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

No it won’t
Read dans post above

The 9.8 m/s speed mentioned earlier is about 32 fps.

Fyi.

https://www.bevfitchett.us/gunshot-wounds/falling-bullets.html

The terminal velocity of a 22 cal ballet is different spinning vs tumbling.

And the bullet will maintain its alignment from the point of firing thanks to the spin - firing at any angle apart from straight up means it will be travelling sideways downrange and be subject to tumbling as a result.

Easy answer to the whole thing. Simply zero your 22 for 1 1/2 mile and if you have a decent legal target that far off, simply hold on the target and fire! But then there might be a problem at 25 yds! :-)

Very true. I'll stick with the 1 1/2 mile dangerous range printed on the shell box.

You're confusing bullets to cannonball. Run any bullet through Sierra Infinity and you'll see the angle of departure for maximum range will be close to 30°. 😉

After fifty-five years of shooting the 22 LR, I’m still amazed at its capabilities relative to its size.

The bit you overlooked in the link you quoted is this : "Imagine as well that the cannonballs do not encounter a significant amount of air resistance"

A 45 degree angle of departure gives maximum range in vacuum. You learn that in about year 9 physics. However, in air this is not the case, as drag has to be factored-in. In air the maximum range for a typical bullet is achieved with an angle of departure of about 30 or so degrees.

I could show working, or you could just check out a ballistic calculator, like this one: https://www.jbmballistics.com/cgi-bin/jbmdist-5.1.cgi

The figure is actually acceleration due to gravity, not velocity, and is measured in m/s/s (pronounced meters-per-second-squared), not m/s.

Spoken... meters per second per second.

[quote=Huntz]What about all those Cowboys whooping and hollering shooting their six guns in the sky? How may got kilt from that??[/quote

Just the ones on the tallest horses. You had to point down to get the ones on the Shetland ponies.

Might need a reboot of Mythbusters to analyze this. I miss the gun episodes.

Drifting...
OP...the sky is not a backstop.

Thanks for the replies...yep I think we need a myth busters episode on this.

Personally, my skybusting is done with a shotgun...but like I said in the original post I see many videos online of coon and squirrel hunters missing - which is understandable, but I want to know if there is a real consequence. Once the 22 bullet slows down, and comes to zero and then returns to earth and hits the unfortunate soul.

I've had shot rained on me many times while duckhunting with no ill affect. From the responses, it seems like I'd want to where a hard hat if coon or squirrel hunting with a 22.

The bullet only slows to zero if the shot is perfectly vertical, in which case you might win the prize. Let us know how it feels please.

Tree's make good backstops.....Just saying....

I don't know if that's true...if it is shot straight up - at 90 degrees - then that would be vertical and come to zero and fall and 9.8 m/s squared...but what if it was shot at 89 degrees, 88 degrees etc. The comments above implies that the bullet does not act in real life like it does on paper 45 degrees would be the max distance angle for distance, but in real life - with physics it's more like 30 degrees.

To me, it's interesting. And, state hunting regulations permit 22LR for tree dwellers along with shotguns. And, on youtube anyways, lots of people seem to miss a time or two. Unlike these boards where everyone shoots 1/4 moa with an oak backstop...

The rotation of the earth comes in play when shooting up