There's a critical moment in time. After all your planning, your prep work, and fitness training, and all of your effort to get into the backcountry and hunt hard and earn an opportunity, Some call it the moment of truth. It's that moment when you press the trigger and launch a bullet toward your query. If you're a good backcountry marksman you'll kill your game

quickly and cleanly. If not you may fail and all that dreaming and training and hard hunting will be wasted.

Serious backcountry hunters work much harder for each opportunity

than most hunters do,

and after all the time and effort and expense, it behooves each

of us to be prepared to make the most of every shot window the mountains gift us with. So today we're going to talk about

how to shoot well in the backcountry and how to train for those rare occasions that we

all dream about and work toward. This topic was inspired

by a listener named Brian who wrote in and asked if I could recommend some tips and ideas

for maximizing practice time and ammunition, both at the range and in the field.

Before diving in, let's go to our upfront Q&A section and answer a listener's question.

Brought to you by Spartan Precision Equipment, a UK-based company that makes my all-time

favorite mountaineering quality

ultra-light bipods. This question is from a listener will call

Keith and he wrote,

I have a question for you regarding the 160 grain acubond in a 280 acly improved for use on elk.

Well I have a ton of experience with this bullet on Texas deer and pigs, our family ranch, participates in a state program

that provides me with around 40 tags per year for population management, he writes, I've only killed one elk with it.

I wanted your thoughts on minimum impact velocity for a fairly hard quartering shot

into an elk, particularly of entering through the paunch.

I'd like to extrapolate some various maximum ranges for different shots, so I'm not wondering

in the heat of the moment. My only experience on

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