Lead from the sky

[fatelk]

We went up in the hills today. My daughter wanted to shoot her little pink Cricket .22 rifle. We found a good place to shoot, actually the only real good place up there with any space to shoot very far. Other folks were shooting down the hill a ways past the trees in a rock pit.

While the kids were playing and I was picking up some brass I heard the shooting down the hill. One of the shots had a distinct zing after it. Someone had a ricochet! No big deal I thought until I realized the whirring was getting louder and definitely coming towards us. I looked up because it was so loud and close I could pinpoint with my ears where it was. It splashed into the water of a mud puddle about 20 feet from me.

I told the kids to get in the van right away, and went over and picked a .45 slug out of the mud right where I'd watched it land.
http://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm274/fatelk/bullets004.jpg
Yes, I realize the only way it got over to us was to go at such a high angle that it landed with maybe enough energy to give someone a headache, but it still wakes a guy up, especially landing maybe 30 feet from my kids. My wife says neither her or the kids will be going out there anymore.

[Frank46]

A friend of mine had a camp in upstate NY. Standing and chewing the fat we heard a high pitched whine. Went right over our heads and yours truly ducked. Heard it hit a tree. This was in shotgun territory. But definitely sounded like a rifle slug. Frank

[WILCO]

Yes, I realize the only way it got over to us was to go at such a high angle that it landed with maybe enough energy to give someone a headache, but it still wakes a guy up....

Yep. I spent some time in the "Pits" running targets up and down. That time paid off when I left work really late one nite and heard the familiar report and "Crack" as a round struck the building. Actually stood for a moment and then hussled to a parked car. When I realized it wasn't my x-wife or a crazy former girlfriend trying to knock me off, I made my way to my vehicle and got out of there. I just figured one of the local dealers must've been shooting a rat......

[oldred]

Back about 1967 there was an incident in a small town in Kentucky where I lived at the time, a fellow had just come out of a store and was stepping onto the sidewalk when he was struck by what was later determined to be probably a 30-30 bullet. This little town is surrounded very closely by mountains and it was assumed that the rifle had been fired from somewhere in the heavily wooded hillside with trees blocking the view of the town. We will never know for sure what happened but probably the guy just fired carelessly in the direction of the buildings or maybe he thought the trees would stop the bullet but in any case it did make it past the trees and struck this guy. The bullet energy was obviously spent from the long range and had the fellow been wearing a coat or other heavy clothing he might not have been hurt but unfortunately the bullet struck him in the side and actually penetrated slightly between his ribs, not a fatal wound but painful anyway. I guess these kinds of things do happen.

[thegreatdane]

next time, bring a net! (and some helmets)

[BD]

I met a girl while in college who's father had been killed on the street in downtown Lancaster, PA by a 30 cal bullet strike to the head. 5:15 PM and he'd just walked out of the office building where he worked in a small city. No shot heard, and the bullet entered from a high angle. At the time they concluded that it had most likely been fired up across a low ridge several miles outside of the city.

Remember, you own them all the way to the end.
BD

[shooter93]

Something pretty spooky....a good friend of mine and his wife Elaine own a rural farm here. Elaine virtually showers the same time every morning in the second floor bath. One time during deer season, and no one really hunts this farm and as near as we could find out there were no hunters anywhere near the place.....she was behind by a few minutes. Just before entering the bathroom she heard a strange noise but didn't pay any attention. She walked in....started the shower and when the water was hot she got in. She was staring at a hole in the shower at chest height. Needless to say she came down and after looking there was a hole through the window into the shower and a bullet lodged in the wall.

[geargnasher]

One of our local ranges got closed many years ago because an errant rifle round traveled across town and killed a man driving a bulldozer at the landfill. There was a hill in between, no line of sight, but it was determined by the direction and energy of the boolit that it must have come from the range. One-in-a-billion, but that's all it takes to die or win the lottery sometimes. If someone hadn't shot over the berm and hill (this was no ricochet) it would never have been an issue.

Gear

[Stephen Cohen]

Back in early 70s I was rideing my Honda 750 along highway, when I was hit in the helmet by something, thought it was a thrown up stone so never worried. Imagin my surprise when I got home and found it was a .22 mag projectile still lodged in side of helmot.

[NSP64]

Back in the day we had a 50 cal tracer smash a tank hull on the machine gun range. Everyone stopped shooting and watched it. It made 3 big loops hitting the ground and bouncing back up again before it burned out. You could see it spinning as it went up in the air, and hear it buzzing. So, who knows how far it actually went. It seemed like over a mile, but tracer is supposed to be good for 2200 meters.

[HollowPoint]

I watched a guy take a 300 grain 45 caliber slug to the back of the head a few quail seasons ago.

With my binoculars, I happened to be watching these two guys traversing the wash-board terrain about two hundred yards behind me. They were walking down a down-hill slop when one of them stopped in his tracks, put his right hand to the back of his head and proceeded to quickly sit down.

It was real early in the morning and I could just make out what they were saying. The guy walking behind the fellow who had just sat down kind of jokingly asked, "What are you doing man?" He didn't realize what had just happened. Neither did I, looking through my binoculars.

I heard the guy who just got struck by the bullet say, "It came out of now where." When his buddy realized what had happened he says to the guy on the ground, "Stay right here! I'll go get the truck." Then he high-tailed it back to their truck so he could get his friend some help.

While his buddy had gone to get the truck I made my way back in the direction of the downed quail hunter. I made my presence known from about fifty yards away so he wouldn't think I was the guy who shot him.

When I reached him he was clearly shaken but there was no blood of any kind.

It turns out that he had caught a ricochet from what looked to be a heavy 45 caliber cast lead slug.
It nailed him in the back of the head leaving a huge golf-ball sized swollen knot. When the slug hit him, it buckled his knees and he went down to the sitting position. The slug bounced off his head, onto his right shoulder and then onto the ground.

He picked it up off the ground and showed it to me. The misshapen slug showed evidence of ricocheting off a hard surface before finding its way to the back of this guy's head.

It was a billion to one shot. We were out in the vast desert at the time; and this guy just happened to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I waited till the guy came back with their pickup truck. Then I thought it wise to get the hell out of there too.

HollowPoint

[firefly1957]

A friend of mine had a slug bounce off several trees around him and land between his feet where he sat deer hunting still spinning like a top. It was a .458 Diameter 500 gr, soft point a heck of a round for Michigan whitetail. Bullet was barely damaged mostly just rifling marks on the jacket.

[nicholst55]

Many moons ago I had a small arms repair shop hidden away in an old missile magazine on a small base in Korea. At one time, they had test-fired repaired weapons into a 55-gallon drum that was set up horizontally in the back of the bunker. It was filled with dry sand, and had a 1" steel plate welded to the bottom. In front, it had a hole with a piece of an old truck tire fastened over it, and a folded sheet metal trough leading into the tire. The front edge of the sheet metal trough was folded completely over, like you would do with a piece of paper.

One day a group of us were shooting pistols into the 55-gallon drum from about 15 feet away, when one guy had a 158 grain RNL .38 Spl bullet strike the folded edge of the sheet metal trough, and bounce back and strike him dead square between the running lights!

I had visions of a dead soldier, a court-martial, and all kinds of terrible things! Very fortunately, he shook his head, blinked a couple of times, and said - 'Wow! I'm going to make a necklace out of that one!'

We never shot pistols - or anything else - in there again!

[LuvMy1911]

Geez! I'm NOT hunting with you fellas... You have awful luck!

Still, it's a good reminder. Always be sure of what's behind your target.

[HollowPoint]

Geez! I'm NOT hunting with you fellas... You have awful luck!

Still, it's a good reminder. Always be sure of what's behind your target.


I know it seems that way but, if you think about it, we were the lucky ones. It's those unfortunate other guys you might not want to hunt with.

If I were any one of them I'd consider myself lucky as well. They found out the hard way that even when the chances are one in a billion, "Sh!t Still Happens." regardless of all the precautions we might take.

I think I'll go buy me a lottery ticket.

HollowPoint

[Old Caster]

When I was driving down the highway in the middle of the city, I saw a projectile arc and hit my windshield and bounce off. It almost went through but not quite. It had to be a bullet because nothing else could have gone that distance from the direction it came.

My company did work on top of an old building that had a flat roof each year and from the space of about 500 square ft. the guys would pick up half of a coffee cup of bullets that were randomly shot and fell there. Most of the bullets were 9mm and when they fell more or less straight down they hardly made a dent in the tar paper and the worst I saw was a short groove about an inch and a half from a bullet that seemed that it would have had to come in at an angle that barely cleared the three story roof and , I imagine it was fired from relatively close. The ones that came straight down didn't seem that they would cause much physical damage judging from the dents on the soft tar paper, but look at how much damage hail can do to a car and ice is much less dense than lead and would fall at a slower rate than a lead bullet. The guys used to turn the bullets in to the safety department and ask for an MSDS sheet on the bullets for hazardous materials identification. -- Bill --

[firefly1957]

I knew a hot roofer that worked in the Detroit area H picked many bullets off roofs most of them hit base first. and were probably fired strait up on new years eve. Knowing what is beyond your target does not help when bullets bounce back . Same friend as above was with me when I fired
A 200 gr Speer bullet from my S&W mod. 29 into a gallon jug filled with water and on its side with a stump for a back stop. upon firing jug exploded Mike swayed back and said you shot me ! I said BS then looked and right between his feet was the perfectly mushroomed slug and a growing lump on his forehead. I wonder what his widow did with that slug? No he passes 16 years later not from my shot.