Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Has anyone done a slow motion deflection study?

We all know nicking brush makes a bullet go wild, but has anyone ever done one of those slow motion (really fast frames) to watch the path be deflected?

It would be an interesting study you'd have to film from the side and top so see the deflection and have some powerful lighting.

If you couldn't slo-mo the thing maybe just having a wall to track the deflections would be nice.

Spot

Woulld be interesting indeed. Don't think my Kodak Brownie has a fast enough shutter speed though. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

It's time you upgraded to the Kodak Girl Scout. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />



(sounds like an interesting study to me, too)

There have been plenty of field studies using artificial brush barriers and targets that indicate substantial deflection and obvious bullet upset, so close your eyes and use your imagination. That way you can have Eva Longoria as your shooter.

Dan

Just wondering if things like a leaf, or small twig matter vs. a 1/4" piece of brush.

I don't think the current battery of tests mirror that, the one's I have seen (the premise here is I haven't seen everything) always have a bunch of branches involved.

None of them that I know of recorded the actual deflection or showed what happened in the way of bullet deformation after making contact.

oh well..

Spot

I requested something similar, among other subjects, awhile back. In between msgs on the other subjects you can find a running conversation HERE.

Body armor engineers have used high speed photography to develop time-lapse finite element models of fabric reaction to bullet impacts.

Also, ceramic engineers have used very high speed photography to study crack propagation in glass. See Journal of the American Ceramic Society

Volume 24 Issue 4 Page 131 - April 1941

To cite this article: H. E. Edgerton, F. E. Barstow (1941)
FURTHER STUDIES OF GLASS FRACTURE WITH HIGH-SPEED PHOTOGRAPHY
Journal of the American Ceramic Society 24 (4), 131�137.
doi:10.1111/j.1151-2916.1941.tb14836.x
Prev Article Next Article
Original Article
FURTHER STUDIES OF GLASS FRACTURE WITH HIGH-SPEED PHOTOGRAPHY*

* H. E. Edgerton11Department of Electrical Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Massachusetts
* F. E. Barstow11Department of Electrical Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Massachusetts
*
1Department of Electrical Engineering Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Massachusetts

Although they were no directly studying the bullet deflection, it id occur and is captured in the tests.

I do high speed digital imaging for robotics and telemetry, and have access to cameras that will image at 1/17,000 second, so it might be interesting to set up some controlled targets, such as dowels and fire various bullets into them off-center to see what happens.

Not hard proof, but I had a 30-06 bullet go sideways (almost perfect profile) through the target at 20yd (testing effectivnes of solar panels for combat usage), we found a 1/8" dia twig that had the bark scraped off on one side, at about 10yd from the muzzle

A very long time ago, like 40-50 years, the NRA did an extensive test using dowels, and many kinds of bullets. I don't recall what the diameter of the dowels were, but I believe they were small ones. The conclusion was that all bullets would deflect, and there was no way to predict which way or how much the deflection would be. It kinda destroyed my faith in brush cartridges. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

I don't have faith in a brush cartridge myself but it has been so LONG....... Since these studies were done that the newbies who are under 30 may not have seen them.

I missed seeing a small twig and had both bullets and arrows go off course, almost wierd but I know and accept it.

If anyone ever does repeat the experiments I hope the use twigs that are green vs. dead wood. I also hope they do both horizontal branch impacts which I think deflect up and down more & slow motion to show if the bullet physically comes apart or not.

It won't change my or anyone elses' beleif but it could help with our understanding.

Spot

Another test was conducted since 40-50 years ago, but drew the same conclusions. In fact, dowels were used and broken dowels showed the path of deflection.....which is the conclusion. The only consideration to be given was the bullet may have enough left to kill if the target was hit within a few feet of the deflection.....maybe. Hence, start with a heavier bullet if you plan on shooting an animal which is close and on the other side of brushy cover......thin weeds and grass is all I'll shoot through.

I didn't see that study but i've seen the old ones and I follow the logic of what you mention. I agree, if the twig is directly in front and very very close your probably ok.

I've seen deer 8 feet away from a twig get clearly missed by a shotgun slug by a friend. On his second shot he took out a sampling that was 2 feet away but he made contact with the shoulder. The slug penetrated into the the left lung after making it through the shoulder. I helped him track the deer which covered about 150 yards before it was down for good.

I've clipped twigs once on a follow up shot where the twig was 12 yards from the deer with my 358 win, no contact at all.

Given deer are so plentiful I've never felt pressured to shoot through brush unless I have a nice open tunnel to shoot through. I'd just like a study on the net to send the newbies I teach or start into deer hunting so they don't attempt it.

Just like the old saying "you don't know a guy until you play golf with him" meaning you can't see how a guy will react until he gets pressured - the same applies with hunting and deer with a newbie - some listen and don't shoot through twigs - other say "this is a powerful rifle" I can make it.

To me it helps if there's a solid study to put it to rest that's easy to access... I know it's been proven over, and over, and ....

Spot

I have done some deflection tests by shooting through brush that had everything from leaves to half-inch branches, with chamberings from .243 Win. to .45-70. There was no consistent result--except that the .243 bullets tended to make it through a LITTLE more often unscathed, I surmised because they were smaller, and thus less likely to hit anything.

My experience in hunting tends to contradict that a branch hit very close to the animal would make little difference. For instance, in 1999 I took a shot at an eland in Nambia with a .338 Winchester Magnum, using a 250-grain Nosler Partition, the range about 200 yards. There was a single, very thin twig from a thornbush right in front of the "sticking place," the angle of the eland's shoulder right behind the big joint. I probably could not have hit that 1/4" twig bwhile shooting from the bench with a whole box of ammo.

We heard the bullet hit, and saw dust fly from the spot. The eland trotted into the brush and my PH turned to congratulate me on the shot. But when we followed up a couple of minutes later, the eland was still standing, 100 yards away, though with its head halfway down. I put another through the ribs and he went down.

The first bullet had hit that tiny twig and turned 90 degrees. There was a perfect sideways silhouette of a 250-grain Partition punched through the skin--surrounded by tiny swirls in the hair where the thorns of the twig had struck the skin. So the branch had been close enough to the eland to actually be forced against it by the bullet--and the bullet had turned completely sideways in that short distance.

I have seen some of the high-speed film that Lee mentions, and it is depressing what a lalmost anything will do to a bullet. They will deflect or come apart on just an inch of ballistic gelatin, for example.

John Barsness

Amazing stuff. Thanks.

Several years ago a friend and I were side-hilling a south exposure where we had seen some bulls bed down in the partial cover from the opposite side of the drainage. Now that we were on their side we didn't know for sure where they were.

Walking about thirty yards apart and very slowly we jumped one of the bulls from behind a deadfall; I was shooting a 225-gr Nos Partition in my .340. He got up about thirty yards away and it was like jumping a big, tawny pheasant really. In about three seconds he was down and out.

On dressing and rummaging for the bullets, a boomerang shape hole was hoted in the medicine ball-sized stomach. My friend dug through the pea soup and hoisted out the Nos Partition bent at the waist with the nose in perfect shape. Subsequently, we found the matching hole in the hide and on then on backtracking a freshly transected "pinky"-sized twig between where I took my first shot and where the bull jumped. The twig was only about four feet from where the bull had gotten up.

You don't need any special camera equipment. Just set up witness sheets downrange.
L.F. Moore used the witness sheets in the Sept. 1968 Rifleman article "Bullets in the Brush--Where Do They Go?" that is referenced above.
It's interesting to see his results. The bullets initially yaw or tumble, but the gyroscopic component of the bullets appears to cause them to restabilize and take an entirely different line of flight.
Where the dowels were hit relative to center line made a great difference in deflection. If he just nicked a dowell on the left, the bullet tended to deflect to the left. But in his many tests, the witness cards often showed that if a bullet hit a dowell closer to the center and was deflected to the left, that the bullet restabilized and struck downrange to the right of the dowell--sometimes by a significant amount. The opposite if the bullet struck and deflected to the right.

Yeah, that's the test I saw. Chuck Taylor did the testing, using dowels as sticks for consistancy. He had a sheet behind the target, and it showed where the bullet ended up. I don't think it's predictable.

He also did some work for Second Chance, the bullet proof vest makers. He allowed himself to be shot with everything the vests (he changed each time) was rated for, up to and including a .308. Of course he had a steel plate behind the vest.

But the thing he was trying to prove, as I recall, is NO BULLET fired from a rifle from the shoulder has to ability to literally knock you off your feet by momentum. You may fall, or may even jump back, but that's muscle reaction, not the power of the bullet.

Movies like to portray bullets and especially shotguns blowing people several feet. Can't happen.

While not a rifle bullet I had a strange deflection happen on a turkey hunt some years ago. two called gobblers came into my window of opportunity and I waited until one was completely out of sight behind some brush before shooting the other bird.

At the shot the intended bird fell flapping... The other just fell dead! It was over 15' to the left of the intended bird and had a single flier pellet in the forehead. In front of my blind was a thumb-size sapling with a cut out in its side...
art

"The shot that went around a corner".

George

Speaking of deflection, a buddy and I were shooting a .38 Chief's Special at a tree...specifically, at a knot on a tree. He was standing beside me. I hit the edge of the knot and the bullet came back almost 180 degrees and hit him on the leg. Just a bruise. Looking at the lead bullet you could see clearly where it sidled off the side of the knot, hit the harder wood, and turned around.

Surely an unusual experience.