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Caught my first ricochet


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Ouch!  At what range were you shooting from?  Gets you thinking more serious about safety when something like that happens.  Did it bounce off the actual target or was it a miss that ricocheted off something else?  Looking at your setup, I'm mystified what could be solid enough to ricochet, it all looks pretty soft and squishy, is it wood chippings or similar?

Our syndicate was having a knock-around clay day a few years ago.  One of the invitees took the stand, loaded his gun and when he closed it....BANG!  That was scary.  Good job he was handling the gun in a safe manner and it was pointing downrange.   "Oh yeah it does that sometimes" he says!!!!!!!!

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Had a few 38 Special and 357 Magnum rounds bounce back from a purpose built indoor range ....  double rubber hanging sheets, sloping armour plate into 18 inches of water but still the very occasional one would come back and if shooting 1 second exposures at 7yrds they did sting.  Good reason to wear eye protection .

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The back stop is barrels filled of sand with about a foot of wood chips.  The steel top is from when my son was younger he would sometimes shoot high.  But it is at a 45 degree angle.  The bullet hit the hanging rubber target because I saw to swing.  I was shooting at 25yards.  

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It hit with enough force to sting about like a airsoft rifle.  

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On my seventh birthday dad took me to the local cycle shop and bought a new Webley  junior air pistol (for him or me?. ) We went to my grans house and when dad was making tea my uncle took the pistol out of the box and  pinned a target to the wooden gate in the yard . I showed him how to load the gun, the man in the shop showed me how . The target was about eye level, he fired at the target and the pellet hit the gate and bounced back and hit him just under his right eye. He said the gun was dangerous Dad said he was dangerous as it could have hit me. First shot first lesson.  

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The issue is slow moving rounds and hitting  springy  materials  .

So a .22 air pistol  is very prone to ricochet 

A .22 lr has a lot of mass v it's velocity and is also likely  to come back .

High speed bullets /pellets etc that are lighter weight shatter or penetrate  more into different materials and hence bounce back less .

The slower the speed the more careful of your back stop you must be. 

 

A good example of this is try shooting an arrow into ply wood or a tyre and it will come back at you almost every time  .

 

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I’ve used a similar backstop without any problems. I’d be happy to put centre-fire into that. What I have found with the self healing targets they can get full of lead and if there are a couple of rounds just below the surface of the target the new round doesn’t get caught and can bounce back. Reality is most of the energy will have gone out of the round into the target. Always wise to have glasses on.

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As a child I was hit in my leg by a ricochet from a air rifle. Years later my brother in law was telling me about the time he and his friends got into trouble for shooting a kid with their air rifle. I don’t know who was more surprised when I told him that I was the kid that he shot. He often asks if I still have the scars. I was also shot in the knee cap with an arrow, shop bought bow and and arrows, that ricochet when my friend was shooting at targets. He said it’s a good job you wasn’t wearing your school trousers, and then looked for his arrow. 

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