Where does that bullet REALLY stop?

[getitdone1]

Has anyone ever done a test to determine where typical hunting bullets stop after going through a paper target and hitting the ground? This assumes level ground for a mile or more. Of course the soft points or hollow points are deformed and lose their rotational stability once they hit the ground. How much does this slow the bullet down and prevent it from going very much farther? I would think a lot.

A dirt back stop is the way to go but what about all the hunters throughout the country? A lot of hunting is done in the Eastern states where houses are not all that far away.

Be nice to know what a hunting bullet does after it hits the ground. Of course it would depend somewhat on how hard the ground is and if there's rocks the bullet could glance off of.

I'm sure very fast and fragile "varmit bullets" would either blow-up or not go very much farther once they hit the ground. This bullet design has probably saved some lives.

There's also lots of shooting of .223 Remington cartridge using FMJ bullets. Would think these could travel quite a distance after hitting the ground.

Don

[Gobblerforge]

Most, I recall, fell back to earth, dug in, and stayed there. Only a few bounced, and none stayed up there.
Gobbler

[Pitchy]

If there`s snow on the ground, foot or more they don`t go very far, few feet.

[AJMD429]

I've read that even FMJ in .223 will pretty instantly get deformed enough and destabilized enough to turn into fast-thrown pea-gravel as soon as they hit anything, even tangentially. No doubt a one-degree impact off a smooth piece of steel would still do far less to it than a ten-degree impact onto a piece of jagged gravel.

As far as straight-on impact, I have seen some apparently real YouTube type footage where .223 bullets (unsure type) hit a pop-can or similar target, and nothing except tiny bullet fragments made it to a cardboard backstop three feet behind. That is an entirely different story than a paper target or a complete miss, though...

[adirondakjack]

look at a ballistics table and drop figures for a clue. To launch em really far requires a good bit of elevation of the muzzle.

That said, there was a time back in the early sixties when my dad hunted woodchucks with a scoped .44 mag revolver. Ole mister chuck was sunning himself on a ridge, and when dad whistled, he obliged and stood up. Dad put a round through his head at maybe 50 or 75 yards, shooting from a sillhouette shooters position, lying on his back, the gun rested along his leg, somewhat downhill from his target. That meant there was enough upward trajectory that the bullet, even after passing through the chuck, sailed a ways.

When dad drove out of the dirt road to the highway, a pickup was blocking the road waiting from him. The farmer took him to the house and pointed out a hole in the tin roof of the porch, where his wife had been sitting, shucking peas, when the bullet came through the tin, bounced around on the porch, scaring heck out of her. The farmer handed dad the bullet. Dad ended up giving the man $40 and was barred from use of the land ever again. The shot went about 400 yards AFTER hitting the woodchuck.

[Terry Murbach]

NEVER EVER BUT NEVER UNDERESTIMATE HOW FAR A BULLET MAY TRAVEL AFTER ROCOCHETING OFF THE GROUND, OR ANYTHING ELSE FOR THAT MATTER. I HAVE SEEN A 22Ogr 30/40 BULLET GO WELL OVER HALF A MILE AFTER BOUNCING OFF A LITTLE ITTY BITTY PUDDLE OF WATER BEHIND A TARGET.

[vancelw]

NEVER EVER BUT NEVER UNDERESTIMATE HOW FAR A BULLET MAY TRAVEL AFTER ROCOCHETING OFF THE GROUND, OR ANYTHING ELSE FOR THAT MATTER. I HAVE SEEN A 22Ogr 30/40 BULLET GO WELL OVER HALF A MILE AFTER BOUNCING OFF A LITTLE ITTY BITTY PUDDLE OF WATER BEHIND A TARGET.

+1

A day spent shooting prairie dogs will show you a lot. Varmint type bullets usually fragment and lose energy very quickly, but occasionally one will glance just right and you can see it skip until it reaches the hills in the background. A FMJ will most definitely skip. Shotgun pellets will ricochet off of water.

Anyone who has ever seen night firing with tracers KNOWS how far bullets will travel after hitting something.

Even after passing through a paper target, a bullet (on perfectly level ground) will travel until the acceleration caused by the force of gravity ((9.8 m/sec)/sec) makes it hit the ground. So it's velocity (disregarding BC) determines how far (not how long) it's in the air.

At our gun range you can see plenty of furrows in the ground downrange of the 25 m target holders. Most stop at the 100 m berm.

[Old Savage]

I have watched .50 cal tracers take off for what looks like a couple of miles. I think as Terry mentioned in the right conditions and certainly in the desert hard pan out here they can really go.

[rimrock]

I have some recent experience with ricochets. I mostly shoot offhand standing down into the dirt. My .44 and .45 cal bullets with wide meplats appear to stay in the dirt as long as they don't glance off off a stump cut at ground level. They are traveling at 2000 fps or less.

My .30 cal flat meplats easily ricochet off the dirt as I confirmed by examining the trees behind my end range. They are traveling at about 2500 fpds. There are several cut marks on the trees from the .30 cal about eye height, so now I'm real interested in developing a better back stop for my home range.

rimrock

[madman4570]

Don,

There are so many variables that its a tough call for any one thing.
I can say that when we do the rare occasional 600yard shoots the 30-06 180gr FMJ bullets seem to only penetrate about 4-5 inches of plain unfrozen earthen bank.
I would assume that if you are target shooting with say a 30-30 (150gr SP)and are sighted in at 100yds you will be hitting dirt before you reach 400yds.(course this is considering the shooting area is fairly level and the target height is of normal target height).
Would think that if indeed the bullet struck just plain soft earth the skid path would be quite short and shallow in depth.

Can tell you for a fact that shooting a deer with a 385gr 12ga Win. Supreme partition at a distance of 50 yards from a upper bank position shooting the animal angling downward will provide complete pass through of a 170lb deer and still go 10inches into the dirt bank on oppisite side(at least in my case)
That type of penetration blew me away! Intereseting stuff anyway!

[getitdone1]

Although I didn't think about it when I started this thread, the responses--and there's been some good ones--just might save a life or two and save someone a lifetime of grief and guilt.

Don

[Otto]

Anyone who has ever seen night firing with tracers KNOWS how far bullets will travel after hitting something.

This. Tracers fired from an M16 will ricochet hundreds of feet into the air, after having travelled several hundred yards downrange. And, that is hundreds of feet into the air before the tracer burns out, so who knows where the bullet goes after that.

[C. Cash]

Anyone who has ever seen night firing with tracers KNOWS how far bullets will travel after hitting something.

This. Tracers fired from an M16 will ricochet hundreds of feet into the air, after having travelled several hundred yards downrange. And, that is hundreds of feet into the air before the tracer burns out, so who knows where the bullet goes after that.

+1 Some go much farther, if they just glance off the ground. Even the 5.56 and 7.62's seem to go miles when they glance off a burm and keep going the direction they are shot, losing very little velocity from having struck the ground. Others seem to pop up from several to several hundred feet and flop back down in front of the target, or to the sides or back.

[.45colt]

As a kid my Sisters and I were out in the backyard playing badmiton one summer day. up the road I could hear the report of a .22 semiauto and soon after each shot we could hear the sound of bullets hitting the apple trees next to our yard. We got My dad and took a ride up that way and about a half mile up the road neighbours were haveing a picnic. there was a small hump in the side yard faceing tword our place and they were shooting at tin cans in front of it,the slugs were hitting the top and sailing away. the neighbor looked like He had a few beers in Him and said it's just a .22. He shut up as I thought Dad was going to pop him. they didn't shoot our way anymore.