TexasCHLforum.com

ApolloFrost wrote:It was explained like this to me when I got into extended long range shooting. Normal shooting is 100-300 yards. Medium range is from 301-600. Long range is from 601-1,000. Extended long range is anything over a thousand yards. The difficulty increases geometrically with every step.

Having shot with URSA for the last two years at ranges out to 2,600 yards I'll be the first to say that there's a lot more to long range shooting than just the numbers. A rifle might look much better on paper but that's no guarantee it will work better in actual use. I knew a guy that used to absolutely dominate at 2,000 yards in competition with a plane jane 300 WinMag and another newbie shooter that got the high score his first match using a 7mm RemMag. That's against 50 cals, 375 Cheytacs, 338 Lapuas and even 338 Snipetacs. The other guns had much better stats on paper, but they got crushed by one very dialed in shooter with a smaller rifle.

Now, when the second stage came and we moved back to 2,600 yards he got absolutely flattened. But at the 2,000 yard line the "smaller" calibers seemed to dominate. Heck, I even took my 308 Winchester to the 2k yard line twice and I scored 1/10 and 2/10 respectively on a 36" steel target. There was one particular fellow that had been trash talking all day and almost had an aneurysm when I finally connected with the gong.

Of course, now they're all building insane super magnums like 375-50 BMG improved and 10mm-50 BMG. One guy even has a 50-20mm which from what I've heard will really clear the sinuses

But as for a point and click hunting round it boils down to what YOU can shoot well and YOU can afford to practice with. Larger magnums may not have more raw mechanical accuracy, but they do reduce the damage from a poor wind read or slightly wrong range estimation. You have to find what is a suitable envelope for accuracy and then work backwards from that to see what cartridge will give you enough of a safety net to stay within that envelope taking into account your own skills and abilities.

A word of warning, the further out you shoot the more little things can completely ruin your day. Case and point, one day I saw that my ammo box was in the sun so I tossed a towel over it until I was ready to shoot in the competition. That slight difference in temperature from direct sunlight vs covered was enough to completely miss the target.

I've seen videos of shooting at those kinds of distances, but I can't even comprehend trying to do it myself. I'll be happy if I can shoot 1 MOA or better at 1000 yards, and I haven't even attempted that distance yet.

Beiruty wrote:Hornady Solution for same bullet at 2713 fps with standard atmo

Your Gyro value is off. The barrel twist is 1:10, not 1:7. You might get a different value if you plug in the right twist rate.

Similarly to my previous post, when I plug in the values for my favorite handload in .308, fired from my 26" barreled Remington 700, here's what I get:

Here's the Chronograph data:


BTW, and SD of 9.9 is a pretty consistent load.

Sierra Bullets assigns a Ballistic Coefficient of .496 from 2800 fps down to 1800 fps, and .485 below that.

So if I plug this data into the jbmballistics webpage, here's the results. I can't fit the entire thing into one screen shot, but this part shows the transitional nature into subsonic (below 1116 fps in these atmospheric conditions):


So, at 1,000 yards, the bullet is still traveling 1243.6 fps, with 600.9 ft-lbs of energy, and it has dropped 356.1" or 34 MOA. As you can see, the bullet crosses into the subsonic right between 1155 and 1160 yards (near bottom of chart), at which point it is moving between 1118.5 and 1115.1 fps, and packing between 486.1 and 483.1 ft-lbs of energy. Also, at 1155 yards, the bullet drops 548.8", or 45.4 MOA. Consider that out there, from just the 155 yards between 1000 and 1155 yards, the bullet has lost 125.1 fps of velocity, 114.8 ft-lbs of energy, and has dropped 192.7" (16.06'), or 11.4 MOA.

Meanwhile, back at the 800 yard line, where I do have some experience, the bullet was still traveling 1460 fps with 828 ft-lbs of energy, and had dropped 185.5" or 22.1 MOA.

Consider just the bullet drop over the 155 yard distance from 1000 to 1155 yards...... it drops over 16 ft in just 155 yards! Can you imagine what the trajectory looks like when viewed from the side? It's not even close to a symmetrical arc. The further the bullet travels, the slower it goes, so the decent angle from apogee gets steeper and steeper. From 1155 yards to 1300 yards, the bullet drops 240.6" more, or another 20 ft!!!! At that point, it must be falling at such a steep angle that if the target were a human face, the bullet would strike him almost vertically in the top of his head. At that point, the bullet is well under subsonic and beginning to yaw. At the moment of impact, the odds are that it might be keyholing instead of hitting nose-first.

I know this is a long post (who would have guessed that one of mine would be long ), but I find the topic of ballistics endlessly fascinating. Given the right .308 rifle and load, the average shooter (like me) can pretty much count on getting out to 1000 yards with enough practice. What happens beyond that starts to enter the realm of people who have an almost autistic talent for the thing.

From the 800 yard line to the 1300 yard line, my bullet loses 425 fps, 412 ft-lbs of energy, and drops another 604". So, can I theoretically hit a target with this load in this rifle at 1000 yards? Yes. Is this the right rifle/cartridge combo to try and hit a man with at 1300 yards (like my instructor's combat experience)? Probably not.......at least not in my hands.

And that's the humbling thing about long range shooting....... it involves getting to the point where you can admit without shame where your personal limits are. Not everybody has what it takes, including people who are really good inside of 800 yards, and those who can hit beyond 1000 yards are pretty unique shooters. I am in awe of some of the shooters I've seen. I wish I was one of them, but I'm not, and I'm not ashamed to admit it.

LSUTiger wrote:The answer is caliber dependant but probably when you need a calculator to start figuring out corrections it's long range. For most hunting rounds the maximum point blank range (MPBR) is about 250-300 yds. So what zero do need to keep a +/- 3 inches MPBR out to the maximum distance with out requiring you do any calculations or scope adjustments?

http://www.chuckhawks.com/rifle_trajectory_table.htm

https://www.americanhunter.org/articles ... ting-zero/

http://dailycaller.com/2015/07/28/how-t ... ing-rifle/

Go to http://www.jbmballistics.com/cgi-bin/jbmtraj-5.1.cgi, plug in the data for your caliber or bullet choice (there are also some commercial cartridges in the database), and near the bottom of the page, first input the "Vital Zone Radius" value you desire, and the a little bit below that, check the "Zero at Max Point Blank Range". The calculator will give you the maximum range you can shoot at in which the trajectory will never rise above or below the maximum vital zone radius for your target. For instance, if you want to ensure a hit inside a 10" circle, set the vital zone radius to 5", and your bullet will never rise above 5" or fall below 5" all the way out to whatever the maximum point blank range is.

I set the bullet choice to Hornady .308 Cal, 160 grain, FTX® (30-30 Winchester). I set bullet velocity to 2360, which is my actual chronographed value in my 18" barreled Marlin 336BL. Distance to Chronograph was set to the minimum possible - 1 ft - because I use a bayonet type of chronograph. I set the Sight height to 1.75" to account for my scope on that rifle. I set zero height to 0. (Plug in a value here if you are looking for a POI to be a specific height above POA at a specified zero distance.....which would not apply when figuring Max Point Blank Range.) Input your local weather data. Input maximum vital zone radius. Check Zero at Max Point Blank Range. Submit.

For that rifle, and that load, with a 10" vital zone, here's what I get (I asked for 5 yard increments):


In other words, I can hold on the POA out to 275 yards, and the POI will never be more than 5" high or 4.6" low - or, well within a 10" circle. Also note that the terminal bullet velocity and energy at Max PBR are well within the performance envelope for a clean kill with the FTX bullet

I have more than one fairly sophisticated ballistics app on my phone, but when I'm on the web, like this, I always use the jbmballistics.com online calculator. It's really easy to use, and very flexible.

Bitter Clinger wrote:For precision rifle, "long range" (shooting) is best defined as the distance at which the round becomes transonic (and therefore its behavior is far less predictable). When a bullet flies through the transonic region, the aerodynamics change. Transonic regionshockwaves shift from the tip of the bullet backward to the tail as the bullet approaches and then crosses the sound barrier at Mach 1.

http://www.texaschlforum.com/viewtopic. ... c#p1113670

What Bitter Clinger said.

However, some of that is just "combat effectiveness" too.....meaning, the question becomes, what are you trying to accomplish? Punch a hole in paper.......or kill a man? One of my friends who shoots regularly out at ETTS is a medically retired MARSOC scout sniper. lately, he has been regularly ringing steel at the 1000 yard line with an AR15 based DMR, using a midrange powered scope, and shooting Hornady Superformance 75 grain match. But he's doing that just for the grins. In other words, he's just plinking......way more accurately than most of us can, but still just plinking for the grins. When it came to actually killing people at 800-1000 yards in real world combat (both Iraq and Afghanistan), he used at minimum a .308 chambered rifle - typically a bolt gun. At distances below say 600 yards, he used an accurized 5.56 weapon.

Another retired MARSOC sniper who taught me, told me that he had kills in Afghanistan at 1300 yards with a .308 when I had expressed doubt about my own .308 being a "killing rifle" beyond 1000 yards. He helped me get out to 800 yards, which I found quite difficult mainly due to deteriorating eyesight, despite have a scope that was more than capable at that distance, and a rifle to match. Maybe some day I'll get out to 1000 yards, but I can tell you that 800 yards, even with good eyesight, is no longer just "plinking". It requires an investment in VERY good optics and a rifle capable of accuracy to match, and the time invested in learning/maintaining long range skills - combined with the right load for that rifle. For example, my Remington 700 .308 shoots VERY well with my own 175 grain Matchking handload, and the 175 grain Match loads from Black Hills and Federal. Other 175 grain loads have been OK, but not nearly as good. Of all of them, my best results have been with my handload. My point is, if for example you have a .308 with a heavy 1:10 twist barrel, don't expect that just any 175 grain match load is going to perform well for you. And to add complexity, just because a load gives you little tiny .5 MOA groups at 100 yards, doesn't mean that it will hold to .5 MOA at 500 or 1000 yards. That's just ONE reason why, the further out you go, the harder it gets........but also the more interesting and arcane it gets. It's been the better part of a year since I last shot at that distance, and it is a perishable skill if not maintained, so I'm probably going to have to build up to it again when I next have the opportunity to do it.

On that same ETTS range - which goes out to 1200 yards - I have seen guys ringing steel with 6.5 Creedmore and other "less than 7.62mm" calibers at the 1200 yard line. The 6.5 Creedmores are still effective at that range, given a rifle accurate enough to hit.

Without having much experience with it, I would relegate .30-06 to roughly the same category as .308. It's not that much more powerful. The next logical step in .30 caliber cartridges for long range shooting after .308 is the .300 Win Mag, which is exactly why military sniping units chose that cartridge for long-action bolt guns rather than the .30-06 when it came time to step up from .308 to something more powerful for shooting over longer distances. If I were on the market today, and I could only afford to own ONE long range rifle, I would start with either a .308 or a 6.5 Creedmore. Either will get you well out past any distance you have any business shooting an animal at......let alone another human being unless you're being paid to do it, in which case your professionalism will afford you more rifles.

But I would encourage anyone to at least give long range shooting a try. You may not like it, and that's OK. But it is a MUCH bigger thrill to connect with a small, hard to even see, target at 800 yards, than it is to tiny groups into paper at 100 yards. Punching paper is fun. Hitting a clay pigeon on the berm at 800 yards was a huge thrill.......at least for me.....and I badly want to do it again.