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When livestock and other commitments permit, Dan is a serious hunter and rifleman, and serves as the family guide in his native North Dakota, and elsewhere. Here are some pictures and text as provided to us by Dan in November, 2017.

Hi Ralph, ... I’ve been super busy, still am, I bought a lot of cows lately and now understand why ranchers don’t have time to do much hunting. I looked back at some pictures this morning and thought I’d forward them onto you, feel free to use them as you see fit.

My elk hunting trip in New Mexico this last winter, it would be 20 degrees every morning and be in the 50’s by afternoon, so I’d take off the inner layers by noon and just rock the WeatherWool jacket. [Dan has a Ski Jacket.] Shot a nice bull at 950 yards. [Please see note at bottom of page about this long shot!]

This was last hunting season as well, I guided my girlfriend to a cow and her dad to a bull for the once-in-a-lifetime elk tag in the breaks of the badlands of Western ND. The whole family came with so it was pretty fun. Her dad got his in October and Britney got hers in November. I don’t remember how cold it was, but it was cold for early October in ND.





This is a elk hunt back in 2015 on Thanksgiving weekend in the Montana mountains, I shot a young cow the last morning of the season after not finding the big bull I was after. Britney took the photo as I was taking the shot:

I asked Dan about the 950 yard shot on the bull in the first picture. I know he flies airplanes so I was not surprised to learn he is a technically-oriented shooter who has the mastery of the details to make such a long shot.  Here's what Dan wrote about long range shooting:

I’m using a Gunwerks LR-1000, caliber is their 7LRM (long range magnum), basically a reformatted 7MM. It’s an amazing shooting system, but Gunwerks is the leader of the long range shooting pursuit and is therefore pricey, they have gone up significantly since I bought mine many years ago. 180 grain Berger bullet, it has a .695 Ballistic Coefficient or something real close to that (they just changed the number slightly with new testing apparently), which means the bullet flies amazingly well through the air, keeping its trajectory real flat. 72 grains of Hodgdons H1000 powder. You can make most any rifle into a long range system with some time and work. I’ve done it with my old Remington 700’s, a .270 and a 22-250, and expanded their range to about 600 yards. Gunwerks has good videos on Youtube on how to do that yourself. I had a good spotter, Jack, who was using my G7 BR2 rangefinder. At long ranges like that the rangefinder and ballistics is the weak link, elevation and pressure and temp all can have a huge impact on bullet trajectory, especially when you’re shooting a live animal and can’t afford anything other than a perfect vital hit. That BR2 has my ballistics programmed into it, so while the bull was at 950 yards perfectly broadside, the BR2 gave 910 yards as the shoot-to range. It’s pricey too but when you only have ten seconds sometimes to get your shot, it’s real nice when a click of a button does all the math for you. I can say I would have not have gotten that shot without both rifle and rangefinder. It all just happened so fast. We were racing up a mountain ridge, trying to catch this bull before he disappeared into thick mountain timber in the next valley, got to the ridge, had to find a open spot where I could lie down prone, found the bulls moving through the timber, my spotter told me which bull it was I was after and the bull moved off by himself for literally fifteen seconds max, turned broadside, Jack gave me my shoot-to range, I turned my exposed elevation turret on my scope (a Nightforce NXF 5.5x22x50) to 910, there was no wind, jack told me to shoot, and I felt good, felt solid, and I put a good shot on him. It was pretty exciting. :) And of course it’s nice when you have good WeatherWool gear haha. Britney has shot a couple cows at long range now, 560 yards and 420 yards, and her dad Delair shot his bull at 550 last year.

4 November 2017