Know Your Firearm’s Range

Knowing your firearm’s “maximum projectile range” is critical to being a safe and responsible hunter. The maximum projectile range tells you at what distances your firearm’s projectile could cause injury or damage to persons, animals, or objects. When hunting, knowing your “effective killing range” lets you immediately assess when a shot will give a clean kill. The effective killing range will always be less than the maximum projectile range. Learning to estimate distances and knowing your firearm’s projectile range and your effective killing range are important parts of hunting.

The charts below indicate that the maximum range increases substantially as the altitude increases.