There exists an abundance of high‐frequency scattering methods—but relatively little is known of their accuracy. Furthermore, the technical literature is significantly lacking in demonstrating the efficacy of one method of target scattering analysis versus another, and very few comparative analyses have been conducted—why? The Kirchhoff, Keller, and geometrical optics (acoustics) methods are well known, and can be applied to arbitrarily shaped bodies. Comparative results are shown for the problem of scattering from a rigid sphere to demonstrate the differences between methods. Further comparisons to the more exact wave‐harmonic and Watson series solutions emphasize the importance of establishing domains of validity for the approximate methods.