The only places I've ever hunted for deer are in the thick woods of Southern Ohio, Indiana and Northern Kentucky. I started hunting with a Ithaca Deerslayer and only took deer with 12 gauge slugs for years, all with hand cast Lee slugs or during muzzloader season .490 round balls. Several years ago Indiana allowed hunting with bottleneck rifles and Ohio has opened up to straightwalls. I continued to hunt with pistol cartridges; I took a buck this year with a 357 carbine. Basically my entire hunting experience has been short range, dense woods, mostly stalk-hunting. I think I've taken all but one or two deer on my feet and never past 100 yards.
So, I was hunting on Friday morning, the first time I ever took anybody with me to hunt (my oldest son, age 10). I was hunting a a friend's place having already taken a buck this year at another place and wanting to let that place chill for a while so my friend can hopefully get a move-in-buck and/or some does. Anyway, my other friend's place is unlike basically anywhere I've ever hunted; a big open pasture on top of a Indiana rolling hill. I found a recently downed ash tree and tucked into a spot with my son to wait for shooting time figuring a deer may present on the other side of the pasture with a good, safe and clean shot. Not ten minuites into shoting time do I spot a deer, but at the distance I could hardly tell if it was antlered or not. Having only a red-dot and no binocs I was left to surmise it was a buck from its behavior. Can't shoot another this year, darn! Then we see some does and they are likewise distant. When I put my dot over their body it appeared to cover 1/3rd to 1/2 their body. I almost couldn't believe it because the dot is supposed to be 2" at 100 yards, and it seems to be the case from my target shooting. If the dot seemed to be perhaps 6 inches wide this would mean that they were 200-300 yards away, well out of my effective range. I could just barely make out they they lacked antlers and since they were moving in a pair I assumed young does coming to visit the buck. Anwyay, they went to to provide increasingly good broadside shots but still at 200+ yards, which I wasn't going to take with 357 magnum carbine. It just didn't seem that far away where they presented when I sat down. They seemed closer, or my range estimation must just be way off. By 9AM it was clear that they had moved off property, so I went over to where they were and tried to pace it off. I gave up after I counted over 200 paces. I went home and looked it up on a satellite map tool and found out they were 260 yards or so away! Even with my hot rodded 357 magnum it would have been a ~33" drop at that range! Though the bullet would still be going about 1000 FPS.
This got me thinking that if I want to hunt long range again I need to figure out a way instead of just letting them walk on by.
There seems to be two approaches. With cast boolits it seems the logical way is a big bore heavy bullet and really work out trajectories and ranging. The other approach is to go the way of the small bore high velocity rifle with j-words. It certainly seems more straight forward with this approach, though perhaps less fun.
I am aware of countless people who have taken the latter approach, but I'd really like to hear some input from those that have taken the former, even if it was eventually abandoned for whatever reason. Is there really a reason to be married to cast bullets under the circumstances? What do people think?