How much should I worry about ricochets

[longcoldwinter]

My backyard range is set in bowl with 7-9 foot tall hills all around me. Soils are clay loams and fairly rocky, I am sure there are fist size limestone rocks a few inches under the soil surface. Bullets would have to turn 90-180 degrees to the right and 30 degrees up and travel 200-300 yards before they could hit anything.

Is it likely a bullet could burrow into the soil, hit a rock, turn 90 degrees burrow back out of the soil and travel 200 yards at a upward angle? I shoot mainly pistols.

 

[hillbille]

coldwinter, anything is possible is it likely? no. still with that said safety is stil the main thing in any shooting enviroment. If you can I would stack up a few railroad ties in a open c shaped box shape. it would only have to be a few ties high then fill with sand or fill dirt, total should be under50-75 dollars , be worth it for the piece of mind. my 2 cents

 

[armedandsafe]

In a similar situation, I used hay bales. Two deep, 4 high. It worked.

Pops

 

[TimRB]

Given that it's your personal range, probably you can figure out how big your (small?) expected impact area is and where it will be. Why not dig that spot out a few feet deep and remove the rocks?

Tim

 

[chris in va]

Wear your glasses. This video has been confirmed real, BTW.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=0ABGIJwiGBc

 

[BerettaFox]

I tested mine with my supressed p22/pilot. i was firing into a bank that was about 45 degrees... I could perfectly hear the ricochets... about one in 4 did it. then i could perfectly hear the ricochets hitting the trees as well. Kind of made me think.... man I wonder how many 357, 9mm, 38 special, 44 mag, and 22 bullets are randomly in the trees in the woods behind my house? However, I've never had a bullet come back at me. Which is GOOD.

 

[OldShooter]

ricochet

I have dug into a berm after shooting high power rifle and the bullets didn't penetrate but a few inches. However it is not worth the risk to have ricochets into the neighbor's property. If there are hard objects in your berm, I would dig them out and make sure the berm is plenty thick.

 

[shortwave]

watch the railroad ties!

my brother wanted to shoot my 38 s&w airweight and see if he liked it for possible ccw. went to friends house which has homemade range made of railroad ties stacked up approx. 5 ft. brother was approx. 10yds from ties shooting. he shot, grabbed his throat and staggered backwards. projectile had hit something in tie and came straight back. thank god it didn`t penetrate, but it sure put a good knot on his throat. i gave him the airweight with the condition he never again fire it. he`s got slug on neck-chain as reminder.

 

[longcoldwinter]

I am thinking I need to built a earth and wood berm right behind my target sans the rocks. Logs on the inside covered with a foot of clay loam soil just to be on the safe side.

 

[thrgunsmith]

I was shooting in similar conditions

and a ricochet went inches past my ear, I felt it and heard it
I was shooting my .357 snubbie!

 

[RedneckFur]

I used to shoot on an old dirt road, and never thought twice about ricoshets. one day a .38 special bounced off a peice of rock or something in the dirt behind my target, and came back and hit me in the leg. It really changed my openion of shooting in rocky areas.

 

[Doyle]

If you have ever seen a video of nighttime automatic weapons fire using tracer rounds, you'll realize just how frequently rounds do fly off into places you don't intend.

 

[Tom2]

Dittos to putting in some fill dirt or something without rocks for a foot or two in the area immediately behind the target. The bullet would have to pass thru alot of soil, hit something hard, deform which by now has expended alot of energy, and then pass back out the way it came. Ought to slow down most anything.

 

[Garand Illusion]

At one indoor range I go to, I sometimes get bits of lead thrown back at me (especially if I'm shooting .32 ACP -- weird, huh?). I don't know why, but the bullet traps throw a lot back. Not every shot, but I don't think I've ever been there and not felt something come back, either from my gun or someone else's.

But by the time it totally reverses course and comes back, it's never more than a feeling like someone throwing sand at you. Never worried about it penetrating.

I have seen videos of people shooting tracers and seeing them zing off in all directions, but normally you can see that if direction is radically changed (i.e. 90 degrees or more) the bullet has lost it's ballistic force and is really just bouncing more like a rock than a deadly spinning projectile. You see the rounds that bounce upward just kind of loft up and then tumble down -- wouldn't want to be close to it, but it's not going far.

So what I'm wondering is ... while if you hit a shallow richochet, off of water or a flat hard surface, the bullet continues on with a deadly speed and trajectory, will a bullet that bounches up, to the side, or even back ever be much more than a tumbling rock of lead?

 

[rr2241tx]

Truth is, lots of unlikely things do happen. Rifle bullets are usually pretty easy to trap in a steep-faced berm without rocks in it. Handgun bullets are much more problematic as they may lack the power to penetrate cleanly and may re-exit after penetrating only a couple of inches. Railroad ties and dense logs are particularly poor choices for trapping handgun bullets because they will often bat those bullets back with a significant amount of their impact energy intact. If you are able, use an angled backstop with a stopper wall to catch those that bounce off the backstop and trap them in the angle.