Fisherman takes one in the head

[Gbro]

http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/160816/group/News/
Going to be interesting to find out how far away the shot came from.
And i will put a buck on it being alcohol related.

Bullet to head won’t keep angler off ice
Ryan Byrnes heard gunshots coming from the north end of Shagawa Lake about 10 seconds before he was hit in the back of the head by a bullet that came into his fish house on Thursday.

“It hurt pretty badly and bled a lot,” said Byrnes, who is from Phoenix and studying at Vermilion Community College. “I had a good feeling it was a bullet right away.”

Byrnes was fishing with his roommate, Cody Kuznia, who was in an ice house 10 to 15 feet away. Kuznia said he heard shots about 5:30 p.m., then he heard Byrnes drop and start yelling.

“He said he got shot in the head,” Kuznia said. “He was bleeding from his head and there was blood in on his hands.”

Anyone with information on the incident is encouraged to call the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office at (218) 749-6010.

They packed up their gear and took Byrnes to the emergency room in Ely, where Byrnes said the wound was cleaned and he was released. The bullet barely penetrated his skin, Byrnes said in an e-mail interview.

“[Everyone] said I was lucky as hell,” Byrnes said. “It could have been a lot worse.”

Byrnes tried to keep the .22-caliber bullet, but the police took it as evidence.

Kuznia wrote about the incident on the Web site www.lakestatefishing.com under the subject line “Craziest Fishing Story.” Byrnes chimed in with a photograph of the knick in the back of his head and with this optimistic take on events:

“It was a crazy day of fishing. I caught my first walleye and I got shot for the first time.”

Byrnes said this incident won’t keep him away from Shagawa Lake.

“I will fish there every day of the week,” he said. “The fishing was awesome.”

 

[Double Naught Spy]

10 seconds between the time at which the shots were heard until impact for a .22 round? Okay, so given the speed of sound, maybe 11 seconds of actual flight time. That seems like a very long flight time.

 

[blume357]

Looks like they may need to armor those fishing shacks

I guess I never got it....

sitting inside a shack on a block of ice looking into a hole....

just never quite captured my fancy.

 

[Nev C]

Fishy story

Something fishy here, even if a .22 bullet could stay in the air for 10 seconds, by my rough calculation it would travel about 2 miles, who could hear a 22 rifle from 2 miles?

 

[OldShooter]

Come on you guys, obviously more than one shot was fired.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

So what if more than one round was fired? What does that have to do with 10+ seconds of flight?

 

[AK103K]

Welllllll, if they started shooting 9 seconds before, he would have heard them shooting. Nobody said the round that hit him took 10 seconds to get there.

 

[fisherman66]

Just fer the record, I'll make a full recovery.

 

[45Gunner]

The distance the bullet traveled is a direct correlation to the time the round was first heard. The speed of sound varies with atmospheric pressure and temperature at the given time. Inversely related is the depth of which the fishing line was inserted into the ice hole and the ambient temperature of the water. After running the math, not forgetting the coefficient of friction generated by the .22 (was that a short, long, or magnum?) I would say the fisherman was damn lucky it wasn't a bigger caliber. He is one of the very few to say he was indeed shot at in the Ice Hole while fishing and survived.

 

[LukeA]

I think you guys are forgetting the time it takes to realize what has happened (to go from "something hit me in the head" to "a bullet hit me in the head and I'm bleeding") and to find an appropriate response (drop and start yelling). That can take a couple seconds.

 

[Gbro]

10 seconds between the time at which the shots were heard until impact for a .22 round? Okay, so given the speed of sound, maybe 11 seconds of actual flight time. That seems like a very long flight time.

heard gunshots coming from the north end of Shagawa Lake about 10 seconds before he was hit in the back of the head

Your Gazinta's are done with exact calculation for an estimated period of time.
Had Mr.Byrnes been holding his stopwatch/cellphone with thumb on the go button waiting for the predicted impact your Gazinta's would mean something.
The article didn't elaborate on his fish house. Was it a portable (canvas), stick built, ice castle trailer, ???

 

[4INCHSMITH]

Byrnes tried to keep the .22-caliber bullet, but the police took it as evidence.

I'd try to keep it too! I can't think of a better good luck charm.

 

[OldShooter]

From Wikipedia:

The speed of sound is the rate of travel of a sound wave through an elastic medium. In dry air at 20 °C (68 °F), the speed of sound is 343 meters per second (1,125 ft/s).

This is comparable to the velocity of many 22lr bullets at the muzzle. The sound and the bullet would arrive at almost the same time. Obviously the shots heard 10 seconds before he was hit were not the one that hit him. I imagine that the sound of a gunshot would carry well over a frozen lake. No one reported how far the end of the lake was.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

Nobody said the round that hit him took 10 seconds to get there.

Nope, it was stated that they heard the shots about 10 seconds before being hit. So the shots were heard. Time elapsed. Impact occurred.

As noted by OldShooter, the shots that were heard likely did not include the one that impacted the fisherman, that that is what is implied by the story. The time delay, however, makes that extremely unlikely.

 

[CRUE CAB]

I think the 10 seconds was a generality.

 

[AK103K]

I think so too.

To much speculation and over thinking going on here I think.

 

[FrankenMauser]

.22 LR is an inferred generality, as well. No one said he was hit by a .22 LR projectile. The article (if we believe it) stated ".22-caliber bullet".

It could have been anything from a .22 CB Short, to a .220 Swift, to a .22-378 Wby, to an "X-celerator" load with a saboted .22 caliber projectile.

.22 Caliber does not mean .22 LR.

 

[scorpion_tyr]

Anyone who's ever had an article in the newspaper about something they had a hand in knows how well the media gets their facts.

And the bullet would arrive at about the same time the sound did. Maybe .0384 seconds later. I would think that getting shot in the head might make me miss the sound of a .22 from a distance.

I'll still play along. It was either the guy with a silencer on the grassy knoll on the complete oposite side of the lake, or the shots were fired into the air, took 10 seconds to go up, come down, ricochet off the ice and hit him in the head.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

I find it interesting that in the original posting of the incident at www.lakestatefishing.com that the bullet is reported to have bounced off the guy's skull and that they were able to find the bullet somewhere on the ice and that they had pictures of their walleye fish, a picture of the bloody wound, but no picture of the bullet.

 

[T-MAN1984]

Where I live there is always shooting goin on somewhere (no not the city Redneckville USA) He could have just dulled out the shooting noise, and I'm sure getting punched in the head like that is gonna throw off your perception and such. I mean he probably didnt start screaming right away, probably took a couple seconds to realize what happened till he started yelling. (Ever been hit so hard you saw stars? your brain is firing a bunch of receptors trying to figure out *** just happened) I'm sure a 22 caliber (prob short) still packs a punch when it's decelerating.
He's just plain lucky many people die every year from celebratory gunfire. (Anyone see Mythbusters?)