Hmm, well I suppose that is some pretty good shooting there. I guess the more important criteria that comes to my mind is how well he can shoot when someone is trying to shoot him. That seems much more practical to me.

Marksmanship is a good place for people to begin evaluating their shooting skills, but I've come to the conclusion that practical shooting skills are much more valuable, and never occur under ideal conditions. To me, long range target shooting is more an indication of the quality of the firearm than of the person pulling the trigger.

In practical hunting, I seldom take a shot at big game much beyond 250 yards. Mostly because I just don't encounter animals further out than that, but also because when I do, hunting ethics dictate that I should get within my firearm's maximum point blank range, which for most high powered hunting rifles is about 250 yards anyways. I know that within that range, I can reasonably expect to kill the animal with my first shot, and unadjusted point of aim stays in the kill zone from the muzzle out to that range.

In birdhunting, I am good to about 50 yards. You don't aim a shotgun at flying birds anyways, you point it, so marksmanship is really more by feel than by sight picture most of the time anyways. No one is going to take 5 seconds to pull the trigger on a shotgun at the skeet range or the duck blind once the target is presented, so the whole idea there is more intuitive than discipline.

In self defense shooting, I doubt you are going to even remember what the sight picture looked like after you are done. Going through combat and PPSC courses, my mind is more focused on target identity and the situation than on what the front sight is doing. There is a certain amount of marksmanship required in order to be successful with this sort of shooting situation. In my experience the most important trait of that is becoming accoustomed to the orientation of the firearm relative to the target prior to pulling the trigger more than actual precision shot placement. In any case, 50 yards is what I'd consider the absolute maximum range for engaging in self defense except under true combat situations. For hunting purpose, 100 yards is about the maximum limit I would ever want to shoot any handgun, even the super duper single shots, again as a matter of ethics.

What this article tells me is that the shooter fairly well knows his firearm and what can do, and can be relied on to make the best shot possible under controlled conditions. It is an accomplishment to be sure. Just not quite as sensational to me as for others. If I can hit the target at 1,000 yards I would be happy. My Brownings will shoot 1 minute of angle, so at 1,000 yards that is +/- 11 inches, which is outside the kill zone on pretty much all North American game, not to mention probably 50-100 inches of bullet drop and who knows how much deflection in a 5 mph wind. Even Army snipers know better than to take a shot like that at live targets, though sometimes they have to. I reckon it is good to know that it can be done still.

Of course, it would be far easier to simply point the laser beacon from a mile out and let the F-18 put a 500 pounder on the spot.