308 Winchester

[petey]

Why sure it is. But first lets define "Long Range". To some that could be 200 and others 2000 yards. The .308? Many use it for the 1000 yard bench rest shooting.
But as far as deer sized game, it may not have the wallop to do the job at 1000 yards.

Lets take some sample data I just plugged into my Exball program.

150gr Serria Match Kings around 2750 fps at 10 ft from the muzzle will produce 2532.8 ft-lbs of energy. At 600 it's producing 774.9 ft-lbs of energy, still enough to take down a deer. But at 1000 yards it's only producing 354.5 ft-lbs of energy and if it were me behind the trigger shooting this load, I wouldn't stretch it past 650 yards from the energy produced alone.

By the way, my program says that's a 451.8" drop at 1000 yards, um that's almost a 38' drop! Quite the difference from my 7 Rum dropping only 270" at 1000 yards and having 600 ft-lbs of energy.

Now lets bump up to a 168 Gr Match King at 2750 fps (if you could get that?) at 600 yards the energy is 826.7 ft-lbs and 472 at 1000 yards. That's enough to give you another 150 yards from what I'm seeing. At 800 you're getting 675.7 ft-lbs so in some poeple's book that wouldn't be enough but with the size of the deer we shoot long range, that's enough energy to do the job.

There's a lot of variables that come into play, obvioiusly I just showed you 2 different bullets fired from the same gun at the same velocity produced different energy (you got more power from the heavier bullet). I haven't even brought in the other 20 variables...

I won't get into a long drawn out explanation of those variables, in short; I wouldn't neccesarily be using the .308 for shooting deer at 1000 yards since there are much better choices, but I would use it to shoot one at 650 and not even think twice (1000 yards?? well I might think twice about that one).

By the way, welcome to Huntchat