Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Max Dangerous Range 22LR when shooting upwards for Racoons etc

Hi,

On the back of a 22LR box of Winchester Wildcats, there used to be a graphic of a guy shooting and something along the lines of dangerous to 1 1/2 miles. On a current box I have it just says in fine print, dangerous to 1 1/2 miles.

So, what happens if someone shoots at a coon or a squirrel in a tree and misses? Is the 22LR deadly on the way down? Do we have to worry about hitting satellites or other space debris as the mighty 22LR continues to break gravity?

If the 22LR is dangerous to 1 1/2 miles...are the supplies dried up because military snipers are buying up the ammo to replace their 338 lapuas and 50 cals?

I guess the real question is....when shooting any rifle cartridge - in this case a 22LR - what would be the angle one would have to shoot to really air one out there for a deadly shot, versus the angle that gravity has taken over and slowed your bullet to zero in the air and now it accelerates to terminal velocity on the way down...and is that terminal velocity deadly?

I just got to wondering when looking at the hunting regs and watching some coon hunting videos on the youtube 'You missed, shoot again' is kind of common, at night, in poor lighting, off hand on those videos.

Thanks for your interest and future reply, sarcasm, wit, or scorching.

LW

About 20 yrs ago 2 guy's shooting at a snake in a tree in Noble, Okla. killed a 6 yr old boy in a boat fishing with his Grandfather, on a ranch pond over 1 mile away , Yeh a falling bullet will kill. Rio7

If it's still flying, it's still dangerous.

Straight up, or nearly straight up trajectories will produce a situation where the bullet gets down to 0 velocity and then gravity takes over. The bullet hits terminal velocity on the way down and does not go any faster. If it hits something on the ground it hurts, it'll break skin, but it is probably not lethal. On the other hand, if you point the barrel 45 DEG to the horizon and touch it off, it'll still be lethal at 1.5 miles. At least that's what I've been told.

You can look at a ballistic calculator and find out what the numbers are for 22LR, if you plug in the right data.

If they say 1.5 miles, I'd know what was 1.5 miles beyond my coon or squirrel tree in the direction I'm firing.

Sometimes a shotgun is the sensible choice.

Or an air rifle.

In about 2000 or so, while living in NW PA, a kid in town got hit with a stray .22 bullet. As I recall, it went through his flannel shirt and actually penetrated his arm. Not fatal, but painful enough he went to the hospital. Again, if I recall, it was determined there was a party hunting squirrels up on the plateau above town, over 1/2 mile away.

I'd not like to have been the kid and more so if it had hit him in the noggin.

It's been a long time since I've had a physics class, but google says that a 22lr fired straight up will get up to about 12000 feet elevation, plugging 10,000 feet per second into one of the free fall calculators on the net and that bullet is going almost 1400fps when it gets back to the ground just from the acceleration.

You should have paid more attention in physics class.

I worked my butt off in physics, still got a c though

Hatchers Notebook.

Part Two, Chapter 20, Bullets From The Sky.

An object that is shot straight up will reach an apex based on the project’s velocity it will then fall back to the ground at a rate of 9.8m/sec/sec accelerating until it reaches the ground and impacting at the same velocity that it started (that’s in a vacuum so air resistance will slow it some)........at least the way remember from physics 40 years ago😄🥴

That said why would anyone miss😄....when squirrel hunting and shooting at them in trees I wait until I have a branch/trunk behind them just in case I miss😉

PennDog

An object is never going to gain more velocity falling than it started with when shot upward, because of conservation of momentum...and with air resistance, the terminal velocity of a 22 caliber lead projectile weighing 36-40 grains may approach 250 feet per second, but I can't imagine it would be much more than that.

40 grains at 250 FPS is gonna leave a mark.

Back in the '80s when I lived in Missouri, it was reported locally on TV and in the papers, that a woman in Columbia, Mo working in a greenhouse was killed by a falling 22 lr round after being fired by someone shooting upward. The round went through the glass roof and hit her in the head killing her. I don't recall if they were able to find the shooter.

Maximum range for a rifle fired in air is usually when the barrel is angled at about 30 degrees or perhaps a little more. A steeper angle or a lower angle each reduce the maximum range. The old yardstick for .22s used to be a mile, and ballistics programs show that to be perhaps a little generous, using your standard .22 LR round. A 40 gn solid starting at 1070 fps reaches 1300 yards carrying about 250 fps, and your HV load not much more. To reach out much further your victim would have to be a good deal lower than you, such as down a steep slope, as the bullet is dropping steeply.

Growing up in SW Ohio, getting permission to squirrel hunt was problematic. One of the tricks I learned was to make sure folks knew I was hunting with a shotgun. There was a definite bias against .22LR. People got tired very quickly of getting a .22 fired from a neighbor's farm through their window. As a result, I never hunted squirrel with a 22 until a year or so ago-- past the age of 60.

It will go it furthest shooting at 45 degrees, but I’d never shoot a rifle in the air.

What about all those Cowboys whooping and hollering shooting their six guns in the sky?How may got kilt from that??

sure will but the chances of a serious injury is slim.

I've been hit on the head with lead shotshell pellets falling from the sky while duck hunting.....didn't even leave a mark. I don't believe the 1 1/2 mile claim at all.