EVERYMAN’S EXTREME LONG RANGE
Everyone needs a buddy like Chad. A.J. Stewart, a 34-year-old industrial technician from Mobile, Alabama, had dropped three .22 LR shots onto a steel target at 825 yards—and into a group about the size of a dip can. Now, with a ridiculous 120 mils of elevation doped into his rig, he sent it to 1,000.
But, it wasn’t going well.
The splashes looked to land in front of the 30x30-inch steel square, so Stewart spun up more elevation.
“With .22 LR, at that distance, to get it to travel another 5 yards, you need a whole mil of elevation,” Stewart told me. “That’s how steep the bullet is coming down. One meter of elevation for 5 meters of distance.”
He went to 122, 123, 124, 125. Still, no hits.
“Aw, hell!” said his friend and shooting partner, Chad Long, “I’ll go down there.”
Extreme long-range shooting (or ELR)—as with King of 2 Mile events, at which teams of centerfire shooters send .50 BMGs and their derivatives beyond 3,500 yards—makes regular use of forward observers. Chad Long knew this. He took his truck to 1,000 yards and got safe behind some heavy construction debris.
Stewart shot, and Long radioed back. “You’re 35 feet or so behind the target.” Through the spotting scope, Stewart and his team saw the splashes under the steel target, not in front of it, as they first thought.
Stewart walked down the elevation. When he. “That,” he told me, “was the best sound in the world!”
