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Old 05-22-2018, 03:24 PM
C J C J is offline
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Originally Posted by shep854 View Post
One more point that is VITAL for ethical, humane hunting: Understand your responsibility to the game to make a shot that will kill quickly and as painlessly as possible. That means passing up a shot if you have doubts about how effective it will be.
Reality being what it is, there will probably be misses and poor hits, but a true hunter strives to minimize them.
I know the OP said he wouldn't be using a .223 to hunt deer. This is the reason why. An accomplished shooter can bring down a deer with a .223 but someone new to shooting and hunting should choose a larger caliber. Personally I would not hunt with a .223 and I've been shooting for over 50 years.

The first thing a hunter should do is learn to shoot. Learning from an instructor is good but learning to shoot by thinking about what you're doing works too. Get a rifle, I'd start with a .22 because of the price of ammo, and learn to shoot it by the age old method we know as plinking. You will learn to shoot a lot of different ways plinking. Shoot moving targets (not live targets of course unless they're rats or something similar) and learn to shoot from different positions. I taught my kids to shoot using swinging targets. Side to side swinging targets that is. But a .22 target that swings back and forth can be useful too. It can teach you timing.

It takes a while. I learned by shooting at pop cans tossed into the air. If you know the trick you can hit them many times on one toss. Even better is to shoot clay pigeons with a shotgun. If you learn to do that you will be able to hit a running deer with a rifle.

Where I came from people learned to be accomplished shooters in all types of shooting. If you know someone who is like that you can learn a lot from them. We poked fun at each other if anyone dared to use a rest to shoot. Hunting doesn't allow for much shooting from a rest. It's possible to hunt deer with a rest since you'll likely be in a blind or a tree stand. But people also hunt while walking. That's the reason we all learned to shoot off hand. If you do that shooting from a rest is child's play. Sure it takes practice to get really good from a rest but you don't have to be perfect to hunt. Just good. It pays to be very good at shooting off hand. I wouldn't spend much of my time shooting from a rest at targets. Find a place where you can shoot different ways SAFELY. I grew up in a remote area in the mountains of eastern Kentucky. We could shoot in the air at pop cans with little concern about hitting anything as long as you knew where the few neighbors lived in range of a .22.

Once you learn to shoot then you should learn to hunt. Just shouldering your rifle without spooking your game is tricky. That's an area where instruction from people who have done it can help a lot.
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