Ricochet

Bill Wynne

Bill Wynne

Active member
I have a practical question that has been troubling me.

How much further do you think a 22 LR bullet goes after it ricochets off of the ground at say 75 yards?

I would think that it would be in the range of 200 to 300 yards max but that is just a guess. Not near the stated warning of "range 1 mile" that is stated on the box.

Concho Bill
 
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Concho Bill,

Going on experience at a local range, far enough in in such a wide angular dispersal that you'd better have a good backstop. Wet ground, the occasional bit of rock or other hard stuff can make them a near ICBM. Maybe that last's a tad exaggerated.

John
 
I would think that it would be so variable as to make any specific value meaningless. If the angle in is shallow and there are no rocks or clumps, the angle out of the strike would be the same and the velocity little changed, like skipping a rock.

We've got a bullet skip problem at out club (Riverbend) even with out new giant 50 foot tall berm that we constructed to allow access to extensive club property on the backside. Not talking rimfire here but it looks like CF rounds were hitting the berm and skiping out at an unknown angle to the 45 degree slope of the berm. Most of the horizontal component has to have been lost. Bill Dittman responded by making a verticle shear cut in the earth behind the target frames but that's a big maintenance problem. I've been trying to talk him into getting someone out there at dusk with a bunch of tracer rounds so it can be finally seen what is happening.
 
Bill Wynne said:
I have a practical question that has been troubling me.

How much further do you think a 22 LR bullet go after it ricochets off of the ground at say 75 yards?

I would think that it would be in the range of 200 to 300 yards max but that is just a guess. Not near the stated warning of "range 1 mile" that is stated on the box.

Concho Bill
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I have wondered the same thing Bill. My thinking goes, once a bullet hits something it is slowed down considerably and in the case of a lead .22 RF bullet, should be somewhat crumpled up. It is difficult for me to believe that a bullet or anything else could be propelled after striking anything unless there is some law of Physics I can't recall.

My home club had a problem with neighbors over a mile away and at an obtuce angle from the range, showing up with bullets they say came from our range. I think we were able to make the case that the bullets presented were planted but they won't relent on their effort to close us up.

Of course, there is the problem of Idiots using our ranges. Last week I visited a range and was listening to a group of pistol shooters at a new firing line. The club had installed a 2x8 pressure treated "Eye Lid", if you will , in an effort to subdue idiots. One of the members said, " We had a bet as to when the first bullet hole would appear", as he points to what looked like a 40 cal hole in the 2x8. Nuff Said, eh?
 
I would think it depends on how bad the bullet was deformed, energy/velocity expended and the change in trajectory angle. Of course those will never been known.
 
The range I was a member of near Seattle got complaints from people living on the other side of a high hill claiming that rounds fired from a baffled range had struck their property. When they were shown that there was no way, unless someone was shooting skyward from 25 yards in front of the firing line, for a bullet to leave the range they went away unhappy that they wouldn't be able to close us down or sue. Too many people wanting to make a quick easy buck IMHO.

I've witnessed recoilless rifle projectiles ricocheting over a hill at Yakima Firing Center, and it was pretty scary wondering if anyone or anything was on the other side or on the Columbia River. That'd make a serious problem.
 
I once fired some 38 caliber 158 round nose bullets, 900 fps or so across a smooth lake. We crouched as close to the water as practical and fired parallel to the water. The bullets made first impact at about 100 yards, second, 150 or so, third, 175 or so with subsequent strikes closer and closer until the last which might have been a few feet apart. The bullets skipped 14, 15 or 16 times, never less, never more. The path of the bullet curved quite dramatically, more than 90 degrees to the right due to the spin. I think ricochets loose considerable energy in the strike. The steeper the angle of strike, the steeper the angle of departure and the more energy transferred. Generally, bullets striking and departing at shallow angles will quickly strike again and again with a subsequent loss of energy and again.... I wonder if folks who engineer ranges have information on this. I think the NRA has a range engineering staff.

Sometimes ricochets tumble and loose velocity very rapidly and sometimes do not tumble. The ones that tumble are obvious as they have a whine of rapidly increasing pitch due to the Doppler effect. The bullet looses linear momentum much faster than angular momentum. The Doppler effect being, of course the well known phenomenon of frequency shifting up as the source approaches and down as the source retreats. If the source retreats rapidly the frequency is much shifted down and as the retreat velocity slows the downward shift is less and less making the apparent pitch go up. At the end the pitch goes back down as the departure velocity has dropped to near zero and the decay of angular velocity is heard.
 
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Let’s look at what I’d consider a worst-case scenario and if anyone disagrees....I ain’t gunna attempt to gather any empirical evidence with live bodies to prove I’m right and you’re wrong. LOL

I’ll first try to calculate the maximum range of a 22 rimfire without a ricochet and I’ll use a BC of 0.150 and a muzzle velocity of 1,075 ft/sec at standard atmospheric conditions.
We’ll elevate the muzzle to approximately 35 degrees since maximum range is only achieved in a vacuum at the oft incorrectly assumed 45 degree angle and we’ll use a modification of Professor Art Pejsa’s formulas for calculating maximum range with a pinch of interpolation from some testing done at the BRL (Ballistic Research Lab).
After half a page of doodling on a note pad, I come up with 2,000 yds for the lowly 22 rimfire. And, no I’m not going to show you all the chicken scratching I did to determine this value. This isn’t any scientific investigation that must meet the requirements for a peer review....just an exercise in curiosity.

Now, let’s fire this same bullet and have it impact at 25 yds and subsequently ricochet at the same 35 degree angle which maximizes downrange distance potential.
At the stated 25 yds, the bullet has slowed to 1,039 ft/sec and we’ll stay with the “worst-case” and figure for that velocity after it ricochets (Not possible of course).
There “will” be damage to the bullet and it’ll suffer degradation in its aerodynamic shape even if it glances off of a perfectly smooth slab of “unobtanium” someone left at the range, so we’ll look at three different BC’s of 0.150, 0.100, and 0.050 which produces the following conclusions:

0.150 BC = 1,900 yd Max Range
Red Ryder Lethality Range = 800 yds

0.100BC = 1,400 yd Max Range
Red Ryder Lethality Range = 550 yds

0.050 BC = 700 yd Max Range
Red Ryder Lethality Range = 280 yds

The Red Ryder Lethality Range is a very complex algorithm that “Armchair Ballisticians” use for very accurate quantifications of how much it used to hurt when as kids we fired these at each other.

Remember, this is just a guess for the “Worst-Case” and all the distances above are “probably” too high.

Landy
 
Many years ago, I was shooting a 7.62x39 fmj at a tin can sitting on 6 inches of crusty snow over hard frozen ground, the can about 25 yards away, gun held aprox 5'4" off of ground level.

There was a 1/2" dusting of snow on the crust. After 4-5 bullets I noticed downrange about 80-100 yards, rapid tufts of snow being kicked up. I went down range to investigate and the ricocet bullets were landing, cartwheeling when hitting the crusted snow covered field. They would tumble end over end for about 10 feet producing what apeared like mouse tracks from the motion. The trails would curve rt or left and at the end sat a bullet whith no deformation other than land engraving.

I shot up another clip and all bullets when fired at the can ended up in an oval if drawn out would be about 15 yards wide and 35 yards long. The pattern of ricocette and "re-entry" seemed pretty predictable in this instance.
 
Bill Wynne said:
Not near the stated warning of "range 1 mile" that is stated on the box.
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I think the 1 mile warning applies to free flying bullets but does not apply to richochets, does it? I assume that most ricochets produce a tumbling bullet that loses velocity pretty darn quick. Some of the posts here about shooting over water or snow suggest that the richochets don't go very far. I'd wager none of them go a mile or anywhere close to a mile.
 
OK, let me bring the veering horse back into the OP's range, as it were.... :)

I too have a bunch of guesses but does anyone have any actual factual experience??? I'm intrigued. I'm a Hunter Ed Instructor and live on a range. I've also fired out into the lake in my impetuous yout' and would love to do it again, objectively...... but don't have a lake handy....

Come on guys, in the interest of science???

LOL

al
 
Jim S said:
Many years ago, I was shooting a 7.62x39 fmj at a tin can sitting on 6 inches of crusty snow over hard frozen ground, the can about 25 yards away, gun held aprox 5'4" off of ground level.

There was a 1/2" dusting of snow on the crust. After 4-5 bullets I noticed downrange about 80-100 yards, rapid tufts of snow being kicked up. I went down range to investigate and the ricocet bullets were landing, cartwheeling when hitting the crusted snow covered field. They would tumble end over end for about 10 feet producing what apeared like mouse tracks from the motion. The trails would curve rt or left and at the end sat a bullet whith no deformation other than land engraving.

I shot up another clip and all bullets when fired at the can ended up in an oval if drawn out would be about 15 yards wide and 35 yards long. The pattern of ricocette and "re-entry" seemed pretty predictable in this instance.
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Thank you for this Jim. Wicked nice description.

al
 
Gentlemen and fellow shooters,
(sounds scholarly) :)

Thank you all very much for your contributions to this subject. I don't think the book has been completely written on this subject or if it has it may have been lost. We have few still lakes around here and never enough snow to cover the rows in a plowed field but some of you do and I urge you to do some further testing.

Landy's B C approach is logical and may be the best way to approach this problem. I wonder what the is the B C of a 22 bullet when it is emitting that furious whining sound as it tumbles?

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.

Concho Bill
 
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.

Spooky......
 
Bill Wynne said:
I wonder what the is the B C of a 22 bullet when it is emitting that furious whining sound as it tumbles?

Concho Bill
Click to expand...

Visualize a helicoptor autorotating for a "dead stick" landing. LOL

In a more serious vein, the "worst-case" scenario is the only way to approach this problem even if it means only 1 out of a million shots might approach the maximum ranges I estimated. I even read a 10 page report by a physicist that suggested the unknowns were too many to calculate exact numbers. You're stuck with determining averages and then deciding how far you want to wander away from the center of a bell curve.

Considering the consequences of even a single bullet escaping the range, is it possible to play it too safe? I don't know and you'll have to decide.

My post was partly "tongue in cheek", but the numbers may be fairly close.

Landy
 
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've been up on the mountain at my home and shot 22rf at my 1 acre pond. From 450 yards away, I can't hit the pond. However, it's not about what the typical round will do, it's about what the worst case could be. It doesn't matter if 99/100 won't make it to the pond, how far does #100 go. The example above of the 6.5 142 at >1 mi after impacting a berm gives some idea of how careful you have to be if there's things behind or nearly behind your impact area.
 
4Mesh said:
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.
Click to expand...

More than a mile? Hard to believe for a 357. How much energy could have been left?
 
And then 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 shipped the bullet off his berm, as I recall.
 
I have a pond at 165yds on my range and have fired .22 long rifle at the 350yd target butts......I have trouble believing that all ricochets stop short or that a .22LR won't make it 450yds but I do agree that you'd have to lob the .22 bullets in!!

I know that line-of-sight even a 45ACP shows no noticeable drop to the pond (I've had guys shoot pistols at ducks and the beaver dam and stuff) and since we have over two miles downrange we "can race" and racegun and bounce bullets off the yard all the time and it's only rarely that a bullet lands in the pond. I'd say 99% of them fly off down-range over the pond. These are real ricochets, low level entry/exit not stuff that's slamming a berm and then trickling over the top.

Snow stops bullets fast. Every year that we have enough snow I step outside my reloading room and fire bullets into the snowbank by the driveway. A week or two later I go out and pick them up 3-5ft away. The ones I recovered last year were 105 and 108 6MM's traveling well over 3000fps. They went about 5 ft thru fluffy powder and look perty cool.

BTST we have a local trap club that shoots right at a subdivision full of homes that are less than 450yds away, just at 400yds in fact and the pellets don't hit the homes. It's scarey to look at though.

They did end up putting up a huge berm ...... and legend is that some knotheads fired some goose loads that DID reach the homes. Some say that this is why they had to berm it up. But they also now have reclamation tarping on the berm so my guess is that it was all an environmental issue from the start.

Manalive..... wish't I hadda' lake! I think I might just get intrigued enough to grab my GPS and drive up to the reservoirs.....speaking of which, just last summer some idiots were caught skipping SKS bullets into a campground across about 250yds of water and the bullets were coming in to ground and still whining away into the trees. This was some drunk rednecks shooting beer cans out in the lake.

And VERY incidentally and maybe even off topic..... I misspent my youth hunting with a slingshot and even a rock whines off perty deadly sounding! At mebbeso 200-250fps???

jus' guessin' here....

al
 
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