"Miss!" exclaims Jimmy Durham for the fifth time, one of Outdoor Solutions' long-range rifle instructors. "Oh come on," I curse under my breath, as the shot from my Christensen Arms Ridgeline FFT had broken perfectly. A few moments before, we'd been shooting across a set of twin canyons through some trees at a bear target, ringing steel at 640 yards on the first round at Huntin' Fool and Outdoor Solution's 'Built to Hunt Summit' in Preston, Idaho.
I felt heroic, especially after the group of students I was with was having trouble just getting on target. Yet, when we moved out to a target plate at the mythic 1,000-yard range, I couldn't for the life of me connect. Shot after shot, I hit dirt. The dust kicked up to the left, the right, high, and low by the bespeckled steel.
I was humbled in short order, which is sorta the whole point of 1,000 yards.
I've long been enamored with shooting out to 1,000 yards. It's one that's stuck in the back of my mind ever since I started shooting guns a few decades ago. To me, long-distance shooting tells you a lot. Not just about the rifle, as this Ridgeline FFT is absolutely capable of slamming lead into steel at even longer engagements. But it's a shot that can tell you whether or not you're a hack or whether you can control your muscles, read the wind, understand the math that goes on with sending a bullet so far out, selecting a bullet that's crafted with care, and working with every other variable that goes into that sweet, sweet "GONG" of steel getting hit.
"Miss!" Durham says again, a wry smile across his face. "You're getting closer, but that wind is swirling and your DOPE is off. Let that barrel cool, and we'll get it dialed later," he tells me after sending another 7MM PRC Nosler Trophy Grade bullet downrange. I may have rolled over onto my back and cursed the heavens before lamenting to Durham's words.
The rifle, the ammunition, and the Leupold scope were all capable of hitting steel at 1,000 yards. But I needed a crash course on dialing my rifle and myself perfectly from Durham, as well as a better understanding of how getting good, trued data gets you that last step. There's also the need for a Can-Am Defender to even find a 1,000-yard range.
A lot goes into a rifle's accuracy before it ever touches steel or an animal. Visiting Christensen Arms and not only seeing the sort of quality assurance methodologies the company employs, but building the rifle myself from its constituent parts, impressed that fact upon me. Every single person in that factory inspected each part they were responsible for even the most minor of defects that could cause issues. They hand-lapped the barrels to ensure the rifling was perfect.
And as they built the rifles, they test fired the barrels by themselves, and then followed up by test firing the assembled rifle to certify that, with the right shooter, you can be as accurate as Christensen's engineering will allow. My Ridgeline FFT is certified as a sub-MOA rifle right out of the package, and I can attest that it's extremely accurate even with me being behind the TriggerTech trigger.
And then you have the round.
"All extended ranges do is magnify variability," Mike Lake, Senior Manager of Engineering, Research and Development at Nosler tells me over the phone, adding, "Anything you can do to reduce the variability in any factor that affects the dispersion or accuracy of the of the whole package, and that includes not only the bullet, but the ammo and the firearm and the jerk behind the trigger and everything else. Anything you can do to reduce that variability is the name of the game."
For Nosler, the Bend, Oregon company is looking at reducing the variability of all of its components for its ammunition. "Well, there's a lot of things that go into it," says Lake, "First of all, reducing the variability of the components such as the bullet and the brass, with regard to physical characteristics. And so in the bullet we're talking about not only diameters and lengths and weights and that kind of stuff, but also internal construction techniques like the run out of the interior cavity, jacket wall thickness, how well the lead core is centered and tamped and crimped into place, all of that kind of stuff play into making a bullet that is, approaching perfection, if you will."
He added, "Nothing's ever perfect, but anything about that bullet that departs from a theoretically perfect center line will cause a gyroscopic imbalance when it spins up the rifling in the barrel spins it up, you know, to stabilize it. And so what happens then is rather than flying perfectly true and point on as it as it flies like a football does when I throw it as opposed to as opposed to when someone who actually knows what they're doing throws it—it wobbles around kind of like an out of balance tire on your motorcycle."
Yet, even with all that engineering, there's still a lot that goes into making a rifle accurately, and repeatedly, hit targets at longer distances.
As Durham had told me when I kept missing the 1,000-yard target, my DOPE (Data On Previous Engagements) was wrong. At the start of the Built to Hunt Summit, I downloaded the GeoBallistics app that, with a few data points, will spit out what you need to dial your rifle's scope elevation and windage adjustments for when engaging in different long-range targets, i.e. dial the elevation to 3.7 for a 350-yard target. The app requires your rifle's muzzle velocity, along with some measurements of the scope rings, what rifle you're using, what ammo, etc.
But while Nosler prints the muzzle velocity on the Trophy Grade ammunition I was using, I also had a suppressor screwed on, and likely at a different elevation from where Nosler acquires those values. Furthermore, I was still breaking in my rifle's barrel, and that'll speed it up, too.
Later that night, after driving the Defender to the 1,000-yard range at Day Mountain Resort, Durham brought out a Garmin Xero X1 chronograph to accurately set my muzzle velocity within the app. As he expected, it was running way hotter than the Nosler box's stated velocity. We put the new velocity into GeoBallistics and new dials were spat out. But as Lake stated, variability includes "the jerk behind the trigger," which I take as meaning me, but I'm pretty sure he meant a shooter's smooth or not trigger pull. We needed to "true" the data in the app.
Trueing requires you to take the elevation and windage readings from the app and basically verify their veracity by shooting your rifle. That meant taking a handful of those Nosler 7mm PRC rounds and sending them downrange.
And in short order, with Durham providing spotting services and guidance, I was ringing steel again. 200 yards, 300 yards, 400 yards, 500 yards, 600 yards, and 700 yards all fell one by one with some minor alterations to my DOPE along the way, trueing the data as we went along. But when we got to 800 yards, for the life of us, neither Durham or myself could find the target across the landscape. We could see the 1,000 yard plate, but 800 and 900 were...not in our viewfinders. As we searched for the two targets, I stopped, glanced back at Durham and asked, "Want to just go to the 1,000?" Smiling again, "You want to?"
Oh yeah, I wanted to.
But as I swung over to the 1,000-yard target, the gravity of the shot once again sunk in. Even with the Leupold VX-6HD Gen 2 scope, and its 3-18 x 44 objective, 1,000 yards looks far. Zoomed all the way in, my target just felt small and I was instantly transported back to earlier that day and sending round after round toward the 1,000-yard cross canyon target. Suddenly, even all my trued data felt like not enough. And it wasn't, as I still needed some minor alterations.
My first round went high right, just off the edge of the steel. Durham told me to send one more and make sure it wasn't the wind that had taken it, but after racking another round and sending it, it hit nearly in the same place, though a little more center. There was wind, but it wasn't causing my elevation issues. "Dial it down three clicks," said Durham, to which I followed his instructions. "Send another when you're ready, and be sure to breathe," he tells me.
The Nosler round racked, my breathing steady, my seated position rock solid behind the rifle's buttstock, and my eyes open, I replied, "Shooter ready." Durham told me, "Send it. Seconds later, I heard him say, "Hit!" I'd done it. I'd shot out to 1,000 yards. "Send another, just to make sure you weren't lucky," he says, another dry smile across his face.
"Hit!," he tells me four more times in a row. I'm still smiling about it some three weeks later. I even recorded a short video of me hitting the target once for Instagram, where you can see the same shit-eating grin plastered across my face as I had when I shot that 640-yard bear target, or the 500-yard cold-bore shot later. I couldn't believe I'd achieve it. I couldn't believe I was part of that mythic engagment range.
It's a wild feeling, honestly.
But here's where I'm going to tell you something extremely important. I never plan on taking a shot at an animal at 1,000 yards. Full stop. To me, there's far too much variability that goes into making an ethical shot on an animal's vitals from that distance, especially in the field when you're not on a shooting bench with sandbag rests and a spotter who competes in long-range shooting competitions and teaches long-range shooting. There's too many things that can go wrong, and it goes back to what Nosler's Mike Lake said that "All extended ranges do is magnify variability."
That magnification means showing me where I suck and where I can improve upon. If I'm just shooting 100 yards over and over again, and then find myself with an elk or deer at 600 yards, my point of aim or where I hit might be different because I'm doing something like jerking the trigger to the right. But I wouldn't know that without going further and further with my distance shooting. A small jerk at 100 won't affect the bullet's point of impact all that much. But a small jerk at 600 yards? That might push the round into the animal's guts or high across its back. And that's not something I want to do.
And it's the same reason I practice longer distance engagements with my bow, as the longer the distances, the more your failures magnify. It's all about taking the most ethical shot I can, something I care about deeply within my hunting.
For now, however, I can say I joined the ranks of the 1,000-yard club. I reached out with that Ridgeline FFT and touched steel using those Trophy Grade bullets. I still can't really believe I did it, but can't wait to do it some more. I also feel far more confident in my shot process, as well as my skills behind the rifle when the time comes to harvest an animal.
So stay tuned, there's a whole bunch more stories to come. And more on Huntin' Fool and Outdoor Solution's 'Built to Hunt Summit,' which was awesome.
