Beat me to it
@Nutterbuster. I have to admit I've taken some 40yd shots in my past and even connected on a few. But that was before I considered the time it takes an arrow to cover that distance. Don't get me wrong, I'm not the ethics police or trying to say what
you should or shouldn't do. I also agree everything is situational but for
me personally I see too much risk in long distance archery shots. I limit myself to 30 yds these days (and that's probably longer than
I would like).
Just for clarities sake I'll back up my stance with some hard numbers (I know, I've posted these before but I think its worth repeating). Let's say you're shooting a smoking 400fps arrow at a deer standing 40yds (120 ft) away. It will take 0.3 seconds for the arrow to cover that distance. That sounds like (and feels like it when shooting) an incredibly short time. The problem is, in reality, its not. Forget about jumping the string, standing vs walking, alert or not . . . just consider it in terms of how much something can move in that amount of time. If you're walking at the very leisurely pace of 2mph (approx. 3 ft/sec) in 0.3 seconds you will travel 0.9 ft.
In other words if, if your target even moves leisurely the softball size group you're aiming at has moved almost a full foot by the time your arrow gets there. And that's at 400fps. In the same situation with my measly slow 260 fps compound my softball has moved better than 16inches. For
me its just too much delay to impact and too much that can possibly change.