Bryan Austin
posted this
11 September 2021
I was looking around and wondering......if......
There are likely many ways to categorize what long range shooting means to people, but for the sake of these training materials, we are defining the various ranges as below, since we are going to be shooting long range:
- Short range is less than 300 yds.
- Long range is 300-1200 yds.
- Extra long (ELD) range is greater than 1 mile
Shooting at the range at the usual 1-200 yard distance requires very little compensation for all the factors that come into play at longer ranges, including some physics, a little trigonometry, and a few formulas to use for long distance shooting. So the definition is essentially the difference between just shooting at the target directly, and having to make changes to your point of impact based on a number of factors you will be learning in this course. In the U.S.-based shooting community, we tend to use the term MOA for how accurate a rifle system is, or how big a group or target is in size. MOA refers to Minutes of Angle which is an angular measurement system that relates size to distance. 1 Minute of Angle, or 1 MOA, is considered the standard accuracy minimum for a long range rifle. A rifle that is said to be a 'one minute gun' is capable of producing a group of shots equal to 1 MOA at any distance.
That means if the rifle is fired at a target 100 yards away we can expect the group size to be 1 inch in spread from the center of one shot to the center of the shot farthest from the group and if it's 1000 yards, it would be 10 inches in spread.
See where I am going with this? If this is the case, then we can take the "44-40", for example, and consider 300 yards as our "long range"...since we have so much calculation and corrections to make from 25 to 300 yards ;-). However, 1 MOA will never work BUT we can extend the group size to be 4 or 5 MOA, pending what we start seeing, and start with a total of .5" Group at 50 yards and 12" Group at 300 yards. We can grade the shots with the Ballistic-X iphone app. Basically the kill zone on a white tail...which is also what is needed for a man size chest/torso target.
The first cold shot needs to count for something since it is really what puts food on the table. Maybe we should just keep each caliber (.40-.45) and maybe the (45-70) and (.30-30/.35) as separate "categories", but then include all calibers (cartridges: 30-30 thru 45-70) for the over-all "monthly winner".
I think it would be fun!
