IMHO, and this is strictly my opinion, if you're rolling a fresh character I would not start as ranged. Start OHE and shield or 2WC and then change to ranged at the end of the 30 days. You'll find it much easier and a lot less frustrating to NOT go ranged right off the bat. For stat placement you'll need others advice, but please include the race of your sniper as that is a large determining factor for stat placement.

Only the dead have seen the end of war - Plato

Radeek Andoran
General, Drakes Vanguard

Personally, I've been ranged since level 0 and I haven't had a problem with it. You probably won't be very good at aiming for a while, so you can skip that and eventually start aiming for the eyes for the easy crit.

The art of the bow doesn't have sample training for an ambushing ranger, but you probably want to do include these:
2x ranged
2x perception
2x stalking and hiding
1x ambush (if you manage the points, you can try going for more than 1x and it will help you aim)

...plus whatever else (spells, PT, HP etc). You can mostly skip Dodge right away because once you get 618, that's like 20 dodge ranks (and +1 for every ranger spell rank after that). You'll probably also want to learn how to fletch eventually and make yourself some sweet faewood arrows once you've mastered.

Oh, and don't bother learning the MFIRE CMAN. It sounds cool, but it's really, really terrible. SMASTERY is good, but you also don't need to worry about that right away.