3600 Yard Shot

That was cool, Thanks for sharing. The furthest I ever shot was 600 meters in the service and I thought that was a long shot.

I guess I'm not as impressed as I would be if it was on the first shot. Once you know where to adjust, AND IF, the wind doesn't shift, it's a matter of trial and error isn't it?

Would it still be impressive if it was on the 4th shot? The 5th? the 10th?

Nah..It's still impressive, one small muscle movement at the wrong moment and that bullet could miss by yards at that distance.

Some people could never make that shot (flukes excluded) even in a closed environment, anyone can point the rifle at the target, it's the body control that makes the difference.

What impressed me was 1st and 2nd shot, was in the area, the second thing that impressed me was the shoter looked to be past middle age and his eyesight could make out the target. The third was his steadiness. As far as making the shot after a reference yes, I'm still impressed, how many people do you know who could make that shot after 100 try's.

What I wonder is what was the impact of the bullet.

Even so, every round is a little different, too.

When I shot competitively I would reload my own .308 NATO and sort my brass and ball by weight. Then the powder was weighed carefully and the whole round carefully assembled and then finally molybdenum coated. It would hours to hand load 120 rounds. Using automated loaders added too much variation, so everything was done by hand. Then tested on a chrony and target to see if the recipe was right.

That was shooting at 600 yards (with iron sights). Going beyond that just complicates things and the smallest variations become very important.

Granted, he was using a tripod, bags of sand, and a scope, but 3600 yards is not cakewalk.

Anonymous Hero: I know exactly what you mean not hours but some times days getting every part to weigh the same. 300Win Mag going through sometimes a thousand bullets to find matching weights, and winding up with multiple piles of different weights. Then checking the powder for differing temps for the loads resizing the brass and checking for irregularities. Then on to the primers of different manufactures until you find just the right one for the powder charge then trying different powders and starting all over again. It took almost 4 months of range time to come up with a really good load using Reloader 22 with Winchester Large magnum primers at temps above 80 deg below 50 Remington primers were better. Things as small as the primer pockets being sized to a uniform pocket and flash hole also made a lot of difference. Maybe not for the every day shooter but the true marksman was conscious of any deviation. And god forbid you have a flyer you go back and check your records and check for a mistake or some one putting the wrong cartridge in your block out of sequence for a different load. We even engraved our cartridges to keep track of how many times they had been loaded and to what max charges and how the case wall thickness's were after max loading. I guess you could say as long range shooters we were a little anal retentive.You Think If my wife knew how we were about cleanlyness back then I shudder to think what she would think about that today.

I would just throw the brass in a box and mark the box with the number of times it was shot. I had boxes marked I, II, and III. After that I pretty much retired them.

Bought Lake City brass. Forgot where the ball came from, but it was plastic tipped boat tail.

My secret for long range shooting was to try not to shoot in the first course and to listen very carefully to all the bitching that the shooters were making. Saved my bacon every time. ;-)

Isn't it amazing how most people can't figure in side slip when the wind kicks up. It use to amaze me that very few people would walk the range to check for wind channels in the environment that would effect their trajectories. We also would install wind socks to see where and how the breezes changed and wouldn't you know it they mostly thought we were installing pretty things to blow in the breeze for their entertainment. We never told them any different if they weren't smart enough to figure it out tough cookies. Over the years I helped train some pretty smart shooters One or two of them went on to sniper school and became way better then any of the other local shooters. They hate to see them come home for some of the local turkey shoots and or long range events. It was great when I was younger but now it is just too hard on my shoulder and back to keep on loading for all of the shoots. I guess I have just slowed down to the point that I will help the young guns to create the next gen of shooters if they don't all turn out to be afraid of guns.

At Camp Perry I would watch the flags. They had a line of them starting at the firing line and ending at the target line. I can assure you that I never saw all of those flags flying in the same direction.

The wind changed directions at least once over the length of 600 yards.

Yea what was really funny was when the flags near the end of the range were fling straight up and they wondered why the were shooting long. Did all of mine civilian taught by retired Airborne Ranger. After I had my 300 win mag built by Remington's custom shop we started working to get it to the next level. Re crowned the muzzle and threaded it for a custom compensator, we went through 8 different renditions finely settled on the very first one we built holes drilled radially around in a barber pole arc it worked the best and took a lot of the recoil out of the weapon. Then accurizing the bolt face with jeweling done to the bolt surface. then the Timney trigger worked down to 1.25 lbs of pull. And finally the last piece to the puzzle was the Leupold Gold Ring scope almost 800.00 back in the 80's. I don't even want to know what one like it cost today. Oh yea! almost forgot the Mc Millan stock that was Z cut with springs in the stock with hydraulic cylinders to help with the recoil as well as tubes of mercury imbedded in the stock to control the recoil. Saw a scope during the NRA convention in Indy that was computer controlled to fire when it crossed the target cross hairs. You could use the scope or the monitor screen either one would put you on target every time without fail. You really had to try to miss.

I belonged to the North-South Skirmish Ass'n and for a while we held a Labor Day shoot there. Great fun, Black powder smoke and fog all at once. Try even seeing the targets never mind hitting them.

Awesome shot.

WOW! Great shot!

I have watched footage of sniper shots in Iraq and Afganistan where a 50 cal. Barret was used to strike targets less than 12" in diameter at distances up to 2,000 meters (6,600 yards).

While it is impressive, there was/is a significant quantity of high-tech equipment being used by the spotter and the shooter to make this happen where this shot is pretty much an off-hand, prone shot using nothing more than a cushion rest.

Definitely impressive and I for sure would not want him shooting at me.

The shooter at time may not see the target itself, while the spotter can.

I have watched footage of sniper shots in Iraq and Afganistan where a 50 cal. Barret was used to strike targets less than 12" in diameter at distances up to 2,000 meters (6,600 yards)."

Bit of a conversion error there - 2000 metres is a bit shy of 2190 yards, still way short of that shot.

I once had an in-service training class with a US Marine SGT. During the breaks we often talked about sniper capabilities. He was a sniper "over there". He told me the longest confirmed shot he made was two miles. I, tongue in cheek, said that he must have pulled the trigger in between heart beats. He said that is the working joke within the sniper community.

I'm glad these guys are on our side.

Don

Is it 2000 meters = 2188 yards? You probably ment nearly 6,600 ft ? jt. (6,564)

He can't see the target because he's firing at a target way below his sight line; basically he's firing flat and letting gravity drop the projectile to a target on a much lower plane than he's on. Judging from the dull "clink" and the target's lack of motion from the impact I wonder how much forward momentum that round had. Any ballistics experts out there care to estimate its velocity/momentum/impact after 7 seconds of flight time?

The wild part is that you could die before you heard the sound from the muzzle, assuming that there was any penetrating power left in the bullet.

That looked like a mountainous area, I believe it's in Western Texas.

The other thing is as far as seeing the target, I don't know what you mean by that, He has a scope, that adjustable....

As far as being above the target, maybe, but that doesn't matter. It's all in ballistics. if his scope is sighted in (which it is), the bullets trajectory would be a nice parabola.

Its interesting to note, like on the guns of a battle ship that can shoot a 2,000 projectile. If the gun is shooting level, the distance that shell will cover before it splashes is the same time if that shell was dropped at the height of the gun till it hit the water.

Boy. that's impressive! All my competition shooting was with a .58 rifle musket, offhand. Never at more than 200 yds. At that distance I was happy to hit the paper! (16x16 target) But I never claimed to be among the best.

Good shot and I'm not knocking it at all, but with scopes etc. reasonably easy?

We had (uk) 303's which were very accurate at 1000 yards no problem at all, and supposedly,
could reach 3 miles; not that we ever had that long a range. (No scopes, so couldn't see that far)
1000 yards was good. A 303 could kill at that range, and I could easily put 5 rounds into a
one inch circle at 100 yards - to qualify as a marksman - worth another 3/6 a week in money! (yippee!)

Unfortunately the officer would never accept it, saying, "I had put 2 or 3 into the target... and
the others over the top!" (probably jealous, as I could do it repeatedly)
I never got the 3/6 a week extra. :-( - so they can stick their wars.

This was all with no scope - only a lift-up metal "range adjuster" calibrated in yards.
The rest was all by eye. Great days, as long as no one got hurt.

However a marksman usually got put up a tree, or some where equally stupid,
and, while everyone else cleared off, their days were numbered. So for the best. (live longer)

jt.

A rifle that can put all shots in a one inch group (actually 1.047") at 100 yards is classed as a minute of angle (MOA) rifle, and that is generally classed as a pretty good rifle.

That same rifle, with the same grouping, at 200 yards will be two inches, at 1000 yards it will be ten inches. By the time we get out to the distance of that shot - 3600 yards - that very good MOA rifle's group is now 36 inches - the same size as that target.

You can see on the video that each of his shots - even the ones that missed the target - were within that MOA.

Then you have elevation at that distance. From the moment the projectile leaves the bore it is falling to earth, gravity is doing its job, it never rises above the line of the barrel, so to get it to hit where the scope is looking you have to raise the muzzle. A rifle is normally bore sighted to a point where the bullet first rises to the line of sight of the scope, and then the scope is adjusted for any longer distances by shifting the scope's erector tube such that the barrel must be raised accordingly to re-acquire the target.

I don't know the specifics of that shooters loads, but taking a .357 H&H Magnum 270gn projectile at 3000fps muzzle velocity (speed of sound at the point of firing is 1120fps), zeroed at 100 yards with the scope 1.5 inches above the barrel, the bullet rises to your line of sight at that 100 yard mark and then begins its descent such that at 500 yards it is 54 inches below your line of sight, at 1000 yards it is 435 inches (36.25 feet - 12 yards) low, has been in the air for 1.9 seconds and is now travelling at less than the speed of sound at just 1000 fps. Its energy has dropped from 5500 to 600 ft/lb.

If you factor in a cross wind at just 10 mph, the bullet will be 148 inches (12 feet) down wind at 1000 yards, and I'm pretty sure on that range the winds - up, down and cross - would have been quite changeable over the distance.

I have no figures for longer distances, but they are not uniform, those figures increase exponentially the further the projectile travels. You could tell from the ping on the target that the bullet had almost no energy left. It must have been falling almost vertically at that point.

I'm not overly familiar with the mil system for E & W as I used inches when shooting, so happy to be corrected on my calcs, but as far as I am aware, a mil is equal to 3.6 inches at 100 yards, and you multiply that by the distance in 100yd increments and then by the number of mils adjustment. According to the information, he set a total elevation of 60.5 mil which I calculate to be 3.6 x 36 x 60.5, so roughly equal to 7840 inches at that distance, and a windage of 3.5 mil which I calculate to be about 440 inches. Sounds a lot, so happy to be educated here.

To achieve sufficient elevation he had to lift the rear end of the scope, adjust the erector tube as much as possible, and then hold off the target as well.

All in all an amazing bit of work.

Yes, true, a very good shot. (as I said I'm not knocking it at all.) Thanks for a good explanation.

I only referred to the accuracy obtainable from (what was) a UK standard issue 303 rifle;
of which any rifle was given to any man. (no knowledge at all about what they use now.)
The whole world of rifles has very long ago moved on from me!

jt.

A bit of related trivia, When graduated 'ladder' rear sights were first used, they were for volley fire at massed targets such as troop movements. From what I've read, they were moderately successful during the Civil War (USA). As rifles became more accurate, they were used at smaller targets. One of the early commanders of Northern forces at Gettysburg (Reynolds) was killed across the battlefield by a sniper, reportedly shortly after saying "Aw, at this distance they couldn't hit an elephant." Range would have been about a half mile.

From the website:

Elevation: 60.2 mil (26.8 in rail, 22.6 in turret, 10.8 hold over)
Windage: 3.5 mil left
Wind calls by FTW instructor Doug Prichard.

Teamwork and practice

Very impressive