The anti-long range argument doesn’t stack up, never does, never will. A well practiced shooter with the right tool can shoot 1,000yds with little difficulty. All the usual caveats apply, training, gear, practice etc.
The alpine shooting community here eat the anti-long rangers for breakfast. It’s actually quite insulting to them, the insinuation that they are “unethical” or whatever. Very few of the mudslingers have the faintest idea of what’s involved, and how all encompassing the discipline is. If you turned up here and got on an alpine guy’s case with the “other peoples’ children” type comments, you’d be on a one-way ticket home pretty quickly, visa cancelled.
Seriously, the degree of investment, prep, study, practice that goes into it, not to mention the gunsmithing, load development, the reloading itself, meteorology, technology, it’s a skill set and discipline that should be respected in no different a way to the very best of the close in deer stalkers. Here we have hunting TV programs that celebrate the achievement of the long range hunter, the extraordinary lengths they go to to get the chance at the shot!
The long range guys are the most schooled shooters I know, educated in what they do, heavily invested in their discipline. Many of these guys shoot competitions, pretty much all of them, in fact I would wager that the typical long range shooter makes one shot at an animal for every 99 he makes at a 1,000yd target.
You can pick holes in any of the hunting disciplines if you like. Bow hunting, black powder muzzleloaders, low powered straight walled cartridges, long range, shotguns, trapping, hunting with dogs, helicopter hog shooting, take your pick. But within each and every discipline there are lots of expert guys who are proud of their capabilities, and rightly so. They don’t deserve to be classed as “other peoples’ children” by the unskilled and unpracticed.