The world record for the longest rifle shot was broken by a Wyoming team of shooters who managed to hit a target 4.4 miles away in on the state’s arid plains.
Breaking the previous record of only 4 miles, and the Wyoming state record of 3.06 miles, local media outlet KSLTV explains that the shot required years of planning from two expert shooters and their team.
Two Wyoming firearms trainers, Scott Austin and Shepard Humphries, began gathering parts and assembling their team in 2020, after the duo broke set the previous Wyoming state record.
“This was the most challenging, difficult, frustrating, time-consuming and yet rewarding professional project I have ever undertaken,” Humphries, who specializes in long range shooting, told the Wyoming TV station.
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On the team’s Nomad Rifleman website, they describe their custom-built rifle as a “space-aged piece of beauty” with custom ammunition. The rifle was assembled by S&S Sporting in Driggs Idaho and contains parts from Arkansas, South Dakota, Canada, and New Zealand.
Their target, also hand built, was 120 inches wide by 92 inches tall, with an 80-inch circle drawn in the middle. According to the website, this is “equivalent to hitting a 1 inch circle at 100 yards.”
Nomad Rifleman / Provided
“The impact point was on the left edge of an 80 inch orange circle painted in the center of the target,” the team reported. “Not only was their hit within the one MOA 40-inch radius, it was at 3 ⅛ inch to the left of the dead center of the bullseye!”
The video reveals that the record breaking shot happened to be the 69th round fired during the session.
The video reveals that the bullet took approximately 24 seconds to reach its target after the trigger was pulled.
Due to the extreme distance, the team used novel methods to track shots and did not originally believe the bullet hit the target, instead believing it had ricocheted.
“Together, we’ve spent over 1500 hours in research, highs and lows, blood, sweat, excitement and tears, with dozens of amazingly gifted people and businesses personally invested in the goal,” said Scott Austin in a press release.
“This monumental task paid off yesterday with overwhelming satisfaction when we heard crackle over the radio: ‘We have our first target hit confirmed. HIT!’”
Jo
September 18, 2022 at 11:06 pm
Awesome! Ready for deployment!
astonerii
September 19, 2022 at 8:33 am
69 shots and the one that hits is basically dead center.
Extremely good marksmanship and engineering feat. But I think if you just simply shot enough ammunition, you would eventually hit the target without even aiming well.
I think they should make the target bigger, say 5 times, and see exactly how they can get it so they can repeat the feat often enough to matter.
ChaimD
September 19, 2022 at 7:37 am
You have a typo in the article…
When describing the target the author said the center bullseye dot was an “80-inch circle” near the beginning of the article, which seemed rather large to me. However, later the description of the shot had the following statement: “The impact point was on the left edge of an 8 inch orange circle painted in the center of the target,” the team reported” which made me realize the 80 inch number was a typo…
James P Forbes
September 19, 2022 at 7:51 am
80 inches at 4.4 miles is 1 Minute of Angle. Anything inside the 8 inch orange circle is an impossible shot.
carlyle porter
September 19, 2022 at 7:51 am
We have to assume it was a 50 cal. because this Pappert is so well informed on the subject he considers things like projectile mass, caliber, and powder charge irrelevant. Things like how excited the participants were are the real story. Huh?
Colt Baldwin
September 19, 2022 at 9:00 am
Would be interesting to know the caliber & bullet weight.
Colt Baldwin
September 19, 2022 at 9:08 am
Just found everything about the rifles and the load on their website. .416 Barret, 422 gr. ball.
Walter
September 19, 2022 at 10:39 am
Who wrote this article? The hit was on an 8 inch bull at 4.4 miles. That isnt 1 MOA it .1 MOA which is the equivalent of hitting the business end of a 2.5 mm plug at 100 yards.
Buckaroo
September 19, 2022 at 11:08 am
Let’s see….
YEARS of planning, SPECIAL ammunition, SPECIAL rifle, SPECIAL optics and mount, 69 shots and ONE hit on target. The poorly written article doesn’t say, so we have to assume they stopped after their single success because they felt they couldn’t repeat it. As a long-time enthusiast, I am not impressed. I’m quite sure I could write a computer program that could consistently calculate point of impact for a given load and projectile, but what’s the point? At that range the projectile probably wouldn’t have enough velocity to penetrate anything, let alone kill, which is what firearms are designed to do. It might leave a bruise if you’re wearing thin clothing. How much interest does this have for the average shooter? I’d like to see something more practical, like records set for production rifles and factory ammo. People obviously have more time and money than sense
Dave
September 19, 2022 at 9:27 pm
Terrible site. I can hardly read the article for the ads.
tommer
September 20, 2022 at 7:35 pm
Show me a three shot pattern that I can’t drive my truck through and I will be impressed. 69 SHOTS?