I understand you, keith. After reading Elmer Keith's book, Sixguns By Keith, I spent many years shooting handguns at long ranges, mainly S&W .357s and .44 magnums while laying down, holding them between my knees. I could "walk" bullets out to targets several hundreds of yards away and get remarkably close. And sometimes I would hit them. I remember one time, being on a hill in Kentucky and shooting probably a thousand yards away or better, down at a large rock in the middle of a creek (where I could see where my bullets were hitting in all directions around the target) and coming pretty close to hitting it with my Smith .44 magnum. Probably within 20 or 30 feet. But still, hitting a bird in flight at 1250 yards would have to been so lucky, in my opinion, that it would have to have been called "lucky" rather than "skillful". Especially, since you don't have any idea when the bird would decide to change directions, when the wind speed would have increased, etc.
