The Real Gunsmith – Long Range Part 1

good morning we're going to talk about long-range shooting long-range shooting as it actually began here in the West as I know it having grown up here with with a individual that basically was interested in shooting game at long range about 1960 or so les Bowman the late last Bowman was he was a great friend of mine for many many years he had his own outfitting business and guided many hunters from all over the world hunting game and he saw a need for a rifle cartridge to take elk specifically out but also other game up to about 500 yards and the high mountains of Wyoming where he had several hunting camps and over time he had shot various cartridges various seven millimeters and seven by sixty one sharpened heart this is 275 H&H Magnum and he felt that he needed more velocity and being a highly experienced hand loader and blistex test us expert he decided to take then the 338 Winchester Magnum and neck it down to seven millimeter which was basically the idea was sold to Remington and they brought out their new 700 Remington hunting rifle in the ATL and BTL and seven Remington Magnum in 1962 and less wanted a cartridge that shot a seven millimeter bullet at around thirty one hundred and fifty feet a second delivering about eighteen hundred foot-pounds of energy the remaining edge energy at five hundred yards he felt that that was the basically about the minimum acceptable energy required to reliably tick elk at 500 yards and so within a year or two I built myself one of my first rifles that's a seven millimeter Remington Magnum and in the first few years I quickly found out that it was a pretty decent 400 yard elk cartridge 500 yards was stretching it a bit I didn't think that it had the energy that I needed to to take help at those distances I've been shooting a 300 each and each also for a couple of years which delivered a bit more energy a bit more recoil but at the time when les came up with the idea he he felt that that a seven millimeter was easier for more people to shoot and i've always agreed with that but over the years since that first start with the seven remington magnum i've built other rifles eventually became a gun maker went to school and became a gun maker and had built just thousands of rifles many many hundreds of rifles in settled millimeter caliber build on all sorts of different cases and so I'm a few years I was taking larger cases for instance the 300 Winchester case and making it to seven millimeter and then later the 404 Jeffery case making it down and shortening it you know to settle millimeter my idea was to shoot a heavier bullet specifically 175 green knobs wood partition bullet or 175 Green Hornet the interlock I wanted to push these in over 30 150 feet a second which was a step up above the settle millimeter 160 in the seven running two Magnum and it all turned out that either cartridge would we push that bullet over 3,200 feet a second that gave us an extended range capability deliver a little bit more energy at the ranges and you've got to understand that back in these back in these years to start we didn't have all the sophisticated scopes the reticle systems that we have today we had about all that we had at that point in time was maybe a scope with a second for the second crosshair in it such as a weaver scope a little bit later Redfield came out with their accurate rack scopes and that gave us the ability for for hold ability a little bit longer distances and a Scopes developed also bullets improved quality of bullets improved things were added you know over the years to various calibers not only just a seven millimeter but 30 calibers from 338 and so forth and eventually there were just a few scopes time starting to show up that had you know even a little bit better long-range capability I was involved many years ago and I worked for burst scope company developing a long range scope it was called the arc scope it was developed by Don burse and myself and we could just simply change the power and one reticle was in the first focal plane the other reticle was in the second focal plane so that basically zoomed those two reticles either together or apart giving the hold up ability for longer distance shooting and we fast forward from that point in time to now we've got we've got scopes with with multiple dots we've got scopes with with the the grid grid system we've got scopes with hash marks placed to span a certain distance of the hundred yards and if you extend that out 400 yards it just simply multiplies one interest is is it 100 yards would be 5 inches at five hundred and ten mm and so with all those things in place and better rifle barrels people interested in in in long-range shooting not just game shooting but perhaps varmint shooting and I've been building rifles to shoot long range you know ever since they started in the in the in the shooting field and building hunting rifles and benchrest rifles and so forth and I'll build a rifle in almost any caliber for any purpose for shooting whatever that need may happen to be but over the years I've seen something I've seen something happen to this to this whole aspect and that is we've we've lost sight we've lost sight of respect for wildlife the further that the distances got you know 500 yards is is a fairly good distance to shoot game when we start extending that range past 500 yards which less woman thought that that was kind of a about as far as you wanted to maybe shoot game now we've got we've got aspects of shooting game you know at seven eight hundred yards a thousand yards twelve hundred yards or maybe even further and along with that has come disrespect for our wildlife and what I see going on here is people want to want to get their picture taken you know with a three seventy bull elk bull elk of course 370 that shot at 927 yards or whatever that might happen what may happen to be well I've hunted all my life I've hunted elk for 53 years I've been hunting all game in the West for that number of years and I hunt every year and I killed game every year and I've used cartridges all the way from seven millimeter up to 338 to take game a long distance and I know what importance that energy plays in in all this they retained the retained residual energy remaining energy at distance and I've I've just dotted down a couple of things here to share with you it's become kind of popular for instance to shoot a seven millimeter Remington Magnum at long distance well I don't think that it's a thousand-yard l cartridge it was never intended to be a thousand-yard hell cartridge and I'm going to point out some energies here a seven millimeter remington magnum loaded with 175 grain models of long range a cube on bullet started out at the muzzle at 2,900 feet a second and has a computed computed blitzes coefficient of 660 and has a remaining energy at 600 yards of 1700 and 16 foot-pounds of energy now that tells me that we've already stretched the envelope a bit I think we ought to have two thousand foot-pounds energy at distance to reliably kill elk in an elk sized game seven hundred and sixteen foot-pounds only is what it has I think that attempting to shoot game at eight nine hundred thousand twelve hundred fourteen hundred yards with a seven millimeter Remington Magnum is nothing short of ridiculous and the potential to wound our prize game that we see disappearing year after year because of heavy hunting pressure because of tremendous Preda Dacian here in the West I think that it is just absolutely absurd to even depict somebody shooting an animal at 1200 yards with a cell millimeter Remington Magnum with whatever bullet might be loaded in it that whatever wasit II had just doesn't have the required energy that we need at those distances I'm going to add several other calipers to this and then add the six five like to 84 we're going to use the 170 I'm you know one hundred and forty grain modular a cube on started out at 2900 feet a second and has a bush coefficient of five ten and at five hundred yards it has thirteen hundred foot-pounds energy that's barely a deer cartridge that's barely a deer cartridge at five hundred yards energy wise we should have about fifteen hundred foot-pounds of energy remaining at a distance to reliably take game we've got situations where it's been recorded it's being recorded on film that people have taken elk it considerably considerable distances way past this this just is just isn't right how many animals are wounded you think that somebody's going to show you on a TV show how many animals they've wounded perhaps wounded wounded to the point that by the time they got over there at a far distance they never found the animal it died miserably that's not respecting our wildlife and this is where this was really headed this long-range shooting and it's really a sad situation I'll add another cartridge here I'll add the seven millimeter sdw it's a bit better long-range cartridge than the seven millimeter Remington Magnum if we use the same 175 grain long range and honestly a coupon we can start that out of 3,200 feet a second at the muzzle that's 300 feet a second faster and a 7 Remington Magnum that will give us at 800 yards that would give us 1760 foot pounds energy with that boat that has a British coefficient of 660 so we've got a bit we've got a bit more a bit more velocity here we've extended our range a little bit but as we extend our ranges the X potential situation is that ruining game comes up considerably considerably considerably and in the real hunting field and you know let's say that we shot we shot a sheep at 800 yards with this with this cartridge with this bullet and we don't know that that sheep was hit perfectly hit the Sheep he went out of sight he was right on the edge of the timber he went into the timber and the crags here where he lives up at nine ten thousand feet and went down into the timber and eight hundred yards it's probably going to take us 45 minutes an hour to get over there where that where that sheep was and are we going to find him the likelihood that we're going to find him that much later if he wandered weighs it down into that timber we could be 20 feet from that sheep down in the timber and we could never never seen and you know this is this is just not acceptable performance out of out of the hunting fraternity and I'm going to go from this to another cartridge we'll add the 300 run the 300 Remington ultra Meg we use a 200 grain loss or a coupon started out of 3,200 feet a second well of listings coefficient of 590 at 700 yards this cartridge loaded this way this bullet has only 1700 foot-pounds of remaining energy at 1700 yards I'm going to get 700 yards and these are these are below these are below minimum so I purposely showed a little bit below minimum which I feel was 2,000 foot pounds energy so I think that this should tell the hunting the hunting world the long range the long range interest in the hunting world that were attempting things that we shouldn't be attempting and where I live it puts me in a situation where I get to here I get to hear about you know various people hunting with hunting with Outfitters or hunting by themselves or hunting with friends and I almost always hear about the game that was wounded the game that was never recovered and I repeatedly hear about this to do it with with bighorn sheep and this part of the and this part of Wyoming because there's a tremendous interest clear across clear across the country and around the world to hunt sheep and a lot of instances this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing and it's driven is driven by Eagles is driven by by people that you know they just they just can't wait to get their picture behind a set of big sheep horns in on a beautiful Ram here in Wyoming or some other parts of the world you

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Keywords: long range, long range shooting, long range hunting, 7mm, 7remmag, 7mmremmag, 7mm remington magnum, gunsmith, long range rifle, Les Bowman, 7MM STW

Id: ifE_fnsOa1s

Length: 16min 33sec (993 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 20 2017