Neanderpundit

Back again to the use of centerfire rifles in Indiana and the goofiness of Indiana laws.

Tam invites me to “think about it” in comments at the post (in re: 300 yard shots and the differences between them and 50 yard shots.

Actually, I think about that quite a damned bit.

See, I have an obsessive compulsive psychosis about Rule Four. Everywhere I am, I think about what a round would hit if (god forbid) I miss, or there’s a through and through.

I have been accused of this scenario, and it’s probably a fair accusation:

Og: (Gun drawn, facing home intruder) “Please move a bit to your left”
Home Intruder: “Why?”
Og:”There’s a water pipe in the wall behind you, and I don’t want to blow a hole in it when I shoot you”

Anyway, aside from being obsessive about where every round I shoot will go (I have this nightmare that upon reaching the Pearly Gates I’m called to account for stray rounds and not that goat thing or the school fire)I obsess over shooting position. Here’s a diagram of a 50 yard shot at the chest cavity of a deer:

It’s a bad drawing, sorry. Anyway, the angle of incidence is about eight degrees. I’ve also compensated for the height of the deer, so the point of impact with the ground is actually at a spot some distance beyond 50 feet. I don’t have the cad program open anymore and I didn’t write it down, but it doesnt change the angle of incidence. (based on a miss)

Here’s the same diagram for a 300 yard shot.

As you can see, the angle is tiny, close to one degree.

What does this mean?

Well, I’m not absolutely sure, but here’s what I DO know.

About sixteen years ago, inspired by the work of Franklin Mann, I thought, hey, why not do some kind of a study based on the trajectory of projectiles which have ricocheted? So far as I know nothing of the sort had ever been published. SO a friend of mine and i went to the range at Willow Slough and set up an experiment.

We brought concrete blocks, a ransom rest, and my friend’s Ruger MK1. The ransom rest didn’t fit it well, so we used some duct tape to get the grips snug in the rest.

We also brought a plywood box about a foot deep and three feet square, and a big tupperware container to use for water.

We started shooting at 45 degrees, being too much pussies to try shooting straight on. We used gravel, sand, dirt, clay, and water. We would fill the box with gravel and shoot at it from a bunch of different angles. The pistol was about six feet away from the box. To do the water test we just put the tupperware container in the box, propped up with blocks and sand.

We intended to do all of the shots, five shots from each position, at 45, 40, 35, 30, 25, 20, 15, 10, 9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 degrees. We started with gravel shooting five shots at each of the values above,and by the time we got to 35, we pretty much figured

1:a 22 will damned near always ricochet off gravel and
2:there would just be too much shooting to do all this.

So we modified the experiment so we shot at 45 degrees, 30, 10, 5, and as close to 1 as we could get.

Somewhere around here I have a big general ledger sheet that has the results of our experiment painstakingly written out, but rather than bore you with it, I’ll tell you the bottomline. Using a 22 from a handgun, it didn’t seem to make much difference what the soil was, below about 5 degrees the chance of a ricochet was pert near 100%.

The consistency of the soil, and the dampness of the soil, all contributed. We also discovered that there was no clear correlation between the angle of incidence and the angle of deflection, because the projectile was commonly slightly deformed on contact and that adversely affected trajectory.

No, it’s not horribly scientific. No, it’s not something i carefully documented- not as carefully as I should have, anyway. And I only used a 22- because before I was able to move up to any other calibers I scared the crap out of myself- what if I HAD been shooting something more powerful? Those ricochets went every damned place.

I’m sure thousands of people have done more serious studies than the simple playing around I did, and maybe someday I’ll find those studies and, geek that I am, read them thoroughly.

What I did do, was give myself a serious respect for the trajectory of the ricocheted round, and for me, I just don’t take the chance. I ALWAYS set a stand where if I take a shot there’s a berm behind my shot. I NEVER take a shot without an earthen(or other, better) backstop. And I NEVER shoot across a field, not even a 22.

I’m not telling anyone what to do, or how to do it. I know for me, I’d rather be accused of being paranoid than damage someone’s property or harm a human or an animal. And the eight degrees I get shooting 50 yards from 20 feet up is about as far as I personally am willing to go. You do what the heck you want- but let me know where you’re gonna be hunting.

By the way? Water is scary. Spinning projectiles can enter water, and re-emerge, sometimes coming back at the angle of incidence. I read piece of this and am glad THEY did these experiments or observations, and not me.
IM Hutchings, 1976, The ricochet of spheres and cylinders from the
surface of water. Intl. J. of Mechanical Sci. 18 pp 243-47.
doi:10.1016/0020-7403(76)90006-0

And no, I’m not EVEN going to present this a science, or even reasonable research, it’s a couple guys fooling around.