I have shot and hunted all over my home state of Arizona. Hunted UT, WY and KS. Either my 06 or 243 are the rifle I use. I've bagged most varmint critters that are able to be hunted. I've taken Whitetail, Mule deer. Pronghorn, Elk and Black bear. In my 40 years of hunting, my longest shot at game has been 360 yards. I'd say over 70% of all game I have taken is between 130 to 210 yards.
But I hear a vast majority of shooters and hunters declare they take this animal or that animal at 500 + yards all the time. Or they are bagging game while shooting off hand at running game 400 yards away and bowl em over with one shot. I find these stories quite unbelievable. Seems no one gets the deer at 100 yards, or shoots ole Wile unless there half mile away.
Am I wrong?
Why is the fish 'THIS BIG'?
People like to tell stories.
Honestly, some folks really do hunt at long range. My primary interest in shooting is long range shooting, and long range competition. That's the crowd I run with most frequently, and some of those guys are true-to-life extreme long range hunters, too. So, when one of my friends from that group reported that he shot a mule deer at 1,187 yards last fall, I know he did... I've watched him shoot targets at over 1 mile before, and I know he's not BSing his distance because that's not how he is.
On the other hand, it's pretty easy to pick out who the braggers are who haven't really done what they claimed they did. I have one coworker who claims he has an off-hand kill shot on a coyote (who was running laterally to his position) at 900 yards using his hunting rifle. Naturally, I knew that boast was a lie from the moment it was told. But, when asked for more information about the shot (elevation and windage, lead on the animal, atmospherics, etc.) he just gave the old "Oh I just held a foot or two above it, and a foot or two ahead of it". Yeah, right, guy... you never made a shot anywhere close to that.
Sometimes I'll even take these types of braggers out to the range to give them a chance to humble themselves. You can setup a man-sized target at 600 yards on a calm day, and watch them miss it all day long.
But, I can tell you that I've personally taken a prairie dog at 776 yards before. I have taken a number of them at over 700 yards, in fact. The shots have been witnessed. But, it doesn't really matter, and isn't even that impressive to me (I was using a long range rifle that I compete with beyond 1,000 yards, and taking "risky" shots at a p-dog is different than taking a risky shot at a bull elk). I'm just pointing out that long range shots can and do happen, and they aren't impossible for people who practice that discipline.
I think the other thing that drives some of the nonsensical claims is just plain naivety. I was shooting on some public lands a while ago, where the "range" consisted of open prairie and some sloping terrain as a backstop. There wasn't any real designated backstop, and people just put targets out on the hill pretty much wherever. I was watching this group of young guys shoot at a target they placed out in the field, and they were pretty excited to be hitting it. They kept cheering about how they were hitting this target at "400 or 500 yards". Knowing that their target was a whole lot closer than that, I pulled out my laser rangefinder and checked their target myself. As I recall it was right at about 123 yards.