OK I’ve been in the shooting and hunting game for along time so please bare with me on this. There are long range hunting rifles and long range plate banging rifles and they’re two different critters. My plate bangers are delivering bullets with very high BC’s and compared to the hunting rounds they are running at mediocre velocities (usually in the 2600 to 2800 fps range). While these bullets hold their velocity and fight the wind well they’re no designed for hunting and have a tendency to perform poorly on meat and bone. My long range hunting rifles are fast and flat (257 and 300 Weatherby’s) and run about 3500 fps. My favorite bullets for these are designed for meat and bone but they may have lower BC’s. Taking a shot at any game animal out past 500 yards is risky with any caliber but that risk runs higher with the slow movers. Yes I’ve seen the video of the kid shooting the bull elk at just over 1200 yards and I wasn’t impressed at all. He missed his first shot and we don’t know where the second shot hit other than it hit it. With the rifle caliber he shot it with (7-Mag I believe) he probably didn’t have over 750 ft-lbs of remaining energy. there’s far to many variables come into a shot like that and it should never have been attempted on a game animal.
The rifle you mentioned should be a good one and the caliber while I’m not a fan of it should work well. there’s probably more info and testing done on the 308 than any other caliber out there. You have to start with a solid action and the Remington need prove itself to no one, in stock form it’s fine but eventually the trigger will be replaced for something better and with lighter adjustment. The last thing is optics and this is where I see most people go wrong, you have to have Parallax adjustment on truly long range guns so make sure it has it. Don’t go cheap on the scope, but you don’t have to break the bank. The Vortex scopes seem to hold up well with the long range boys and might fit in you budget range. good luck and practice practice practice! Join some of the long range shooting forums and hunting forums, they can be a wealth of info.
If this helps I’ve been buying scopes and bino’s from Doug for along time, great company to do business with.
Thank you for your recommendations.
Optics will be the next hurdle in this saga.