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.

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! :-)

https://www.physicsclassroom.com/mmedia/vectors/mr.cfm

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

Said the junkie.

.........don’t forget where we are in our orbit around the sun, southern or northern hemisphere, position in the universe and so many, many more variables😄!!

PennDog

At no point in time does the bullet "travel sideways".

You fellas get bored find a copy of Modern Exterior Ballistics by Robert McCoy, pour some coffee and start reading.

My brain is definitely traveling sideways . I'm confused as hell ! 😫

on subjects like this, everyone remembers just enough physics lessons to add to the confusion.

As well as the direction of the rifling.

If we wait long enough, the physics will change to fit.

The kid killed in OK fish with his grandpa, was shot by a cop wielding a .357 Magnum.

mag410, I was told it was a .22, it could have been a .458 Win. Mag. shooting up in the air, with anything but a shotgun is not smart. Rio7

The spin keeps the bullet spinning on a fixed axis - it could be going sideways down range, or if disturbed it will tumble out of control. The spin lasts a long time - in most cases it's still spinning when it hits the deck. There's minimal resistance otherwise to slow the spin. There's video of 9mm bullets fired into ice and they keep spinning. Mythbusters did this too.

Repeating that won't make is so.
The projectile remains aligned point first with it's path of travel during it's entire arc.
They never go "sideways".

Spinning keeps it in the aligned axis - what makes it change it's axis in flight and stay stable? Like holding a spinning bicycle wheel in your hands and turning in one direction gets a reaction in the third axis.

That is not necessarily the case. For example, a bullet which is overstabilised will tend to remain aligned with its angle of departure, rather than "nosing over" to follow the trajectory as we get out to very long range. There are also a number of forces at play tending to cause a bullet to yaw in flight, and not just at very long range, and bullets will tend to drift sideways as a result of wind and spin drift, among other things.

There's a rather good treatment of these questions a fellow named Ruprecht Nennstiel put together a while back : http://www.nennstiel-ruprecht.de/bullfly/

You fellas want a different path for critters up in the trees maybe give this some thought. They are 100% effective on head shots....and don't travel 1.5 miles if you miss....and don't tumble.

They won't wash your truck however.




If you got it all figured out they are fairly accurate at close range.

Nothing makes it "change it's axis".
Nothing I said implies that it does.

Over-stabilized would be an anomaly.

"Yaw" is a wobble back and forth along the axis of travel and it's center of gravity.
It doesn't mean the projectile is traveling sideways

Wind drift and rotational "drift" don't mean the projectile is travelling "sideways" in regards to the direction of it's intended main path.

It might be flying 'tip up' on the descending arc.

If stabilization is just perfect, it should 'tip over' as it begins descent.

If excess stabilization, it may fly tip up in descent, not unlike a football with lots of spin.

I always wondered how many folks on the ground got hit by empty 50 BMG and 20 mm cases during the big airbattles over Europe during WW Twice. Seems like a lot of empties got spit out of fighters. Not to mention all of the falling aircraft and the bullets that came out of them as well.

My old stomping grounds in NM was literally riddled with spent 50 cal brass as well as bullets.

You could expect to find many of both when horseback there at the ranch in a day's time.

Also found several linked ammo belts from the aircraft with live ammo. I suspect they kicked them out for a reason... Maybe they were tired of shooting practice, and couldn't return until the ammo was all gone, so they kicked out belts of live rounds to shorten the flight time.

It was always interesting. Most brass stamped '41-'43.

Our ranch was an old air force training range. It still has the earth targets visible from satellite image. One canyon was inert bombs, and another was live bombs.

You could sit anywhere in the live bomb canyon and reach out and pick up a jagged piece of shrapnel. Salvaged many inert practice bombs.

Would a bullet from a Mach 2 rimfire be less lethal if fired at a 30 to 45 degree angle than a .22? The Mach 2 uses a 17 grain bullet.

Yes but only on Tuesdays in the months that end in R.......any thing past 46 degrees will kill, always !

Christmas Day ‘69 I was supporting troops engaged by NVA just a few miles north of DaNang in mountainous terrain. They were taking fire from a large bunker about 30 yards upslope from their position. Tree cover and proximity made the Cobras of little benefit. I came to a hover over the friendlies with a narrow view of the bunker openings. Lit up the minigun with 3 x 3 second bursts into the bunker. There were no survivors in the bunker. Our troops were quite animated about how hot the brass was that I rained on them.

Their CO thanked me later.

Checking the roof for hail damage one
year in January, I found a bullet embedded
in the shingles near the peak from these
hood rats chooting in de air for new year's.
The roofer has also found em while doing
a repair a while back.
My bronco had a big bullet dent in the top
of the tailgate from celebratory gunfire,
and this truck I have now has a bullet
dent in the hood still.

It happens no question

I remember reading about terminal velocity tests done by Julian Hatcher. He tested everything from .22 short and LR to 150 and 180 gr. .30-06 and when fired straight up they all came back to earth at velocities between roughly 150 and 350 fps. I also remember in his testing a falling .22 short bullet hit a pine board when it came down and only dented it and bounced off.

What ever happened to "Be sure of your target and what lies is behind it"? A responsible person obeys all 4 rules all the time.


mike r

No, not really. Bullets tend to lose forward velocity fast, but rotational velocity much more slowly. For most purposes it isn't an issue, but there are times when it is. It was first noticed after modern long-range rifles artillery, when point-detonating shells were noticed to have a high incidence of "blinds", as they were actually not hitting point first at extended range. At extreme ranges the same can occur with rifle bullets - they land like an aircraft coming in with flaps extended, rather than nose first, as the bullet axis remains more or less aligned with the axis of departure.

It is yet another example of the bullet axis not following the path of travel, which is why I mentioned it.



On the contrary, they mean exactly that. The bullet is indeed travelling sideways. Think of vectors - do they teach that in high school? As well, the bullet axis is not aligned with the direction in which the bullet is travelling. In the case of wind drift, for example, the typical bullet will be facing its nose into the wind as it drifts.

Hawk,

Thanks for letting me know that I'm not the only one who ever pondered on that issue. During the air raid videos, on major cities, you see tremendous amounts of tracers going upwards and if the old formula I was given was correct, that there are approximately 4 non-tracer rounds for every tracer you see, then there were a whole lot of bullets going up that had to come down somewhere. ( I just reread that sentence and the brilliance of that deduction is truly staggering...)

Anyways, it would have been beneficial to keep one's head down during the war.

Repeating that won't make is so.
The projectile remains aligned point first with it's path of travel during it's entire arc.
They never go "sideways".[/quote]













On the contrary, they mean exactly that. The bullet is indeed travelling sideways. Think of vectors - do they teach that in high school? As well, the bullet axis is not aligned with the direction in which the bullet is travelling. In the case of wind drift, for example, the typical bullet will be facing its nose into the wind as it drifts.[/quote]

You still just keep repeating yourself and going off on unrelated tangents like "artillery" and "wind drift".

They have nothing to do with the context of what I said.
At no point during it's flight does a normal projectile turn sideways to it's direction of travel.

Snyper

You've made rather a mess of your quoting, attributing things others said to me and attributing things I said to yourself, so it is a bit hard to follow. Maybe that was your intention. However, the salient facts are these. You said:



This is not true. I explained why it is not true, with concrete examples. It has been known not to be true for over a century.



The fact that you think these are unrelated tangents demonstrates that you simply do not understand what you are talking about. As well, using "tangent" unironically in this context reinforces that point. I used the example of artillery because it was with early rifled artillery - which are just a bigger rifle - that the phenomenon of projectiles not remaining aligned point first with the path of travel during their entire arc was noted. Our understanding of wind drift - that it causes the pointed bullet to turn into the wind - is another good solid, well-documented example of the bullet nose not remaining aligned point first with the path of travel.