Bullet travel distance (range)

[bedbugbilly]

Figured I'd post this here since it does deal with bullets/boolits. For some reason yesterday, I got to thinking about when I was a kid (late 50s/early 60s) and how my Dad would make sure we hunted with 22 shorts - and we never had an issue taking squirrels, rabbits, etc. with them - but 22 LR were a "no no:" even though we had boxes of them in the gun cabinet. I remember the warning on the old Remington box flap - "Range 1 Mile".

Anyway, I got to thinking about bullet travel distance - the first lesson Dad hammered in to our head was "no finger on the trigger until you're ready to fire" . . . the second was "be careful what direction you are shooting in" . . . we lived in a rural area on a farm but there were neighbor's houses, barns, etc.

After thinking about bullet travel distance, I googled the subject and one of the charts I came up with was here:

https://www.hunter-ed.com/washington/studyGuide/Know-Your-Rifle-or-Handguns-Range/20105001_700046704/

We all know travel distance can depend on a lot of variables - bullet weight, charge, gun fired from, elevation, yada, yada, yada.

I thought the chart was interesting. Maybe what got me to thinking about it is I'm about ready to buy a 45 Colt Uberti Winchester rifle (1873) and I know the range it will shoot so I'm thinking of places on the farm that i can shoot it with good safe background. Many folks have a good knowledge about bullet travel for what they shoot but then again, some don't . . . and sometimes a "reminder" is not a bad thing. Especially for those that hunt or shoot out in the country areas like many of us do.

Not posting this to start a argument over the different variables for a particular caliber in a particular gun . . . just general knowledge. I found it interesting . . especially for some of the cartridges I don't shoot. Just thought I'd share it.

[Rcmaveric]

I have seen the chart. Always hurt my head because we say that these rounds are deadly out to that range. We then say owe a cartridge needs 700 ft lbs at target distance to be ethical kills.

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[Froogal]

.22 long rifle still carries the warning of one mile, and some of it even cautions that the range is one and a half miles. A box of 30-30 I have cautions to be careful, range 3 miles. Maybe the round is still lethal at those distances, or maybe it is not. To be safe, I will assume that it can still be deadly.

[Tom W.]

I don't want to be a test dummy to find out, either!

[JBinMN]

I have often wondered about such things myself, but I always remember to follow the rule of firearm safety about knowing what is behind/beyond the target, so I never really spent much time looking into the average range after the target.

I was once told that if a projectile can penetrate & pass thru a 1/2 thick piece of 4 layer(ply/plies) plywood it will penetrate a human wearing average clothing. Not sure about that, but it would be an interesting test. Finding volunteers to find out for sure though, would be a bit difficult I would think.
;)

Anyway, Thanks for sharing the chart!
:)

[Winger Ed.]

I figure the warning is on there for folks that shoot at things in trees,
not so much for shooting where you can see dirt out past the front sight.

If you're shooting up & at an angle, that could let the boolit go it's maximum range if you miss.

[Froogal]

My very first handgun was a Smith and Wesson 38 special model 642. I built a target stand out of 2 layers of 2x6 deck planking. Shooting Federal American Eagle, 130 grain bullets. Some of those bullets stopped in the wood, some of them went right through and I found them in the dirt on the backside.

[BigAlofPa.]

They say a coin dropped from a skyscraper can penetrate into the sidewalk. Not sure it thats a myth or not. But a bullet falling from a high shot would be deadly.

[NyFirefighter357]

https://youtu.be/IP1wVJblN00

[Peregrine]

I have seen the chart. Always hurt my head because we say that these rounds are deadly out to that range. We then say owe a cartridge needs 700 ft lbs at target distance to be ethical kills.



I don't see what's head scratching about it.
They can be deadly out to an extreme range. Can isn't good enough when you want to hunt ethically, but when we're talking about the consequences that an errant shot may have you have to assume the worst case.

[swheeler]

Yep guns are dangerous, even little ones," be sure of your target and beyond" always stuck in my head so never worried about the warnings much.

[BigAlofPa.]

https://youtu.be/IP1wVJblN00

Thanks for the video. Very informative.

[mdi]

I dunno. I think the chart is more theory (math) than testing/experimenting. The first thought I had is the chart doesn't say anything about optimum conditions, angles, gun elevation, etc., just sea lever and [I]12,000'[I] and for handgun cartridges "conventional ammunition" is mentioned...

[JBinMN]

I figure the warning is on there for folks that shoot at things in trees,
not so much for shooting where you can see dirt out past the front sight.

If you're shooting up & at an angle, that could let the boolit go it's maximum range if you miss.

Yeah. The chart did not say anything about elevation, but I know what ya mean.
:)

[country gent]

Some thing to consider here when thinking about this is the free travel ranges with out backstops have huge impact areas. Camp Perry's is section 3 5 and 7 of Lake Erie. from memory that's 5 miles X 7 miles of the lake closed during live firing. Would be interesting to run a metal detector out to see how far bullets have gotten over the years.

On these ranges with pits and abutment walls the shooter is shooting at an upward angle and bullets do travel along ways. This also don't include the range being fired if 200 yds or 1000 yds. That's between the shooter and targets.

The warnings on box flaps are a reminder of what your working with. Remember the Sandy Hook tests where the lowly BP loaded 45-70 was making hits at 2 miles. How much farther would those bullets have actually traveled.

[Texas by God]

They say a coin dropped from a skyscraper can penetrate into the sidewalk. Not sure it thats a myth or not. But a bullet falling from a high shot would be deadly.As children on vacation we once dropped Quarters off of the Royal Gorge Bridge in Colorado. We would watch them until the canyon winds blew them away with our binoculars. As far as we know we never killed any tourists down below LOL we also shot our shotguns straight up in the air and then ducked when the lead rain fell!
I have never claimed to have any sense.
But the only gun I will shoot straight up in the air now is a muzzle loading pistol loaded with greased paper towels, there are just too many houses around nowadays.

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[Froogal]

Yeah. The chart did not say anything about elevation, but I know what ya mean.
:)

The warning is there because of the POTENTIAL range. How far it can go IF it does not hit anything.

[40-82 hiker]

They say a coin dropped from a skyscraper can penetrate into the sidewalk. Not sure it thats a myth or not. But a bullet falling from a high shot would be deadly.

My sister and I used to drop pennies (not quarters for sure!) from a lighthouse in the early 60s when we were kids. We were always disappointed somewhat in that they did not go down any faster than they did. It seemed impossible, no matter how hard we tried, to keep the coins from "flipping", up to a very fast rate (sunshine off of the sides glittering from the flipping). This increased the air resistance to a point that they actually seemed to flutter down, rather than drop at a fast rate, reaching what looked to be a terminal velocity in a rather short period of time of free fall.

These experiences make me think for sure that there is no way a quarter is going to have that kind of velocity to attain energy enough to more than bounce off of the concrete, though I surly would not want to get hit with one!

Just my observation from an early age. Funny you should mention that, however. I have not thought of that lighthouse in ages!

[Bloodman14]

The Mythbusters disproved the penny drop myth; the coin doesn't have enough mass. They also fired a ping-pong ball at 1100MPH!

[BCB]

Won't an object only achieve a given maximum speed no matter how far it falls?...

Quick Load, I think, has a part of it that predicts maximum bullet travel at optimum launch angle...

Good-luck...BCB

[tazman]

Won't an object only achieve a given maximum speed no matter how far it falls?...

Quick Load, I think, has a part of it that predicts maximum bullet travel at optimum launch angle...

Good-luck...BCB

Yes, but that speed varies depending on the properties of the object. Weight, air drag, physical orientation, and a few other things all effect what velocity a particular object will have.

[reddog81]

I’d have to assume the chart is referring to ideal conditons and shot at about a 30 degree angle. A bullet fired parallel to the ground will hit in about half a second assuming a normal height person is firing the gun. The bullet will cover about 500 feet for a normal handgun round or about 1500 feet for your average rifle round.

Fired at a 30 degree angle the bullet can remain stable and retain velocity sufficient enough to kill a long ways out. Fired straight up the bullet will be tumbling and not going any faster than if you had dropped it from a tall building on its way down. Any angle higher than 30 degrees and the arc of the bullet goes higher but it doesn’t go as far.

[wmitty]

I was a volunteer RSO for a year at a local range. I was astounded at how many shooters would shoot at a target with no safe backstop. I finally resigned due to the fear of being involved in an accidental shooting. The range owner was threatened by a homeowner whose property was struck twice by stray bullets.

[McFred]

Plenty of calculators out there to figure this stuff out. For example:

http://jbmballistics.com/cgi-bin/jbmdist-5.1.cgi

A friend ran the numbers on his 7mm F-class load at his native elevation. 35˚ up angle from horizon and 40 seconds and 8266 yards later it will land with more terminal energy than a .22LR at point-bank.

239141

[15meter]

Hatcher did a number of tests on this subject, including firing straight up. He went to a beach in Florida and ran a whole series of tests. He found that the vertical shots were still stable and spinning when they came back down.

I think the tests were detailed in his book Hatcher's Notebook. Cool reading that's worth the time. The tests were run during the 20's, after WW 1. The questions started coming up after having all those planes flying around spraying bullets and brass in every direction.