Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters distance of a ricochet???

If one would guess, or maybe know from experience, how far would you say a magnum caliber rifle would ricochet a say 300 grain bullet leaving the muzzle at 2900fps, hitting the ground around 1000 yards out, on fairly level ground?
Thanks
Jim the Plumber

Don't know about a 300 grainer hitting at 1000 yards.

A 30 caliber hitting at <100 yards will make it 1/2 mile or more.

The angle of impact is much steeper out at 1000 yards than at 60 yards and the velocity is much lower. Depending on what the ground is it may well be hard to get it to bounce at all.

From what I`ve read a bullet looses little velocity as rule when it recochets on a shallow angle. The change in the bullets BC from contact damage will cause a lot of variation in how far it will travel.

We used to skip buckshot off the water at our lake house in the winter when nobody was around. There were several miles of open water in the direction we shot. The pellets made two or three skips out to a range of what seemed to be about 400-500 yards. I never tried skipping rifle bullets. I have watched ricocheted tracers go quite a distance.

Not the direction you're talking, but certainly food for thought:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ABGIJwiGBc

Scary stuff!

JV

I tend to go with this explanation if the range is short (200 yards or less). Shallow angle ricochet will loose little velocity but the bullet�s deformation might cause a greater velocity loss.

But for a 1,000 yard ground strike, the bullet will probably be angling down pretty steeply and hit at a high angle. It might just break up pr penetrate into the earth.

The distance it will travel is a product of the height it rises to and the velocity.

They did some forensic testing of HANDGUN bullets at our crime lab, and they would only rise to 30" height regardless of the caliber and at various angles. This has forensic value in telling if a bullet ricocheted or was direct fire, and may have some value in determining how high a rifle bullet rises, I don't know.

I also was taught a technique as follows: If you're recieving fire from a position at the end of a wall (like an alley, for example) you can take out the assailant by holding the shotgun at arms length and firing down the wall and the shot (buckshot) will hug the wall more or less. You can return effective fire without exposing yourself.

I don't think a rifle round will go a long way, and the deformed bullet will reduce velocity quickly, but that's just an instinct. You lose a LOT of velocity every time your bullet strikes something and glances off. Depending on the deformed shape of the bullet, which relies on the original construction of the bullet. I think about 50% each time from watching an episode of Mythbusters, which did some ricochet shots to test lethality of myths.

I know this: back a LONG time ago, I was shooting with a buddy wiht a .38 Special, 158 gr. RN, Chief Special 2". I shot at a knot in a dead tree. The bullet apparently hit the knot and came amost straight back, hitting my buddy in the leg, but not with enough velocity to do more than sting a bit. IIRC, he picked up the bullet and kept it. It was smeared at the side of the bullet where it had (again, apparently) hit the side of the knot and then turned almost 180 degrees.

Dang Almighty, 444! Sound effects alone are enough to cause pucker.

At 500 yards, the trajectory of a 308 Winchester 175 gr. Sierra boat-tail bullet is about 161 inches (that's 13 feet) for a 1000 yard target. See: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://home.comcast.net/~jesse99/competitiontablemoa1000yards.JPG&imgrefurl=http://home.comcast.net/~jesse99/longrange.html&usg=__nTuebYI-IyToZr80ygnOaP8INGs=&h=710&w=646&sz=158&hl=en&start=1&um=1&tbnid=ZPojfUEYAcMGXM:&tbnh=140&tbnw=127&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dbullet%2Btrajectory%2Bfor%2B1000%2Byards%26hl%3Den%26um%3D1

At impact, the bullet (I believe) would probably not ricochet, but plow into the ground, deform and not ricochet.

I read an article on an USArmy officer who recieved a
medal of honor (if I remember correctly) for bravery
in a fire fight in Vietnam. He helped several wounded
troops and killed a VC with a ricochet from a 45 pistol
when the bullet struck a stone wall. Cant remember where
I read the article at.

+1 on that....and the degree of deformation depends on a fair number of variables. A shallow water skip with a low velocity bullet doesn't cause much if any deformation. Like with a .22 RF RN.

Tracers at night are an excellent educational tool on this subject.

The idea that one could call out some hard and fast "Rule Of Thumb" about ricochets is DUMB.

Every shot that's ever been fired on this planet, and every shot that ever will,.....is by nature it's own UNIQUE balistic event,....regardless of how infintesimal the differences.

Bullets do really weird things,....that's my rule of thumb.

Some time working in Long Range Match Pits give one a feel for that fact. Watch a .30 cal "Berm Strike" go howling off into the impact area on a wet day,.......for starters.

GTC

I was reminded of this example, from a book I read back in 1978 which was the subject of one of those reality T.V. shows. I just remembered the book and was told it was on T.V. but didn't see the program. The detective in the story was a reknowned guy back when.

A detective, whose name I can't remember, in NYC was driving to work along the shore of NY somewhere. He noticed the woman driving in front of him who nslumped over and crashed.

It was found that she'd been hit in the head by a bullet. The back window of the car was open, through which the bullet entered.

The dective, IIRC, investigated the incident. It was found that someone on a boat was shooting at a shark, or at least shooting on the water with a 30-06 and the bullet ricocheted. It was a LONG distance, which I can't remember. Anyway, thorough phenomonally bad luck the bullet traveled a long distance, went through the open back window, and struck the woman. Had the window been up, it probably wouldn't have killed her.

The one who shot was discovered, confessed, I think, and convicted of manslaughter.

I shoot in a local bullseye league.We have four ranges.One of them is indoors,and periodically the pits below the butts get full enough with lead that we started getting occassional richochets.
The solution to this problem,aside from closing down the range periodically and cleaning out several tons of lead in the traps, was to hang 1/4" thick rubber curtains in front of the metal louvers that deflected the bullets downward.
Even .357 magnum and .45 bullets do not come out of the traps with enough energy to penetrate that loosely hanging 1/4"rubber curtain.
When we had those ricochets (and ,at worst,there were very few) before the curtain was installed,those same bullets always came back below the knees of the shooters on the line and hit just about hard enough so that you knew it had happened,not hard enough to ever bruise the skin.
With that little energy at 25 yards I doubt they could have richocheted as far as 50 yards,assuming there was that much room.

After a pregnant woman was hit by a ricochet (30-30 IIRC) in Pa. there was a push to expand the shotgun area. The state legislature paid for a study of rifle/shotgun/muzzleloader safety.

I can't find the report itself but here is a link to a presentation about the data. It's mostly charts and graphs.

http://6fbd21e64bc817fd097aa54148bd.../documents/AFWA_Presentation_9-18-07.pdf

Near as I can tell, a 150 grain bullet from a 30-06 fired at a 0 degree angle, will strike the ground 1408 ft from the muzzle and then again (the ricochet) at 4835 ft. They also show some impressive heights on the bounce if I'm reading things right.

Since it was a govt study, it's probably on the state website somewhere.

Dale

The only visual experience I`ve had was in the service shooting at a 50 gal empty drum at 300 yrds with a BAR and clips of tracers. The bullets were going all directions upon stricking the ground. Some just died after a few feet, some went off into the air at about the same speed as they struck the ground. I don`t think you can make a general statement.

Not a direct answer, but another example.

Several years back I put together an XP-100 long range pistol in 6.5-284. Back then, I was hung up on breaking in a barrel, so before mounting the scope, I'd run out to a local quarry and bang one off, then go home and clean, then repeat. On the second or third trip, I parked the truck, jumped out, chambered one, pointed at a big sand pile and let'er rip. I thought it landed a little high, but didn't give it much more thought.

The short version includes a call from the local police. The bullet skipped acrossed the top of the sand pile, cleared the quarry wall, and ricocheted 1 1/4 miles to a farm house, through the picture window, and landed on the living room floor.

I remember that show. It was a guy shooting at sharks about 2 miles offshore in New York.