Ricochets (Got a friendly lecture today)

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He wasn't hearing ricochets, he was hearing successive echoes from the vertical strips on the building.

Yep, my point exactly. When a bullet hits something and ricochets BACK the direction it came from the VAST majority of its energy is already spent from the impact. If you are shooting .22lr at a steel plate 100 ft away a ricochet may come back at you and have enough energy to hurt (not likely but could), at a 100yards that .22lr coming directly back at you just doesn't have much juice left. Most of the stories you get about that kind of ricochet are just as was mentioned above. The echo from the shot or the impact. Now down range is a different story, but when you get to ricocheting 90 to 180 degrees from the initial shot you are going to be seeing the bullet velocity/energy go down real quick. Thus I am sceptical of most of the stories I hear like that.
 
Warning on a box of .22 that I saw at a store indicated that the bullet can travel up to 1.5 miles. If a lowly .22 can travel that far, its very possible that a larger bullet can too. So just be careful and make sure that you have a good backstop in place to ensure overall safety.
 
That's why my club specifically prohibits shooting into the ground - you are supposed to be shooting into a berm. I wouldn't have thought that shooting into the ground was an issue, but people at the club assure me it's a real issue.

Same for us. Since the land around the club range isn't particularly hilly there's nothing behind the berms but space (loosely filled with pine trees), and, eventually, a housing development.

Putting cans or other targets on the ground is strictly forbidden because bullets can bounce and skip over the berm.
 
Damned few people actually have any training or experience in identifying caliber, direction, distance of a supersonic projectile traveling past them. In my (limited) experience, it's quite typical for someone to say "That must've gone right past me!" when in fact the bullet's path was a hundred yards or further from the listener.

As W.E.G. points out quite accurately, once a bullet goes subsonic you're simply not going to hear the crack/whine. The odds of a .30-30 remaining transsonic or better at 1300 yards, after ricocheting off the ground, seems extremely unlikely.

My local gun club had a problem a while back with idiots making noise complaints, claiming to hear bullets "whizzing past", at locations more than 3 miles distant from the firing line. While rifle ballistics can be pretty wild sometimes, you can't argue against simple physics that tell you that a cartidge is physically incapable of doing what someone is claiming.
 
06 said:
Rounds will easily "skip" off water...if the angle is fairly flat.

Do tell...



Bullets whiz past campers
By John Branton
Saturday, June 21, 2008
The Columbian

Campers on the north shore of Yale Reservoir hid behind cars to avoid incoming bullets and frantically called 911 last weekend after a Vancouver man — standing on the Clark County side of the lake — allegedly fired three guns toward them.

"We were just getting ready to go to bed when we heard the first shots," said Brad Burnett, a Vancouver, Wash., man who was at popular Beaver Bay Campground with friends and family members, including children.

The shots began about 12:30 a.m. last Saturday, Burnett said, and continued on and off through the night into the campground along Lewis River Road east of Cougar. He said the campground was nearly full; he estimated that at least 100 people were there.

"It was about 9:30 a.m. when it started getting really ugly," Burnett said. "We started hearing bullets whizzing over the trees over our heads and hitting the trees."

That's when campers started calling 911, according to a Clark County Sheriff's Office report.

Deputy James Payne said he rushed to the scene and was flagged down by campers.

"As I drove in, I was contacted by about 20 people who were frantic and told me someone had been shooting from across the lake and the rounds were hitting in the trees above their tents and on the ground in front of the campsites," Payne said in the report.

He added: "Some people stated that they climbed behind vehicles and under things to stay out of the line of fire."

Standing on the shore and looking toward where campers said the bullets were coming from, Payne said, he heard more shots. He said he looked across the lake and saw someone standing on the Clark County shore near a blue-and-yellow tent.

Payne said he knew there was only one forest road to where the person was. He radioed for backup, waited until Deputy Dave Tendler arrived and they cautiously approached the person's area.

When the deputies arrived, they asked who'd been shooting and 25-year-old Jacob Michael Johnson stepped forward and said he had, the report said.

According to the report, Johnson said he'd been firing three guns: an AK-47 assault-style rifle, a .357 Magnum revolver and a .45-caliber semi-automatic pistol.

Johnson told the officers he'd been shooting at the water and at a small island directly between his campsite and the campground, the report said.

Told that his bullets were ricocheting off the water into the campground, Johnson said he didn't know bullets could do that, the report said.

Johnson was arrested and booked into the Clark County Jail on suspicion of five counts of misdemeanor reckless endangerment, the report said.

Reached by telephone Thursday evening, Johnson said "the whole shooting into the campground is just speculation."

He added: "It didn't happen. I wasn't shooting into the campground."

He declined to speak further.

Deputies seized the three guns and some ammunition as evidence.

Deputy Payne, a U.S. Army veteran and now a firearms instructor, said rifle bullets can travel well over a mile. He said they can ricochet off water and continue for great distances.

Using a laser device, Payne said, he measured the distance between Johnson and the campground at 1,530 feet, less than the maximum range of the rifle and even the handguns.

Back at Beaver Bay, Payne spoke to campers who said they'd looked through binoculars during the fusillade and saw a man holding a gun.

"They could see the splashes in the water" as the bullets zipped over their heads, Payne said.

"They yelled across the water for them to stop shooting, to no avail," Payne said.

During the night as the bullets flew, camper Burnett said there was a light breeze and the moon was out at times.

"We go camping to relax and spend some time with family and friends," Burnett said. "I'm hoping it'll be a one-time occurrence, because Beaver Bay is a real nice campground."

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008009966_campshooting21m.html
 
Weird ricochets certainly occur, but I have seen and heard plenty of people confuse the supersonic crack with a ricochet.
 
our theory is that we shoot down towards the ground and the rounds will embed into the earth
No! This does NOT happen!
The deputy most probably heard tumbling rounds zinging by over head. They have a very distinctive sound.

Bullets striking the ground (even soft ground) at a shallow angle will ricochet, much like striking water.

Get a proper backstop to ensure the bullets don't go flying over the trees and into your neighbors house, car, kid, pet, etc...
 
Ricochets are bad news as you have no control once the bullet hits the ground at a small angle. It is best to never shoot at any flat surface. Always use a 45 degree backstop if possible so the bullet will stay put.
 
Posted by 06:
Rounds will easily "skip" off water or muddy ground if the angle is fairly flat. Why not put up a berm if there is any doubt. A girl was killed in Charlotte at Carowinds about ten yrs ago from an errant round fired from about a mile away. You can never be too careful when practicing. Don't give the anti's any more ammo to throw at us, wc

Actually, that occurred in June of 1987.

It wasn't caused by skips or ricochets. It was caused by morons who were firing too high into the air.

A 16-year old girl was killed, and a 6-year old girl seriously injured.

It's my understanding that the parents of the girl who was killed became fiercely dedicated antis because of that incident.
 
Years ago, I used to help load the dynamite at the Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot. It was much smaller affair back then.

One year (approx. 1981), we sat up a bunch of steel silhouettes for the sub guns only to shoot at. Kenny Sumner and I was leaning against his truck just off and slightly ahead of the furthest left range table when I got hit by a ricochet on my right lower side. The slug actually hit flat and stuck to my skin with out breaking the skin. It stung plenty and left a pretty good whelp.

Kenny and I looked at the case of dynamite at our feet and decided to move it to the other side of the truck.

Take care,

TerryBob
 
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