I shed my pack, slid my arm through the sling and crawled ahead. Only tines showed. The weeds were noisy. Each advancing inch carried risk. Belly to earth, I settled the crosswire above the antler. This close in, with dead air, my scent would reach him soon. “Hey, buck,” I said softly. An ear tip twitched. Again, and its head swiveled. I raised my foot, gently let it fall. The reticle quivered. The buck rose fluidly, one heartbeat from gone, collapsing at the report. On the treeless prairie, whose bleached grass bled to sagging November skies, my bullet had traveled perhaps a dozen steps.
“The last desert ram I shot was not over 30 yards away,” wrote Jack O’Connor, “and the best Dall I have ever taken was maybe about 40 yards from the muzzle …” He allowed that most of the sheep he’d shot probably fell inside 150 yards. Like midcontinent’s prairie, northern sheep country yields much to the hunter’s glass. That killing shots would come close in such environs might seem odd. But long pokes are seldom needed. On my first Alaskan sheep hunt, I carried an iron-sighted Springfield, downing a Dall’s ram at 70 yards on bald shale. Even for sharp-eyed pronghorns on featureless flats, I’ve found lever rifles with aperture sights adequate. The utility of such rifles in eastern whitetail cover is obvious.
Still, the focus of cartridge and bullet design now is on flatter flight and more precise hits at long range. Powerful optics make accurate aim possible beyond the practical reach
