wildcat junkie

I'll bet he did and I would also bet that it had an illuminated reticle of some sort. If it was too dark to identify the target, it was also too dark to see a no-illuminated reticle well enough to make a 200 yd hit..(unless it was a fluke)

Cutting "labor costs" while maintaining a bloated inept salaried payroll will not save them from poor management.

While sub 1/2" groups are certainly something to be proud of, by the results posted here, they are not extraordinary with a properly set-up rifle and a good trigger nut. What is extraordinary is for the 1st 3 rounds of a load put on paper to be under 1/2". When I "developed" loads form my 8X57IS, I did as I always do shooting over my chronograph seeking a compressed load that gave the lowest standard deviation. I did this with both Nolsler .323" 180 gr Ballistic Tips as well as .323" 200 gr Partitions. After getting "on the paper" @ 25 yds, the 1st three rounds on paper @ 100 yds was a very repeatable sub 1" 3-shot group with the 180 gr BTs. That alone would have been very satisfactory, but when I sent the 1st three 200 gr Partition rounds down range, I was astounded. Needless to say, my "load development" ended right there, at least for the time being. I did work up a duplicate performing load with less expensive Speer .323" 200 gr Hot-Cor bullets and more readily available Alliant Rl-17 at a later date when my initial stash of 200 gr Partitions ran out.. At that Mv, the Partitions weren't needed IMO and on game performance of the .323" 200gr Speer Hot-Cor has been outstanding.

That's why I like my tripod set-up with the usual "bread and butter" shot @ 240-270 yds. The deer don't have a clue and I usually have plenty of time to make a shot. If I pay attention to the wind, I can hunt that stand day in & day out without disturbing the spot where the deer are most likely to appear. If you can hold your groups to 1 1/2" or less @ 100yds off a rest, wedging the elbows on the opposite corner rails makes a 250 yd shot routine if your rifle is set up 2 1/2" - 3" high (depending on caliber) @ 100yds.

Doesn't the law read that the bullet must not pass within 500' of an house/building?

The response was to the post regarding almost all states having 1/2 hour before/after sunrise/sunset for big game hunting hours. I seldom see anyone here in the North country wear any orange whatsoever while deer hunting. To me that's just plain stupid. Aside from being mistaken for a deer by some idiot, there's also the line of fire factor to consider.

You boil the piss out of 'em.

How many of those states have mandatory florescent orange requirements?

Criminally negligent homicide.

Must have had an "illuminated reticle".

There are several houses on 10 acre lots on the road .4 miles north of me. On Thanksgiving morning, many of those folks get out to poke around on the back ends on their properties. I have never killed a deer on Thanksgiving morning but have had some pretty good luck as far as seeing deer in years past. We're having our dinner tonight to accommodate my grand daughter's visitation schedule. I'll probably go out a little before 9:00 and sit until noon while munching on turkey sandwiches..

2 1/2 -3# for me. Far more important IMO is creep. I hate to feel the trigger creep ever so slightly without the BOOM that is supposed to happen as soon as the trigger moves. My CZ-452 American has been modified to adjust from 10-30 ounces. It serves double duty as a squirrel/bench rest rifle. The only time I set it above 10 ozs is when others will be shooting it. When shooting 100 yd bench rest, 10 oz seems like 10#.

Yes I was barefoot. I only had on a "T" shirt with Bermuda shorts and no hat either..

Some claim the 8mm-06 A.I. is the best of the 30-06 wildcats. It certainly falls in the middle in versatility having enough Mv for flat shooting and enough mass in a bullet diameter that yields a high BC for good retained energy. 200# dressed weight bucks, although not a dime a dozen here on the NY/Canadian border, are not rare either. What our bucks give up in antler spread/tine length, mother nature puts into body mass. The 2 biggest bugs taken on my farm prior; 2004) 219# shot on November 4th. The fact that he was taken early before the rut kicked in accounts for some of his weight. 2014) 190# (est) Shot November 29th, very late in the rut. The buck would have probably weighed 20-30# more on Halloween. Note the mass in the shoulders/neck and lack of same in the hindquarters. He had been tearing up the saplings along the main loop of the horse trail for weeks before he came strutting around the bend in a horse trail @ 3:30 PM. He was about mid way between 2 of his scrapes.

If I laid down next to him people might mistake us for brothers.

8mm-06 Ackley Improved. When the A.I. chamber is cut properly, the "parent cartridge" will still headspace on the 40* angle cut in the chamber. In this scenario, a 30-06 case is necked up to 8mm-06, then fire formed. The beauty of the P.O. Ackley designs is that factory ammo can be shot with perfect safety/accuracy to "fire form" the case. After that, the cartridge "could" be safely loaded to 62.000-65,000 psi given the decreased bolt thrust and case metal flow. In this case chamber pressure is around 60K and I have never had to trim a case once fire formed. Incipient case head separation seems non existent. On the left is the original chamber for 8x57 IS which, when loaded to European "adult" specs, spits out a 200gr pill @ 2700 fps @ 3200 ft# of Me. The 8mm-06 A.I bests that by 200fps with Me of 3737 ft#. Basically the 8mm-06 A.I arrives @ 100yds with the same energy as the 8x57 @ the muzzle. Terminal performance is about midway between factory 300 & 338 WM.

Yeah we both have 8R does tags and my bear tag is still unmolested. My son was supposed to be sitting in the tripod this evening, but he thought it was "too cold". TOO COLD? I knew if I sat that stand I would get a crack at a buck. The weather conditions were perfect. I once sat a day out in Wisconsin in 1975 when the thermometer on the window sill read -18F. That's "too cold", not +30F and 4 mph winds! The day before that frigid Wisconsin morning we spent the whole day out in -15F. You could see ice crystals in the air when you looked in the right direction and the sap was exploding inn the jack pine limbs.

It didn't go well for him. 10-points (G-4 on the right barely makes a inch.) 205# dressed on my scale. Not a huge rack, but what a pig! He stepped out @ 4:25. 240 yds down the lane. I could tell it was a buck by the shape & when I put the glass on him, I saw enough antler to make the choice. The whole thing took less than 5 seconds to go down. I sent a 200gr .323 Speer Hot-Cor on his way @ 2900 fps. Hit him a bit far back, clipping the liver as the bullet ranged forward taking out both lungs. He went down like a ton of bricks & never even got close to getting back up.

The very best "archery" weapon for low light hunting is a tradition bow shot "true" instinctive style. When I was 14 yo, a buddy & I would hunt cotton tails with recurve bows @ night in the, then lightly developed, suburbs of Chicago. We would walk the transition from prairie to housing. The very best nights were overcast as there would be no shadows which the little bunnies would use to their advantage. There was a lot of spot & stalking going on to get a shot, but I was pretty constant when a gor a shot within 20 yds. I managed to kill 6 cotton tails that way in fall/winter of '64/'65 When shooting truly instinctive, all you need to see is the target and be peripherally aware of your bow arm.

4 1/2 years old, 219# dressed. He was the dominate buck on my property and I never shoot or saw a rack buck on my property until I shot him. The very next year I shot a 3 1/2 yo 8-point and killed several 2 1/2 @ 3 1/2 yo bucks in the years since. To be fair. I watched him for 3 years and from a distance, his appearance changed little. He was very large body-wise as a yearling and had a wide 4-point rack. Definitely "bad genetics"

OK how's this? If you can't see your non illuminated reticle, you either have pi$$ poor optics or you're hunting WAY, WAY beyond legal shooting hours I will typical take a new scope, along with a proven rifle/scope combo out to my stand in the evening keep comparing low light performance down a long 250yd shooting lane until it gets too dark to see the reticle. All of the scopes I have purchased in the last 25 years have either been Nikon, Luepold or Kahles with simple duplex reticles. Although the image resolution varied somewhat, in every instance, the reticles were still clearly visible for some time after small details such as tree branches (antlers) were becoming very difficult to see. Big objective lens are a marketing ploy to some extent as an objective lens more than 5X in mm than the highest magnification will not admit any mote light into the human eye. In other words, the optimum objective lens size for a variable scope @ 9x will be 45 mm. A scope with 50 mm objective lens will not be noticeably "brighter" at 9x than a scope with a 40 mm objective lens. Since a scope with a magnification factor of more than 3x would be of little use on a crossbow at any ethical ranges that the projectile will still be effective in penetration, a scope with a 20 mm objective lens would be most effective. If you want "artillery" use a longhbow. The French learned that lesson painfully at the battle of Agincourt Scopes do not "gather light", that is a manufactures term. What good optics have is a resistance to reflecting light from each lens surface, both external AND internal. Since every scope has @ least 8 lens surfaces, small improvement to the percentage of reflected light @ each surface can make a significant improvement in low light performance. So given those FACTS, they most effective scope for a crossbow would be a 3x scope with a 20 mm objective lens, a non-illuminated ranging duplex reticle sighted in precisely for each hash mark, of the highest optical quality possible.

I used to frequent Gray's quite a lot when the expense of driving from Brasher wasn't so hard on the budget. Yes, I didn't realize until after I posted that it was an XBow topic. That being said, the comment on lighted reticles still applies. If you can't see your reticle significantly beyond legal shooting hours, you need beter optics.

I can see my duplex reticle LONG after legal shooting hours have passed. Invest in good glass and steer clear of all the gimmicks. I just upgraded to a Leupold VX3i 3.5-10 x 40 with standard duplex reticle. I let you know by the end of the week when I get it mounted and head to the range. It's replacing a Kahles 3-9x42 so it has a very tough act to follow.

You don't know what maddening irritation is until you've had chigger bites on your "private parts".