From a hillside outside of Jackson, Wyoming, a team of extreme long-range shooters and spotters were able to (eventually) lob a round into the 8-inch bullseye of a target set up some 23,322 feet, or just over 4.4 miles, away.
The shooters, Scott Austin and Shepard Humphries of Nomad Rifleman, used a custom long-range rifle built by S&S Sporting in Idaho and hand-loaded 422-grain ELR ammo. With the help of five spotters downrange using audio direction finding from the safety of a bunker just off the impact zone, the group walked in the shot and, on the 69th, made contact in the bull. The time from firing to impact was 24 seconds and the dope was a whopping 1,092 MOA up and 17 MOA left.
The impact point was on the left edge of an 8-inch orange circle painted in the center of the 4’x10′ sheet metal target. It was just 3 ⅛ inches to the left of the dead center of the bullseye.
“These types of shots are just for fun” explained Humphries of the Sept. 13th event. “This is not for hunting purposes, and the hit isn’t consistently repeatable yet. Maybe the people who beat our record and the other smart cookies in the ELR world will be able to make first-round hits at these distances in the years to come, but at this point, it isn’t a sure thing.”
The previous state ELR record, set by Paul Phillip two years ago, was four miles flat.
