yards is the longest shot I'll take on an unmoving deer using any cartridge. I say 75 yards is the longest range for airgun. Now I am capable of making longer shots most of the time but most of the time isn't good enough when your talking about wounding an animal. I'm not saying anyone is bad if they take longer shots but as Clint Eastwood once said "A mans got to know his limitations" 
 
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I have a permission here that is a pecan orchard. The owner wants the ground squirrels gone.

He has shown me a pdf from NMSU which says a gsquirrel will destroy 50 to 75 lbs of pecans a year and with a market of 2.50 cents a pound. that is a lot of money.

He doesn't care if the gsuirrel is responsibly shot or not. He wants them gone.

I have had a lot of practice on gsquirrels. And a bunch of them are gone.




 
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I think this would have many factors to consider.

Weight

fps

Caliber

pellet or slug and shape

Muzzle energy and energy at those distances will vary

Shooting at a chrono at 10 to 100 yards in 10 yard increments will shed some light on this and could give a base line for different projectiles. This is several days worth of homework and documentation for anyone up to the task.

A dual regulator set up will probably give the fastest easiest results. Maybe use a 25 to 50 fps increment starting at 800 fps working up to 1k fps and documenting findings per 10 yard distance increase per pellet and or slug weight in a specific caliber. Could be a fun project. Then apply the FPE findings to specific target and then determine if you should be shooting said target at said distance etc.




 
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I think this would have many factors to consider.

Weight

fps

Caliber

pellet or slug and shape

Muzzle energy and energy at those distances will vary

Shooting at a chrono at 10 to 100 yards in 10 yard increments will shed some light on this and could give a base line for different projectiles. This is several days worth of homework and documentation for anyone up to the task.

A dual regulator set up will probably give the fastest easiest results. Maybe use a 25 to 50 fps increment starting at 800 fps working up to 1k fps and documenting findings per 10 yard distance increase per pellet and or slug weight in a specific caliber. Could be a fun project. Then apply the FPE findings to specific target and then determine if you should be shooting said target at said distance etc.



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Species, land owner loss/damage/injury/wishes have also been a deciding factor for me. Every situation is different IMO. One land owner told me he didn't care if I "eliminated groundhogs with a rocket launcher" after monetary loss and personal injury.
 
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I think it is not up to us to define what others can do. Cuz we really have no idea what that they are capable of.

While my Impact was a .25 with a 700mm slug A liner I could shoot paint cans at 200 meters 218 yards and hit them four out of five shots. When the wind changed it could take me ten or twelve shots to get in sync and do it again. I was often holding 12 to 18 inches for the wind and still hitting the cans and often just the caps once they were on the ground.

I am not good with the wind but some are and they can and do pesting at what are ridicules ranges to others. If you can see your pellet miss your target you can correct on the fly so it isn't that difficult so long as you and your gun are one. ;^).


 
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I think this would have many factors to consider.

Weight

fps

Caliber

pellet or slug and shape

Muzzle energy and energy at those distances will vary

Shooting at a chrono at 10 to 100 yards in 10 yard increments will shed some light on this and could give a base line for different projectiles. This is several days worth of homework and documentation for anyone up to the task.

A dual regulator set up will probably give the fastest easiest results. Maybe use a 25 to 50 fps increment starting at 800 fps working up to 1k fps and documenting findings per 10 yard distance increase per pellet and or slug weight in a specific caliber. Could be a fun project. Then apply the FPE findings to specific target and then determine if you should be shooting said target at said distance etc.



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Weight, caliber, shape ....

At this time those who know about ballistic should give us a feedback in order to know if at long distance we should expect a better capabilities to fight with wind factor, for example:

In .22 Cal with the 25.4 grain JSB pellets in comparison with the 15.9 and 18.1 grain JSB pellets;

In .25 Cal with 34 grain JSB pellets in comparison with the 25.4 JSB pellets,

The .30 Cal in 44.7 or 50.1 grain JSB's in regard of the .22 and .25 Cal.

Later on, same exercise with slugs in the three Cal: .22, .25, and .30 Cal.

We should get to valuable conclusions out of this exercise.


 
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I suppose that our friends experts in ballistics would express their results in a mathematical way in order that they can get an increase in percentage that could be translated in an increment in yards. For example:

If you take 100 yards as the base distance, an increment in ballistics coefficient would allow to obtain same efect at 115 yards or 130.

That would provide objective results to get to know our best scenario: with " X projectile" I could expect 20 or 30 yards plus of effective accuracy (the one I get as base at 100 yards).

Then we will have hard data, not mental illusions.
 
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Highly subjective, as there are so many varying conditions and depends on the KZ size of your intended prey. On a calm, light wind day, from a solid rest. I consider 50 yard kill shots on unwary chipmunk, rats, or squirrels as gimme shots for me. On a windy day, particularly varying winds, or wary critters, not so much. So it's up to the individual shooter to ethically decide, or not. I've made pigeon kills out to 100 yards, but conditions were just right, at other times 50 yards felt too far because of conditions.
 
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Experience. Understanding the performance(can you hit what you are aiming at) of YOUR particular gun/scope/ammo combo in particular weather conditions is key to knowing your limits in a particular situation. A lot of practice time shooting( in different weather conditions, not just when it's calm) coupled with a good memory and/or detailed notes should remove a lot(but not all) of the "guesswork" out of field shooting situations.

This experience should allow you to have reasonable certainty at what distance(under particular weather conditions) you can effectively put the projectile in the kill zone with a particular scope/gun/ ammo combo. Knowledge of the effective kill zones of different species and caliber/fpe needed to effectively dispatch game can be researched. 
 
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The range at which a 1.5” target can be consistency hit.

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I'd say that depends on the kill zone of your target, shooting at something with a 3" brain/heart, or 1"? Huge difference between the two..

Killzone*.75 would be my personal opinion, to eliminate margin of error, can even go lower to killzone*.5 if its a windier day.
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Seems a good proposal !

Notwithstanding, for deer for example you also have to take into consideration that you need the projectile to get with enough power to get to the vitals.

The three white tailed deer I have with .357 were taken at 25-35 yards. At that distance you choose exactly where to place the shot.




 
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I don't even think FPE is a consideration in almost all scenarios. It only takes 3 fpe to kill a squirrel. I agree with the post above that stated as far as you can consistently hit a 1.5" target. If you are depending on fpe to make up for a poorly aimed shot there's a problem there. Granted a 30 cal hitting a squirrel in the guts would kill it but is that ethical....nope. I am a huge advocate for pesting and hunting but precision and accuracy trump everything else IMO. Before hunting I believe everyone should map out their drops and be very judicious in their shots. Hurting animals even to help a farmer is just terrible. I take a lot of pride in my ability to cause little to no pain with my shots. Now if you were using a 22-250 you can hit anywhere you want and that game will pop like you lit a cherry bomb in its belly but with airguns your poking holes in an animal. Knock down power usually means nothing here with very few exceptions. One possible exception is using a very heavy bullet at very low speeds and hitting the skull. Often the pellet will bounce off the skull with zero penetration. This technique is all knockdown power and very ethical. Check out edgun leshiy channel on YouTube. Anyway 1.5" is a great way to put it. I think it doesn't get much clearer than that. 
 
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