How accurate should a deer rifle be?

How accurate should a deer rifle be?

  • Sub MOA

    Votes: 12 13.5%

  • 1-2"

    Votes: 42 47.2%

  • 2-3"

    Votes: 21 23.6%

  • 3-4"

    Votes: 5 5.6%

  • 4-6"

    Votes: 7 7.9%

  • 6-8"

    Votes: 2 2.2%

  • more than 8"

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    89
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If you can shoot an 8" target at 100 yards & come hunting Sambar deer in the thick wet mountain valleys that I hunt ,you certainly wont be disadvantaged in putting meat on the table as most Sambar deer I have shot & seen have been within 30 yards. If however you come hunting Fallow deer in the open grasslands where I also hunt, where shooting distances of 300 yards is common, then you will starve.:)
 
growing up we used smooth bore shotguns and round ball black powder.

for us 2" at 25yd was plenty good, but we never had a bench either.

sighting in was off the porch rail, into the "target tree" at 25yd.

100yd was a very rare shot due to the density of the woods, and the hills.

but i made several of those rare shots, so it was plenty good.

now that i have longer range rifles, and the range to open them up i prefer better accuracy.
 
I agree with the plate shooters. If you can hit a 9" plate at whatever range you are hunting ,your gun is good enough. If your only shooting 100yds, you can have a 8"-9" grouping gun. I voted 2-3" cause that still gets you good enough at 300 or so yds, and from what I've read on here, thats farther than most people want to shoot anyway.

I like to play with my loads and my worst gun shoots 3/4" at 100yds. All others are 1/2"-3/8". My metal gongs at 400, 600, 800, and 1000yds are all 12"x12". If you can hit them, you are good to go.
 
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An accurate rifle can help a hunter have the confidence to take a shot without having to worry about where the bullet is going. That being said, IMO any rifle that can shoot 2" groups at 100 yards is adequate for most deer hunting.
 
After a little reflection I think MPBR should play a factor in determining acceptable field accuracy for most hunters. With factory ammo (which is loaded down in respect for many old milsup rifles out there) my 7x57 has a MPBR of ~200 yards with an up/down of 3 inches. With an apex of +3" I have about 3" more (with a tiny bit of give to the equation when considering the largest vitals target on a deer sized animal) to give at about 135-140 yards. A two inch group @ 100 yards pushes my top side to ~3" at 150 yards. After apex everything settles down along with Newton's apple. I won't take an offhand shot much past 50 yards, so a rest helps keep this all realistic; but an improvised rest is nuttin like a bench and exertion & elevated vital signs on the shooter's part are limits that have forced me to call off a shot before that I would have called a chip shot from a bench.

I like a neckshots, but I really want a MOA rifle and a good understanding where my trajectory is before I put my crosshairs there at any real distance. Timing becomes tricky too since that head is only up for a second or so usually. Low neck is more forgiving but close to those highly coveted backstraps.

To sum it up it depends very much on they style of the hunter, but bench testing means very little under field stress unless you have a shooting bench in a blind looking over a corn feeder and very happy and ignorant deer.
 
I think it really depends on where you live and what kind of terrain you will be in.

For hunting white tails in the east, I think you could have an iron sighted marlin/winchester 30-30 that shoots 6" groups at 100yds and be able to kill 9 out of 10 deer you run across. I would like to have a rifle that can do better than that, just for confidence though. But I don't think an eastern deer rifle NEEDS to be any more accurate.

However for a Wyoming pronghorn rifle, you will probably have an unfilled tag with performance like that. I believe the least I would accept from a modern scoped center fire rifle for that purpose would be 2-3". Again less would be better but probably not needed.

And as others said, once its sighted in, get off the bench or you are not as likely to hit your mark. Unless you "hunt" from one of those tree houses that passes for a deer stand sitting over a food plot which is basically a bait pile. :barf:
 
I hunt in some pretty wide open spaces. 90% of my blacktail deer hunting is above the treeline where you can see for miles, and mainland caribou are generally found on wide open tundra.
When I was younger, and much stupider, I wanted to make those long shots and I was into the huge scopes and spent way more time than it's worth trying out different reloading recipes for that accuracy. No matter what you do though, there's wind and there's range estimation errors and heavy breathing from hiking up that mountain, and just plain bad shots. So, there's crippled and lost animals in my past that taught me a lesson.

You owe it to the animal you are hunting to get close enough for a sure kill. Maybe that means you have to backtrack or make a big half circle of a mile or so, or low crawl through brush - and maybe after all that, the animal isn't there any more. Hey, that's hunting!

For hunting at ethical ranges, you don't need a sub-MOA rifle. If you have to think about wind velocity and bullet drop of more than a couple of inches, you're too far away. Get closer. I like to get within 200 yards. I'll consider 300 if there's no wind, but around here that's a rare day indeed.

I'll exempt pronghorn hunters, etc, but for 98% of us; if you're taking long range shots it's because of poor hunting skills. Sorry if that sounds harsh...
 
I'm sure there is some of that, but there is also those who consider the shot more of the challenge and would rather shoot an animal at distance when they could very easily get closer if they wanted to.

I am mostly a bowhunter and the skill required to get within 100 yards of a deer or elk is over rated. Pronghorns are a different subject.
 
I'm sure there is some of that, but there is also those who consider the shot more of the challenge and would rather shoot an animal at distance when they could very easily get closer if they wanted to.
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Yeah, there are those people and I have a name for them - that I won't use here on the board. Those are the people that give hunting a bad name and when you come across that bloated gut-shot deer that's been dying in agony for the last couple of days, you can thank one of them for it.

I used to be one of them. I'm not sure age brought me much wisdom, but it did come with a little ethics.
 
Granted, I don't shoot my hunting rifle from a bench. When I shoot it, I normally shoot standing or kneeing cause I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna have a bench when mr. buck shows up. I just don't see why you need a 1-2 MOA gun for hunting deer...am I missing something here, what are your thoughts?
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If you can put all your shots into an 8" paper plate from kneeling, standing, etc., then I think you're fine for deer. Sub-moa is great, but I don't hunt deer from a benchrest with a target rifle....

Remember, most anyone who answers this is into guns enough to: first, be on a gun forum, and second, post a reply.

I think if you asked the average deer cooler customer and not a bunch of interwebs gun nuts (yes, I'm one :)), the average answer would be like mine.
 
I'm so nit picky when it comes to how my rifles perform. When me and a friend of mine go to the range he always tells me that pie plate accuracy is all that is needed when it comes to hunting deer. I agree with him but I always try to get it better than that. For example my 7mm rem mag sendero shoots inside a softball at 400 yards and I can live with that. I want better, but I'll accept if for the time being. Of course I'm talking from a bench. I'm a decent off hand shooter so I need my rifles to be as accurate as possible.
 
Whenever im hunting I would like the rifle to perform better than me so I dont ever mess up a great oppertunity! If you have a buck of the life time standing 200 yards and you have a gun you know can shoot sub MOA that wont be a problem and you will have full confidence of a clean kill. If you have a gun that can hit a 8'' plate who knows where you are going to go or hit! to me its a confidence thing and i would much rather have the ability to pic out a hair and hit it then spray and pray!
 
Yeah, there are those people and I have a name for them - that I won't use here on the board. Those are the people that give hunting a bad name and when you come across that bloated gut-shot deer that's been dying in agony for the last couple of days, you can thank one of them for it.
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Lats year I watched a guy completely miss a standing deer at 75 yards with a good rest...twice.
I'm not sure that range has everything to do with your assessment.
I watched a friend of mine shoot one in the top of the heart at 380 yards.
I am not a long range rifleman by any stretch, but I know guys who are. Just because I can't make a shot I don't assume that nobody else can.


But, as others have said, the longer shots one takes the more critical accurracy becomes. So, I suppose for deer you could figure 3 inches max from point of aim and then correlate that to the max distance your particular talent will let you shoot. A six inch group at 100 yards would be OK if that is a far as you plan to shoot providing your jerking and fidgeting doesn't double it in the field.
 
Poll

I voted 1-2, becuse that would give a a 6 inch or smaller group at 300. this vote is tempered by the fact that I know I can shoot atleast that good. A sub 6 inch group keeps me in the vitals of Carolina swamp bucks as long as I do my part.
 
I am not a long range rifleman by any stretch, but I know guys who are. Just because I can't make a shot I don't assume that nobody else can.
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The problem is that even very good shooters can't make those shots every time, in the field. It's not the same as sitting on a bench at the rifle range. There are little variables like range estimation and wind and temperature and the fact they aren't carrying a bench rest around that can throw them off.

Consider that a 5 mph wind will drift a standard hunting velocity bullet 10 inches or so at 500 yards. Your bullet drop is going to be in the neighborhood of 50 inches. Is the deer at 450 yards or 550 yards? The difference in bullet drop might be 20 inches or more. Even with a range finder, you may not have a hard object close enough to do more than guess. Is the wind really 5 mph or is it 7 mph? Is the wind here, the same as it is across the canyon where the deer is? Does the direction of the wind change?

Get any of that wrong and it's just one more gut-shot or three legged deer left to hobble off and die miles away.

If the guy is a trained military sniper then yeah, I think he can safely score 10 for 10 in the field at 500 yards. But the average guy who sits at a bench rest and rings the 500 yard gong at the range, shouldn't be trying to do the same thing on live animals.
 
The problem is that even very good shooters can't make those shots every time, in the field. It's not the same as sitting on a bench at the rifle range. There are little variables like range estimation and wind and temperature and the fact they aren't carrying a bench rest around that can throw them off.

Consider that a 5 mph wind will drift a standard hunting velocity bullet 10 inches or so at 500 yards. Your bullet drop is going to be in the neighborhood of 50 inches. Is the deer at 450 yards or 550 yards? The difference in bullet drop might be 20 inches or more. Even with a range finder, you may not have a hard object close enough to do more than guess. Is the wind really 5 mph or is it 7 mph? Is the wind here, the same as it is across the canyon where the deer is? Does the direction of the wind change?

Get any of that wrong and it's just one more gut-shot or three legged deer left to hobble off and die miles away.

If the guy is a trained military sniper then yeah, I think he can safely score 10 for 10 in the field at 500 yards. But the average guy who sits at a bench rest and rings the 500 yard gong at the range, shouldn't be trying to do the same thing on live animals.
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We have had this discussion umpteen times on this forum just since I have been here.

My take is that if you have ten shooters you have ten different capabilities. Most of the guys I hunt with have been hunting for decades and know exactly what they can and can't do.
I am not going to judge what anybody else can do.
 
I am not going to judge what anybody else can do.
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I will. I live in and hunt in pretty much treeless open country and I've seen the results all too often. Other than for bragging, there's simply no reason to take those long shots. Just get closer and take that shot inside 250 yards, or whatever the MPBR of your rifle is.
 
2nd is to eliminate or reduce the chase or search for it, when it drops. The ideal is to drop it where it's shot, slightly uphill from the road where my truck is.
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I was talking to my dad after he had just taken a nice buck one day he had been watching for over 30 minutes. When I asked why he did not shoot him sooner her answered " He was walking up hill toward the Jeep and I felt the father he walked the less I was going to have to drag him".

Doug
 
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