volume 13.2

Terry Wieland’s On Shooting

Siren Song: Images of Desert Distance Conjure Need for Reach

This little anecdote took place in America but has great relevance for hunters in the deserts of Africa.

A potential client telephoned Empire Rifles a year or so ago, wanting to order a rifle for shooting at ultra-long range. The cartridge was a .378 Weatherby necked down to 7mm or something equally bizarre; the rifle would have a 6-24X scope, and be intended for shooting pronghorn antelope in Wyoming at 800 yards.

For reasons too numerous to mention, Empire declined any part in the project, but the fact that someone would set out to design such a rifle says a lot about both the times in which we live, and the common perception of hunting on plains, mountains and deserts.

It may be the current infatuation with all things military, especially long-range tactical rifles, but there is an increasing fascination with shooting at animals at ranges beyond anything that could be considered either rational or ethical.

There is no need to shoot at an unwounded pronghorn beyond 400 yards under any conceivable conditions, and the usual range is closer to 250. Their prairie home, while it appears flat, is actually an undulating expanse of broken ground; if a hunter likes stalking and knows how to read ‘dead’ ground, he can usually get himself to within a reasonable distance of a pronghorn.

The same is true in most (but not all) desert situations. Some, like the Kalahari, present quite short-range hunting, because of grass and scrub; in the Sahara, and similar deserts of rolling sand dunes, ranges can be long or short. The point is, the hunter usually has a choice: He can take the long shot, or he can make an effort to reduce the distance and vastly increase his chances of making a clean kill.

Faced with the prospect of desert hunting, most hunters put together an outfit designed for what they figure will be a worst-case scenario, and envision themselves decking a running gemsbok at 400 yards. Outfitters’ brochures (and magazine articles like this one) often include a few words along the lines of “...but you should be prepared for the occasional very long (300-metres-plus) shot.” Generally, it is that throwaway line that dictates the final choice of rifle, and often it is one more suited to shooting terrorists off distant rooftops than crawling through the bush after a kudu.

There are several factors to consider, including overall weight and bulk, and riflescope magnification.

If you want a rifle chambered in one of the usual long-range suspects, such as the .338 Lapua, you are wasting your time unless you have a long barrel – preferably 26 inches. Anything less and the ballistic performance won’t be there.

Most hunters then start shopping for a big scope. Although a common-or-garden old 3-9X will provide everything you need even with a Lapua, most hunters would lean towards something sexier, like a 4-14X or 6-24X. As a rule, these scopes also have bigger objective lenses (40mm or larger), with the result that overall size and weight is excessive on a hunting rifle. It is one thing to shoot these things from a rest, and it is quite another to carry one all day.

That aside, there is the question of heat mirage. Until you have experienced it, it is hard to imagine just how effectively heat mirage can ruin or prevent a shot. When heat starts radiating upwards, it shimmers and undulates. If you can see it with the naked eye, then it will be bad through a scope, and the higher the magnification the worse it will be. Once you get beyond a certain point, usually around 6X, the mirage is compressed into such a small space, optically speaking, it is like shooting through moving water.

If heat mirage precludes using magnification much greater than 6X, why carry the excess baggage around with you?

Some years ago I was on Kenny Jarrett’s private 1000-yard range in June, during a heat wave. The midday temperature routinely nudged 105˚ F. I was testing a .257 Weatherby with a fine Swarovski scope. As an experiment, I drove out to the last butt and put up a 4x4 sheet of paper with a standard target in the middle. Back at the firing line, through spotting scope or riflescope, the target came and went, undulating like a dancer in an opium dream. I took a few shots off the bench. Had the target been an animal, it would have wandered off unscathed.

Long-range competitive shooters go to great lengths to cope with these problems, with wind-direction indicators and similar paraphernalia. And this is over an exact, known distance. A hunter has none of these tools. He will be shooting under pressure, at varying distances, from a makeshift rest; the target may be one of several animals off in the distance, and possibly moving. Throw in a gusting wind on top of radiating mirage and you have a near-impossible situation.

The solution? Get closer.

Having embraced that principle, the desert hunter can jettison a lot of excess baggage. Cut back to a reasonable cartridge like the 7mm Remington, .30-06, or even a 7x57. Cut overall rifle weight down to eight pounds, which is easy to carry yet steady to shoot. Go with a scope as low as 1.5-6X, or even a compact 2-7X.

When a variable scope is put on a rifle, it will spend most of its life at one of two settings: minimum and maximum. A 2-7X will sit at either 2X or 7X. And yet, the most useful setting is probably 4X. A desert hunter could do a lot worse than buying a fixed-power 4X and forgetting about it. At the very least, when you first arrive at your desert hunting area, wait until the heat sets in and then start experimenting to see which setting works best, giving good vision without excessive mirage. You might be surprised to see just how low that optimum setting really is.

One of the starkest lessons I ever had in the relative value of scope magnification came back in the 1980s. I acquired a Sako benchrest rifle in 6 PPC, then the wunderkind of the cartridge world. Through some accident, I also acquired a Leupold 36X target scope. This, thought I, is a match made in heaven and the ground rodents are in deep trouble.

The rifle went hunting exactly twice and collected one (1) woodchuck at about 100 yards. Anything closer and I could not find the target in the scope. And regardless of range, I needed to find a solid rest. The 36X had critical eye-relief, unforgiving eye alignment, relatively low light-gathering, and extreme magnification that made it seem as if I was suffering from ague. Together, they rendered the rifle absolutely, utterly, and completely useless for any shooting except at a fixed target from a bench.

The great old Lyman target scopes came in 10X, 12X, 15X, 20X, 25X, and 30X, and many a shooter in the winner’s circle had a rifle equipped with one of the lower powers. The reason? High magnification often creates more problems than it solves, and the higher you go the less useful they become.

Lest I seem a complete Luddite, raging against modern life, let me tell you that the Jarrett rifle mentioned above is now fitted with a Swarovski 3-12x50. It is the longest-range rifle I own (and probably ever will own) and the scope is intended to optimize its performance to the maximum, while not impairing it with excess weight and bulk. I experimented with a 6-24 and a 4-18, but finally settled on the 3-12. It has a 30mm tube and gathers light fiendishly. For whitetail hunting across vast soybean fields, from a stand, it is nigh perfect.

Even at a shooting range, however, I have seldom used it at maximum power. It does not take much mirage to render 12X almost useless. With its long barrel, and that scope, the rifle tips the scale fully loaded, with a sling, at 10.5 pounds. That’s just too heavy for normal hunting and stalking on foot.

A final anecdote: I attended an editorial gathering a few months ago at which a manufacturer of civilian-market AR-15 rifles was extolling its virtues, in .308 chambering, as a hunting rifle, and told how he took one hunting mountain goats. His guide viewed this with some alarm, and remarked on the 11-pounds-plus weight of the rifle. The owner persevered, however, and insisted on carrying the rifle himself almost every step of the way. He was rewarded, ultimately, with a clean kill on a mountain goat.

Exactly what that proved, I have no idea. That a .308 will kill a mountain goat? I think we knew that. That an excessively heavy rifle will shoot as well as a lighter one? That there is no limit to masochism? You tell me.