As dawn grudgingly gives way to daylight, a hunter approaches, of all things, a makeshift table and chair sitting in the middle of nowhere, seemingly awaiting just such a visitor. In this case, "nowhere" is a wooded side-hill in mule deer country. Below the table the ground falls off gently for a few hundred yards, then reverses itself to form a rather exposed opposing slope stretching for a thousand yards or more until it peaks and falls off into another valley.

These hunters are glassing game from ranges at which their prey is not even aware of their presence. Shooting at such distances is just that--shooting, not hunting. But it is no less challenging, and in many ways it's more satisfying to the technically oriented rifleman.

The table, which is anchored to a stout tree stump, consists of a few boards joined by a couple of cross pieces and supported by legs cut for the purpose from a sapling. The chair stowed beneath it is one of those plastic patio jobs that's been crudely camouflaged by the same hand and with the same brown-and-olive paints that cover the table.

In our visitor's hand--let's call him High Tech Hank--is an imposing piece of ordnance--a bolt-action rifle sporting a 26-inch varmint-weight barrel chambered for Remington's potent 7mm Ultra Mag. Atop the receiver is an equally imposing scope, a 6-18x50, sitting on special tapered bases that provide enough vertical adjustment to use a dead-on hold out to 1,000 yards. Inside, the scope sports a Mil-Dot reticle, and its adjustable objective is set at infinity.

To the butt of the rifle's fiberglass stock is taped a trajectory table showing points of impact in 100-yard increments out to 500 yards and in 50-yard increments from 500 to 1,000. Looking strangely out of place on the otherwise pristine opposing slope are strips of previously placed fluorescent ribbon undulating in the breeze to indicate wind direction.

From his rucksack our hunter pulls a plastic ammo box filled with 20 meticulously prepared handloads; a 10x42 binocular; a laser rangefinder that measures distances out to 1,200 yards; a wind meter that also measures a host of other atmospheric conditions such as altitude, air density and humidity; a GPS unit; and a pair of rabbit-ear sandbags. He wishes he also had a benchrest-quality shooting tripod, but they're too bulky and heavy to carry for any distance and…well, one must make some concessions when hunting, mustn't one?

Trajectory-compensating reticles like this Burris Ballistic Mil-Dot (left) and First Hit Technologies' TDS (right) take the guesswork out of holdover, making first hits at 400 yards and beyond more probable.

Now, comfortably set up as if at a shooting range, our high-tech hunter begins methodically glassing the opposing slope. Say what you will about his tactics; all I know is that I wouldn't want to be a buck sauntering into this guy's field of view at any distance.

In stark contrast to the foregoing scenario is the guy who's an avid hunter but is not technically oriented, doesn't handload and doesn't dote on guns or shoot during the long off-season. Don't get me wrong; he cherishes his rifle. It's the same lever-action .30-30 his father used for many years before bequeathing it to him. It's been "modernized" with the addition of a 4X scope, but otherwise it's a dead-stock gun that, with one box of factory ammo that still has six rounds left in it, its owner has taken eight deer in as many years (the other six rounds were expended during prior sighting-in sessions).

This guy--let's call him Joe Average--prefers to be ensconced in his favorite stand well before dawn. It's strategically placed in a heavily wooded area that has always been productive in the past and where the longest shot he's ever been presented with was less than 60 yards. Typically, if nothing's happening after a couple of hours, or he just gets too cold and stiff to sit still any longer, Joe will climb down and still-hunt in hopes of jumping a buck or perhaps spotting one before it sees him, as unlikely as he knows that is. He'll also participate in drives on occasion, but in any event, all his shooting has been done at short to moderate range.