A 25' earthen berm allowed ricochets, to come over. Strange.

[Ignition Override]

Didn't bother me, but I happened to see a safety officer at an Action Pistol range, told him about it, because it was bizarre.

The high berm was in front of me (as with all of our AP "alleys"), with -- nobody to my left or right-- at the other AP ranges. Nobody was on this side of the extremely wide, long berm, no cars etc.

Weird, to hear "Zing" just behind me twice in about thirty minutes.

Picture standing in front of a 1-story house about 200 yards wide, with a fairly high roof, and the only person shooting is Behind the house, and you hear ricochets above, then behind You.

There are a couple of thick, very tall oak trees behind this same high AP berm, where somebody was shooting a Very Loud gun at the little "Cowboy Town", located immediately behind this high, thick, earthen berm.

I always wear safety glasses and hearing protectors, since day one. Ja wohl!

"MSSA Lakeland TN satellite photos". Actually a good photo of an AP range at our club ---taken From The Ground--- should appear in the upper left corner on Google.

For some reason I can no longer 'copy' any photo and 'paste': lately the "search line data" is partly invisible, no longer allows you to sweep all of it with a mouse, and make it turn blue.
Have no idea why the 'data' is not completely visible.

 

[Demi-human]

Picture standing in front of a 1-story house about 200 yards wide, with a fairly high roof,

Is it vertical steel siding or vinyl?

Sometimes with sharp noises, like smacking a board down on the concrete, makes the sound wave reverberate from the ribs in the steel panel and sound similar to a ricochet. Very close but not exactly. With ear-pro on could the Loudenboomer report sound like that?

Or the ricocheted rounds bounced nearly straight up and rainbowed over. Which is very plausible. Large lead tend to stay together well.
That would still hurt, especially spinning that fast.

So, baseball helmets?

 

[Robert]

The side berms separating the different ranges at my private range are 25-30' high. I hear ricochets going over head all the time. You really want to hear something cool, have a 12ga slug ricochet go over. Sounds like the angriest bumblebee in the world...

 

[Archie]

Unless at a fairly low angle of approach, ricocheting (bouncing) bullets off dirt is nearly impossible. Even then, the departing angle is less than the approaching angle. There are some excellent police training films from the 1960s-1970s (the age of sawed off shotguns for police work) showing this effect.

Ricocheting (bouncing) a round off a small rock or bit of concrete is far more unpredictable. Consider a 'round' rock has any and all angles which may deflect (bounce, ricochet) a projectile. A 'flat' hard surface (like a broken rock or shattered bit of concrete) may lie in a myriad of variations and predicting the trajectory of a ricochet is impossible, except for "...sort of that way..."

Action Pistol type ranges need to be constantly cleared of ground debris. Rocks, loose bits of concrete bits and pieces. Even a wooden surface at a 30 to 45 degree angle relative to the ground (cut off bit of wood half embedded in the ground) can 'bounce' a more or less 'horizontal' projectile quite high. One notes this also depends on how far the cause of the ricochet is from the final stopping berm. From a couple inches, the ricochet has to go nearly straight up to clear a tall berm. From further (you guys do the math) a slight upward angle can clear (even slightly is enough) a backstop.

 

[taliv]

it's pretty common. that's why in bays, setting up stages or plinking, you need to ensure all targets are positioned where rounds impact into the berm. if you put a target where the round goes through and hits the ground, ricochets over the berm are likely

 

[DustyGmt]

The side berms separating the different ranges at my private range are 25-30' high. I hear ricochets going over head all the time. You really want to hear something cool, have a 12ga slug ricochet go over. Sounds like the angriest bumblebee in the world...

Yikes. You don't want to get duffed in the head with one of those.....at any speed.

 

[jmorris]

Tracers don’t lie, I have seen them go up after hitting berms. I know of one range that was shut down because of a few guys and one steel target that repeatedly sent rounds over the berm one day. As above, hitting the ground before the berm will send them over too. Not unlike shooting on water/skipping a rock…

 

[Craig_AR]

MSSA Aerial View
Used Mac's screen capture feature.
Some sites are able to prevent browser capture from working.

 

[Ed4032]

Could it be just spalling. Might need to have the berm mined.

 

[Dave DeLaurant]

A guilty aside on ricochets: about 35 years ago I used ditch about 3' deep behind some agricultural buildings to shoot into for handload function checks. Since I stood on a slight elevation and shot from close range, I figured this was an ideal backstop -- the downward angle meant bullets were striking deep, loose earth.

Then one day I tried this with an M1 Carbine on a cold winter morning. Instead of the usual dull thud, I heard a bullet go spranging off. The soil had become saturated and froze hard overnight, causing an ordinarily soft surface to behave more like masonry.

 

[Ignition Override]

Demi-human:

when I said “imagine a house 200 feet wide”…
..this was only stated to help people —imagine— the size of the huge berm,

which separates the AP ranges from the area behind the berm.

 

[Demi-human]

Demi-human:

when I said “imagine a house 200 feet wide”…
..this was only stated to help people imagine the size of the —-huge berm,

which separates the AP ranges from the area behind the berm.

Here I was imagining a huge firing line with fancy windows and steel siding, heated benches and whiteboards for scoring on the back wall.
With stalls for pistol to the end.

I can be quite literal at times. It makes humor difficult at work sometimes.

 

[.455_Hunter]

Just last week, I was discussing this with secretary of my son's range. They have a prohibition on targets like bowling pins due to their ability to deflect rounds over the berms.

 

[Ignition Override]

Demi-himan:

Young glasshopper, you funny!

 

[PWC]

From the aerial photo, it looks like the berm is shared by back to back ranges; if you don't hear it when you shoot, it must be coming from one of the points on the other side of the berm. If it's a private club, bring it up at the next member meeting or ask to get on the agenda of the board meeting. Rounds that may leave the range jepordize the club.

 

[taliv]

the dead zero range in spenser TN is like this. they have some IPSC bays and behind and perpendicular to the back massive berm, is the 1000 yard range, with a giant metal roof over the firing point. pretty much every time i went there and there were people shooting in the bays, i would hear lead fragments landing on the roof above me. perfectly safe, but a little weird

 

[Laphroaig]

Back in the day, our club used to have an annual machine gun shoot. Members would bring their armament and you could watch, maybe shoot one, and if you brought a box of 45's run them through a Thompson. One year, after dark one fellow loaded a belt with tracers and let loose at the berm. Surprisingly, most of the rounds hit the berm and deflected straight up, visible because of the tracers. Who knew? Last machine gun shoot they had.

 

[alfsauve]

Nice Place. Obviously major Trap and Skeet goes on there as well as AP and SASS.

Here's a better picture. Thanks to SNIP.

 

[Jim Watson]

Once at the Alabama State IDPA at CAGC, Shorter, Ala. I was sitting waiting my turn when a bullet dropped in my lap. Just dropped, no headway on it at all. (Which makes me skeptical about reports of holes in heads and roofs from vertical celebratory gunfire.) I showed it to Cody Ray, the then MD. He put it in his pocket and would not give it back.

On the other hand, I heard a western movie quality Zing off a rock in the berm at my local. I would not want to have been in its way.

 

[Craig_AR]

(Which makes me skeptical about reports of holes in heads and roofs from vertical celebratory gunfire.)

Please ask a high school physics teacher, or a student in spring semester, to show you the calculation for what goes up and then comes down under the force of gravity. Your experience was not from a direct vertical or even parabolic arc gun shot.

 

[Jim Watson]

Does that high school physics teacher consider air resistance and the notion of terminal velocity in atmosphere?
Mine didn't.

Hatcher worked on "bullets from the sky" and did not find that they landed real hard. I was very disappointed in the Mythbusters attempt at it.

I doubt this offending bullet was fired straight up and came back down at terminal velocity, but it was still quite startling. Hell, some pranker wanker might have thrown it at me.

 

[CapnMac]

Tracers can track strange. After all, they have a big hollow in the base for the compound, so they are continuously having their CG move forward in flight.
On striking a surface, they can easily tumble, and the eye follows the bright, burning, light.