Unbelievable Shot, Hitting at 1,000 Yards

I've wanted to try my hand at making a 1,000 yard shot since I bought my rifle. Truly, hitting at 1,000 yards was what originally motivated me to buy the rifle I bought. I read forum after forum taking in every bit of information I could about what would be a good, accurate, affordable platform to start building a budget long range rig. I settled on a Remington 700 SPS Varmint in .308. It has a 26" heavy barrel and the trusted Remington 700 action that has been utilized by the armed services on their sniper platform for decades.

Throwing a piece of lead more than half a mile down range is an incredibly difficult task. In my case, I would be trying to put 168 grain Sierra Match King boat tail hollow point (BTHP) on target. What we find when we look at a ballistics chart is that a 168 gr. Sierra BTHP will fall over 262 inches at 1,000 yards. That's over 20 feet of bullet drop. A 10 mile an hour wind will cause the bullet to drift over 75 inches and a 20 mile an hour wind will move the bullet over 155 inches or more than 10 feet! These are HUGE changes on bullet travel when you consider that a 10 mph wind at 100 yards only has a half inch effect on bullet travel, a 20 mph just over 1 inch. From 1" to 10' is a MASSIVE shift. Compounding this effect, it's impossible to tell what the wind is actually doing more than half a mile away.

At close ranges, it's easy to see a target without optics. Even a half-size man target at 100 yards is still viewable without a telescopic sight. In fact, you can still see a man size target at over 600 yards. However, at 1,000 yards you can't see the target unless you use optics. I learned this on Monday as I had an opportunity to join some incredible marksmen at an un-named range. A local prankster had placed a target at 1,000 yards and only a handful of people even know it exists. We had searched for it on previous outings and never located it. This particular trip, one of the guys I was with had brought along a particularly high-end spotting scope and managed to locate the 1,000 yard target in a few minutes. A couple minutes later, lead was flying down range and we were all absorbed in attempting to get a shot on steel.

I am proud to report that I placed five shots on that target on Monday out of an attempted 24 shots. Many of our misses were near misses falling barely shy of the goal. On of the most amazing things about shooting at 1,000 yards is that a shooter has more than enough time to take the shot, recover from the recoil, place the cross hairs back on target and watch as the bullet impacts. It made it much easier to see exactly where shots were falling and adjust the dope for the follow up shot. I was blown away by how long it actually takes a bullet, traveling over 2800 feet per second, to reach the target at 1,000 yards.

All of the guys I was shooting with were shooting rifles chambered for .308 or 7.62 NATO rounds. We all put shots on target at 1,000 yards. We also shot some closer ranges between 200 and 650 yards. After going for 1,000, 200 yards is hardly even a challenge. To compare what we were doing with the top shot challenge from last week, a .50 caliber BMG at 1,000 yards will drop comparably, but is less effected by wind. In no uncertain terms, we were shooting at a smaller target, with a smaller bullet which suffers more from wind effect. Eat your heart out Top Shot. The pictures on this post were taken through my scope. The small orange target is the target sight picture at 1,000 yards. The small white target is at 650 yards.