Inside a 388-yard pronghorn shot: wind calls, dialing, and prep

Simon K. Barr's pronghorn hunt near Casper, Wyoming, covered 80,000 acres of sagebrush prairie and ended with a 388-yard shot in an 18mph crosswind, a reminder of how different open-country rifle work is from a woodland or hill stalk.

Snapshot

Hunting with Cole Creek Outfitters, Barr tracked pronghorn across rolling Wyoming prairie where the animal's near 360-degree vision and 60mph speed punish any careless approach. He detailed the full process behind his shot on a mature buck, from glassing and wind-reading to running a ballistic solution before the rifle came up, as reported by Shooting UK.

Key points

• The rifle and load: Barr used a G.A. Precision build chambered in 7mm PRC, firing Hornady's 175gr ELD-X bullet.
• The shot itself: at 388 yards with an 18mph left-to-right crosswind, he dialled 5 MOA of elevation and held 8 inches of wind, dropping the buck on the spot.
• The prep behind it: Barr ranged the herd, checked wind, and ran a ballistic solution on his phone from behind a Game Changer shooting bag before ever settling on the rifle.
• The quarry: pronghorn aren't true antelope but the last of the Antilocapridae family, built with extreme eyesight and speed that make stalking them demanding, per Barr's account.
• The result: the buck scored in the mid-70s, which Barr called a respectable head rather than a record-book animal.

Quick take

For hunters running precision rifles at distance, Barr's account is a useful field case study: the discipline of ranging, dialing, and verifying wind before the shot matters more than raw rifle capability. Shooting UK frames the hunt as proof that patience and preparation, not just hardware, decide a long-range shot on live game.

Read the full story: shootinguk.co.uk