How far out are shooting your .357?

Competition wise, we shoot up to 200 m here in Norway. The local shooting range has a 130 m target setup, if I'm not mistaken.

Playing with the 200 yard or meter distance with a 357 magnum is a lot of fun

plinking Clay's off the 100ish he berm is about all I've done with a .357
I don't actually own one, but a buddy has a nice Smith i shoot often.

Max is 100 yards at the local range. I shoot that distance routinely on a full sized steel plate torso in the standing position using a 4 inch GP 100/4 5/8ths inch Ruger BH/3 inch SP101. Since I reload I do that with bullets from 125 to 180grains. Satisfying to hear the clank on the metal at that distance. Way more so than punching paper at 7/11 yards.

Beach Bum said:

We have plates at 200 , 340 , yrds ....your shooting farther than me , are you using a scope ?

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No, open sights and dumb luck, lol.
- I need to get a larger plate for 300m (I miss-typed when I wrote 400m, hit the 4 instead of the 3 and was unpleasantly surprised when I read that just now, pays to proofread) because the 12" is just too hard to see, let alone hit at that range with the more pricey .357mag.
I don't mind missing 9/10 rounds aiming at clay pigeons with a 5.5" .22lr at 200m but those .357s get a little expensive after the first 200.
So what's typical plate size at 300m, 18", 24"...?

I shoot at 10" plates at 100, 150, 200, 250, and 300 yards with my scoped 357 Magnum, and I am NOT shooting off-hand. I am shooting with some kind of field rest from prone, seated or double-kneeling.

I should mention I'm seated and semi-rested. I use sandbags for a wrist-rest but am still holding the pistol, not resting it.

I can’t do it anymore because I dont live where I used to, but before I moved I had a great setup. I had steel plates hanging in the woods and I would shoot at random distances. It forced me to estimate range, estimate hold, and most importantly to have confidence in the shot. What I found is that if your confident then you have a better hold and make a better shot. Revolver shots were typically anything from 30 to 150. I hunted the same farm and killed a few critters with handguns from a few feet all the way out to about 125 which was my longest handgun kill, young whitetail. Only a couple times has tactical shooting helped me, and the best example of that was a buck that slipped up to about 7 yards and bolted right to left as I squeezed off my first shot with a 1911 10mm. I hit 3 as he ran as fast as I could, instinctively put safety on and dropped the pistol onto my backpack and swung up with the .270 as he staggered into the woods. When I skinned him out the 3 hits with the 10mm were all great shots in the heart and lungs in a group about the size of a coke can. The .270 shot came in on the last rib quartering away and shredded what was left of his chest cavity.

point being, there’s a lot more to it than shooting for distance, shooting for speed, shooting one platform well, or being lucky. You have to be good at a bunch of things to be successful, and you don’t get good unless you practice and have fun with it.

25 yards is my standard range
50 yards with 357 BH and 44 mag SBH for hunting
All my shooting is with reloaded boolits.

Let me know if I might be able to offer a suggestion or two regarding shooting up here in the northstate. Although I don't shoot or hunt as much as I used to (old age creeping up) I grew up in a shooting, hunting, military family from Siskiyou County so I've been doing that stuff for the past 50 years or so. It sounds like you've got MANY years of shooting fun ahead of you.

50 paces when I had mine. Always went into the swamp and shot. Dang I need to get another one.

I have three 7x12 silhouettes that I set up at 25, 35 and 50 yards when I shoot. I'm not very good at 50 with semi autos, but I'm pretty automatic with them at 25 and 35. I credit the revolvers with that, because prior to getting into revolvers this summer I always set my steels up for handgun at 10 and 15 yards. Revolvers made me get better with my semis because by god if I was going to shoot that well with a revolver I would figure out how to get better results with my semis, and I concentrated on sight picture. It didn't take long to see the results, I left the range that first day out with a revolver and one of my carry semis shooting my semi better than I ever had before.

I would honestly say that getting into revolvers was responsible for the greatest improvement I ever got in my semi auto handling. I figure if I'm good with my carry guns at 25 and 35 yards then defense range use is no problem. Couldn't be happier and going to the range is more fun than it's ever been.

One of the stages in Advanced Pistol courses , like those given by ITTS or others is usually a long distance target. In ITTS it was 100 yards and 200 yards downhill . I was shooting a .45 1911 and when that stage came up slipped my Wilson Combat 1911 out and my Gold Cup into it's place the 100 meter shots were any position you wanted to make them but severely penalized for more than one miss in a string (can't remember the string think it was 6 shots) . I made lets say 5 out of six rested over the berm on the ipsc shilo K zone. Now the 200 meter shot was a different story. Even tho when in the Army with an issue 1911 and lots of ammo to play with I remember shooting a 55 gallon drum at about 300 yards and getting 15 feet of drop= holding all the front sight above rear notch and a smidgen more . At 100 yards the drop is about a foot if the gun is sighted in at 25 yards . If you are shooting 9mm Nato the drop is about half that as I remember. 200 meters with a .45 acp is difficult and I managed to walk in one hit in a mag full. .Now the .357, especially out of a 6" barrel is another story. 200 meter Rams are not a big problem for a longer barrel 158-180 grain hot load.

The bulk of my shooting is now on silhouettes like those in my avatar at Front Sight in NV, usually at 10-15 yds with any of my handguns. That's on a daily basis here on the farm...a nice break from the usual chores. But finishing up, I always shoot our railroad tie plates on the way back to the house. Spaced at 5 yd intervals, from 25 yds out to 90, they teach you a lot about hold, zero, sight picture, and most of all, trigger manipulation.

The plates are ~8x15" in size and make for a challenging target past 50 yds. The holes for spikes are convenient for mounting too. I have about a dozen, garnered over the years from highway/railroad crossing points, discarded when tie/ballast work has been done.

Best Regards, Rod

The firing line to the targets was about 27 yards at the old pistol range here. It was actually 25, but I would stand back a bit behind the benches. I had a stainless .357 Blackhawk I shot at that distance pretty often. At the new one I shoot at, since the old one is closed, it is about the same distance. I've never thought there was much of a point at shooting at anything closer because it's pretty hard to miss. I know statistics say otherwise, and I'll probably get reemed for my thought process on this subject, but I feel in a really dangerous situation 20 to 40 yards (not 2-5 or whatever they say) is a more realistic handgun engagement distance. I may be wrong, but that's just how I look at it. So I prefer to practice for that. Haven't done enough shooting practice lately though! I haven't had a .357Mag in awhile, but I typically shoot 9x19/.45acp and 357Sig at that distance when I'm shooting.

Uberti Pietta SAA said:

No, open sights and dumb luck, lol.
- I need to get a larger plate for 300m (I miss-typed when I wrote 400m, hit the 4 instead of the 3 and was unpleasantly surprised when I read that just now, pays to proofread) because the 12" is just too hard to see, let alone hit at that range with the more pricey .357mag.
I don't mind missing 9/10 rounds aiming at clay pigeons with a 5.5" .22lr at 200m but those .357s get a little expensive after the first 200.
So what's typical plate size at 300m, 18", 24"...?

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We try to mix up target size and type at all ranges silhouette and steel plates as big as 30 " down to small critters , clays are normaly 50 yds or less , sometimes out to 100

Rodfac said:

The bulk of my shooting is now on silhouettes like those in my avatar at Front Sight in NV, usually at 10-15 yds with any of my handguns. That's on a daily basis here on the farm...a nice break from the usual chores. But finishing up, I always shoot our railroad tie plates on the way back to the house. Spaced at 5 yd intervals, from 25 yds out to 90, they teach you a lot about hold, zero, sight picture, and most of all, trigger manipulation.

The plates are ~8x15" in size and make for a challenging target past 50 yds. The holes for spikes are convenient for mounting too. I have about a dozen, garnered over the years from highway/railroad crossing points, discarded when tie/ballast work has been done.

Best Regards, Rod

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Indeed, first shot in the vital zone, in under 2 seconds, from concealed carry, wins the fight. I'm a big fan of, and practice draw-from-concealment often. But again, 100 yards with a pistol is not a "big" trick.