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Distance a ricochet can travel???

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  • HKShooter65

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    I'll preface this question by acknowledging that a precise answer is impossible.

    Does anyone know how far a ricochet can travel if the screaming projectile is traveling at 800 or 1,600 or 2,400 feet per second???



    The question arises from shooting 100 and 200 yards (a lot of rounds) at targets in the middle of a, rather rocky, 450 yard deep field with a high berm of a stock tank at the end of the field and houses 1.35 miles from the shooting bench.

    My concern is the the field has a lot of rocks from 3" to 6" all over the place.

    My buddy that took me shooting there was unconcerned, believing that the berm was keeping things safe, until I raised the question.
    He was also frightened by the recognition that ricochets were even occurring, made apparent by my suppressor's allowing him to shoot without ear protection.

    I'm thinking that a 5.56 or 7.62 round glancing off a 6" rock could easily travel the 1 1/3 mile!!!

    Any opinions or actual data???

    HKS
    Happy T-Giving all. Safe shooting.
    Lynx Defense
     
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    Dawico

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    I have shot many 308 tracers at steel and can tell you that they can really travel after impact. Even solid hits will send pieces pretty far.

    A normal non magnum round doesn't have much juice left at a mile. If it hits something first then even less power.

    My opinion is that you are safe as long as it is a ricochet. Even a missed clear shot will hit the ground long before it reaches a mile (given a flat shot over flat terrain).

    There is always that one in a million shot though.
     

    TreyG-20

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    Pretty far, but after they first impact they will no longer be stable which is what causes the noise. It is its spining out of control. Unstable projectiles lose momentum quickly. It also depends on the weigh and speed. .223 probably won't ricochet as bad as a .308 and up due to the bullet weight and velocity and how much of it it sheds on initial contact. But .22lr and most pistol rounds are worse usually because of how little speed they have. Combined with more weight they hold together better.
     

    Younggun

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    I have shot many 308 tracers at steel and can tell you that they can really travel after impact. Even solid hits will send pieces pretty far.

    A normal non magnum round doesn't have much juice left at a mile. If it hits something first then even less power.

    My opinion is that you are safe as long as it is a ricochet. Even a missed clear shot will hit the ground long before it reaches a mile (given a flat shot over flat terrain).

    There is always that one in a million shot though.


    This.


    A high BC round from a .308 is dropping at 45* at 1000 yards. Now rob a lot of energy at 200yrds, ruin the BC with an impact, and imagine how far it can go.

    There's always the video of the guy shooting .50 BMG at 1k (supposedly) and the round bounces back, skips in front of the bench, and takes the ear muffs off his head. This is that 1/1,000,000 chance. Of course any milsurp bullet will be made of steel and deform less, plus it's got tons of energy at 1K.
     

    easy rider

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    most rocks aren't as strong (hard) as metal gongs and will rob more of the inertia of the projectiles, not to say they won't travel far, just not as far.
     

    benenglish

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    A little googling turns up a bunch of sources that all say the same thing - this is too unpredictable to quantify. The few things I've found that constitute controlled tests are inapplicable, e.g. there's a nicely illustrated study showing, among other things, what happens when you shoot a .50 BMG into a hard steel plate, found here: https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2013/05/f1/June_2012_Bullet_Trap_and_Steel_Target.pdf .

    If we accept the "too unpredictable to quantify" position (I don't, but I'm not equipped to test the question.), then we need to concentrate on the exceptions, those times when the stars aligned NOT in our favor and bad things happened.

    Yes, this is all anecdotal but here are a few quotes from folks behind keyboards. Take them with as big a grain of salt as you think necessary. Thank goodness the OP was also open to mere opinions. :)
    there was the woman who was washing dishes when a 50 BMG bullet came into their RV trailer in the infield at Texas Motor Speedway. I don't think she was hit by it but it was discovered that a Rancher, some 5 miles away had skipped the bullet off his berm

    I remember some years ago there was a guy out sitting in his lawn chair sleeping somewhere here in this part of PA iirc, and a bullet from an indoor pistol range had ricocheted out at the corner of the roof, traveled > 1mi, and killed the guy where he sat. His wife found him when calling for dinner. I want to say the round was from a 357, but it's hard to remember the details.

    I skipped a 6.5 142 SMK off the top of a sand pile in a rock quarry that went through the window of a farm house roughly 1 1/4 miles away.

    I now remember walking on the back side of a low berm (about 8 feet high) at a pistol range at our club and finding hundreds if not thousands of pistol bullets in an area less than 20 yards from the berm. That does not mean that others did not land much further away in the brush. It may just mean that behind a pistol berm is not a good place to rest during a pistol match.

    As a retired Abrams tank Master Gunner, we had to create a SDZ (Surface Danger Zone) for all of our ranges. It was dependant on the largest caliber fired, and most times on the tank range it was the 120mm cannon. But on the other ranges where the Scouts qualified, that was for the .50 caliber MG. The SDZ ricothet portion was dependant on multiple factors, to include type of round (dependent on velocity/range/material of round), elevation of target, and material of target. I have even had to create these for 5.56mm where dismounts were egressing from armored personnel carriers and engaging troop targets. Sometimes these SDZ's do not account for every possibility.
    ...
    Here is some food for thought:
    Hazard distance of .50 cal M2 ball ammo - 6,500m at 2,810 fps
    7.62mm M80 ball ammo - 4,100m - 2,750 fps
    5.56mm M855 ball ammo - 3,437m - 3,025 fps

    In Germany, a soldier in my battalion was killed when a 5.56mm round ricocheted from another range and hit him in the back. Truly sad! That was probably 400-500 meters of ricochet impact. I have seen .50 caliber rounds ricochet off of tanks and penetrate smaller vehicles sitting next them and tank rounds ricochet and disappear over a mountain range!! So ricochets can be very unpredictable and I have learned that the best media to shoot into is a paper target into a dirt berm.
     

    rman

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    not sure if it's pertinent, but Kathryn Steinle, the young lady shot/killed by the illegal immigrant in San Francisco, was killed by a JHP .40 approx 78-95 feet away.

    Sent from my SIG Sauer
     

    HKShooter65

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    Good input.

    I'm simply thinking this way.......

    A .44 magnum bullet, with it's pretty lousy ballistic coefficient can fly 1.5 to 2 miles I've read.

    I'd think a .308 projectile skimming off a rock could easily retain .44mag velocity and fly 1.5 miles.

    TX limestone is pretty darn hard. Castroville in this case.
    We had a rifle with a scoped 6.5 Creedmoor that was way, way off and we just adjusted the scope and walked it in to a 6" rock out at 200 yards and once we hit it dead center it was scarcely chipped.
    I wonder if we'd hit the rock 2mm from it's top how fast the 6.5 Creedmoor round was traveling when it passed down range, hypothetically, 5-10 degrees from the horizontal.

    Many of us have seen .22lr rounds bounce off a lake surface and hit a second time 1/4 mile away.
    I'm wondering is a rifle round can simply skip off a hard dirt surface in a field?
     
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    HKShooter65

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    Thank goodness the OP was also open to mere opinions. :)


    Uhhhhh......well.......I only believe half of what I say.

    Just pardon me if I question what others say, eh???

    (:

    This sort of topic is dependent so often on opinion.
    Often "facts" or "proof" are hard to come by.

    Your example of the ricochet off sand passing through a window 1.25 mile away is totally plausible and is the real point of my inquiry.
     
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    Charlie

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    My only close experience with a ricochet was a .223 from an AR that came straight back (about 6 or 8 ft. from the bench I was shooting from). It was scary (I heard it!). Damn near had to clean my pants! That was several years ago and haven't had anything like that since. We mostly shoot a paper target on a sheet of asphalt board about 3/4" thick. Never had a "come back" since then,
     

    benenglish

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    Uhhhhh......well.......I only believe half of what I say.

    Just pardon me if I question what others say, eh???
    In that spirit of openness, I suppose I should tell the only story of repeatable richochets with which I am familiar.

    I was competing at an IHMSA State Champs many years ago when one of the competitors was using a .38 Special revolver loaded with 200-grain round nose lead bullets. In that game competitors shoot directly into flat steel targets. The chicken silhouettes weigh about 8 pounds. Obviously, when shooting into flat steel the bullets will disintegrate, right?

    Nope. Not at all.

    She hit every one. The bullets stayed intact well enough to ricochet downrange off the steel as it became angled while falling. It was absolutely weird to witness the consistency with which they all sounded the same.

    On the heavier targets further downrange, the bullets just flattened and fell to the ground.

    My experience and research tell me that ricochets are going to happen in far more situations than people normally realize. I've read credible accounts (and seen it myself, once) of low-velocity "cowboy" loads literally bouncing straight back from crumbled-rubber backstops. I've witnessed .45 ACP ball coming straight back at the shooter when shot into railroad ties.

    It just seems to me that if you want to completely obviate the risk of ricochet, you need to limit your ammo choices to the sort of sintered bullets used in "green" ammo. I'd hate to have to do that.
     

    Moonpie

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    Gunz are icky.
    Saw a ricochet once from a .22lr take out a pick-up truck window.
    It was summertime and several of us deer hunting buddies were out on the lease doing some work for the upcoming season.
    One of the guys had dropped us off then drove down to the far end of the pasture where he parked his truck.
    The truck was roughly 300yds from us.
    Where we were working was a small pond. One of the knuckleheads with us had a .22lr rifle and just HAD to shoot at a turtle in the pond. Of course the turtle kept going under whenever knucklehead aimed at it.
    So knucklehead ducked down below the levee around the pond and snuck around to get a shot.
    He rose up frm below the top of the berm and took a shot. It was a low angle and the bullet skipped off the water and went downrange striking the truck down at the far end of the field. It broke the drivers side door window.
    We learned of this very soon when the trucks owner comes tearing up screaming at knucklehead.
     

    HKShooter65

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    OK...original poster back to the the original question...with a thought experiment.
    Original core question is whether or not a bullet can skim off a rock and travel 1.25 miles.

    I was, just this morning, shooting at rocks in a pond and listening to the .22lr rounds ricochet and thought of a way to bring the question nearer a simple physics experiment.
    ...................................

    Let's presume I'm on the 450 yard field with a 10 foot tank berm at the far end and homes 1 mile beyond the tank.

    Let's then presume I'm shooting a 4 foot diameter perfect sphere of very hard granite 50 yards away with a 6.5 Creedmoor.

    a. If I shoot dead center granite sphere the projectile splats and ceases to move.
    b. If I shoot 1mm above the granite sphere the projectile is unaffected the the berm protects the homes.
    c. If I shoot somewhere between a. and b. the projectile ricochets off at 45 degree from the horizontal.
    d. If I shoot somewhere a bit above that point the projectile ricochet's off at 20 degrees from the horizontal.

    ..................................
    Therein is my fear.
    If my HS trigonometry serves me well the berm top is just 1.43 degrees above the horizontal from the granite sphere.

    If I shoot the granite sphere with the 6.5 Creedmoor (or any hard rock) such that the the projectile just grazes the topmost top and keeps traveling at 2 or 4 or 6 degrees from the horizontal I suspect the velocity will still be mostly conserved and it will clear the berm and it will endanger the homes!!

    Yikes.
     
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