From a practical standpoint, learning the fundamentals of long-range shooting will make you an all-around better marksman—even if you don’t want to spend your weekends shooting a National Rifle League Match or an F-class competition. A general knowledge level, where you can consistently hit targets at 1,000 yards, means attaining a solid grasp of optics, external ballistics, body position, trigger control and ancillary gear like ballistics engines, chronographs and anemometers (wind meters). Traditional hunting ranges, typically 400 yards and in, will begin to seem like a chip shot for sharpshooters with these skills. This proficiency leads to increased harvest for the hunter and more precise shots on game, which leads to more humane kills.
Before a prospective hunter or marksman even purchases or fires a rifle, consider a beginner long-range course. Increased familiarity with and understanding of gear from the beginning allows you to select a system optimized for how you will use it and prevents spending money twice to correct an uninformed purchase.
Long-range shooting used to be expensive. Accurate rifles, usually match-grade .308 Winchester or .300 Winchester Magnum, would cost north of $1,500 and require at least another $1,000 for a riflescope. Ballistics calculators were neither refined nor accessible, and if you wanted to push the distance, you had to handload your ammunition. With the increased interest in long-range shooting, there are now scores of good factory rifles and scopes available within the financial reach of most shooters. Affordable, match-grade hunting and precision rifle ammunition is now widely available, as are reloading components if you want to tune a load to your barrel and squeeze out that last bit of accuracy.
This article will look at five different budget rifle builds suitable for long-range shooting. Each build includes scope recommendations and some meaningful upgrades should you customize the gun in the future. With the proper
