Shooting steel ? >>>Projectiles bounce back !<<<

[OS OK]

The Grim Reaper just missed collecting this fellas brains in a bucket...50BMG woulda left a mark!

https://video.search.yahoo.com/video...&fr=aaplw&tt=b

[smokeater]

Couple years back my wife and I were shooting at a steel plate rack with our 9mm's and a piece of the bullet jacket with a shard of lead came back and hit me in the arm. Went deep enough that it took a couple of weeks before my forearm swelled up enough to pop it out. Needless to say, we do not shoot steel with jacketed bullets and even with lead we stand back further than the line and rope from the rack. I have since bought us a steel plate target that we sat out at 30 - 40 yds to shoot but even then we wear all appropriate safety stuff. Love to hear the clang.

[lightman]

The pistol backstop at our private range is made from old tires. Think heavy equipment used in mining. Huge, heavy, 24+ ply tires. Occasionally, one will throw a pistol bullet back. 25 yards is pretty safe but 21ft can get your attention! Rather than moving closer to the backstop I'll move the target closer to the firing line and try to maintain some distance.

[Pumpkinheaver]

I caught a 230 gr .45acp bullet last summer that came back off of a bowling pin at a match.

[marek313]

I shoot cast 99% and we shoot plates often when its nice out. I never had anything dangerous come back at us but couple of shards came down from the sky few times because it thats where it mostly goes when its splatters on the plate. Nothing like that video but I'm always pushing everyone back when they get too close.
Shooting steel with cast 45acp though is not the same thing as 50BMG obviously. I dont think I'd shoot steel plate at a 100yards ( I'm guessing) with 50BMG I think I'll be fine shooting that on paper

[Echo]

Shooting an All AF Match @ Lackland 'way back, during a slow fire 45 HB stage, I was hit by a washer - well - I guess it was the base of the lead in the HB round. Somewhat larger than a nickle, the bullet must have struck the angle-iron on top of the berm and popped the base of the lead back - or something. Still have the washer...
(And I didn't shoot the round - generally, my rounds went into the target, not the angle-iron 3' below the black...)

[Ballistics in Scotland]

I remember an "American Rifleman" letter in the 60s or 70s, in which a man shot at a piece of railway track, presumably not in use, and lost the sight of one eye to a circular piece of jacket the diameter of a cigarette, which ended up behind his eyeball. I don't remember the range, but it wasn't long, and yet didn't seem foolishly short. Nothing that shape is likely to retail velocity really well, and it probably wouldn't have done him serious harm anywhere else, but enough to be unwelcome, and even if your eye is behind a scope, you've got another one that isn't.

I sometimes fired rifle shots at a large brass block I had. It made approximately spherical little lead-plated cavities, narrower at the mouth than inside, with quite attractive little outward turned petals. There was never any sign of solid metal inside till I used Nosler solid based boat-tails, and then I gave up in a hurry. I found a little cupro-nickel button loose inside each cavity, which was the solid base. I reasoned that for them to stay there, the rest of the bullet must be going somewhere predictable by the laws of physics. Since I couldn't predict any way for it to go left, right, up or down, I reasoned that it might be coming straight backwards.

[kens]

that is why many of the steel gongs are hung such that they are tilted for the bullet to go to the ground.
Hang steel gongs such that the fragments or bullets richochet towards the ground.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

That should be a big help, but not the complete answer. You'd think of something to say to someone firing even small fragments of metal from a shotgun into the ground in your direction. The best thing is hanging the gongs a long way off.

[marek313]

That should be a big help, but not the complete answer. You'd think of something to say to someone firing even small fragments of metal from a shotgun into the ground in your direction. The best thing is hanging the gongs a long way off.

Thats fine but not all shrapnel is going downward. It splatters in a full circle so some of it goes up and because of this angle now it bounces back at the shooter. Good part is that it loses momentum pretty quick and by the time it comes down its harmless. Some of those do lob with some range though.

[17nut]

Tilt it (steel target) away from you in a 90+10degree manner and whatever splatter will be upwards and will never catch you!

[Walks]

Steel plates for Cowboy Action Shooting are spring-mounted to their stands and tilted down at at a 15 degree angle. When you go down range to pick up the targets after a match you will see a groove in the dirt just in front of the target legs where the bullets impacted, coming off the target.

[wistlepig1]

The guy with the 50 was lucky, good day to buy a loto tic. I to have seen bullits come back, started shooting at angle now.

[W.R.Buchanan]

The accepted minimum safe distance to shoot steel targets with pistols is 15 yards. With shotguns with slugs 35 yards and Rifles are 50+.

Also like mentioned above targets should be constructed so as to deflect boolits downward after hit. Most cast boolits will flatten on impact. Jacketed not so much, and they will come back at you if the circumstances are just right.

I have seen whizzers come back at the line during a Rimfire Silhouette Match coming off little bitty chickens at 40 Meters.

You can't be too safe, but really if you get hit from a ricochet is more about blind luck than anything you did wrong.

I guess Karma is real!

Randy

[Texas by God]

Don't shoot steel pock marked by rifle bullets either. I have a scar on my forehead to explain why.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

[derek45]

wear good eye protection.

I've been shooting steel for decades without trouble.

targets and stands designed for steel are very hard, and the lead splatters off.

shooting pitted steel or steel not designed to be target steel can cause trouble.

[OS OK]

Every time I see this range it makes me think of Hickock on the U-Tube . . . . . . I keep trying to find the 80 yard big round gong!

[MyFlatline]

So far,,knock on wood, my set up has done well

[OS OK]

The only thing that bothers me about steel is not being able to get my Pb back...have to install a tire around the plates to keep that Pb.

[MyFlatline]

Agreed, I use these for more long range. If I can hit the 3" gong at 150, I'm happy.

For pistols we have a sand/dirt back stop, I made a gold miners trough to sift the sand and reclaim...Yes, I am that cheap..