Ballistic calculator

[yobuck]

I couldn't agree more. For those of us whose long-range experience is (for me, very) limited, the ballistic calculators help to shorten the learning curve. But they'll never replace years of experience. I wish we all had access to the kind of practical-shooting heaven it sounds like you grew up with. Where I live, I have to travel 45 minutes just to be able to safely shoot 600 yds. 1000? 2 1/2 hrs away. I don't get much long range experience because of that. Seems to be that way for most folks these days.

well first off i didnt grow up with it. beyond that i never had a close place to shoot distance either. neither did most others i know.
if you have a place to shoot 600 within an hour drive your one of the lucky ones.
realize that it wasent untill after ww2 that this type of hunting really got started. the reason then was the availibility of surplus optics by way of rangefinders and very very large military binnoculars. without those 2 items it would have never happened to the degree it did. thats still true today, those are still the most important items we have. most talk on these sites revolve around guns and various cartridges. fact is they really dont matter much so long as you have one. basicly almost any one. next we talk about scopes which dont matter much either so long as it works well and it can be dialed. there are also today many computer generated programs for giving the information we need for making the shot. they no doubt all work well and any one would suffice even tho there are personal favorites.
but how many of us are confident we can see every shot that our buddy makes at say 1000 or more yards? because if you cant you shouldnt even be thinking about shooting that far. its the same as driving without headlights. any decent shooter can do it so long as he knows exactly where his last shot went. while hunting, first you gotta find it to shoot at it. thats something else never discussed.
if you were to come to pa during buck season i could take you to visit quite a few other camps. they would all be long range hunters and you might be surprised by the fact that there is little gun talk.
much of the talk will revolve around binoculars and mainly big ones.
get a buddy and get good optics the rest is easy.