Mythbusters: Cutting down a tree with a machine gun!

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Well if the mini gun is 3,000 rounds a minute, and it took them 47 seconds to shoot it down, then they used about 2,350 rounds for the pine tree, plus another 3,400 for the other tree (based upon a 1:08 time). So about six thousand rounds fired, plus what they spent on the Thompson and SAW.

Sounds like a tough job!
 
The second tree burst into flames before it went down.

(Note to my inner-survivorman -- use minigun to start campfire.)

:cool:
 
The MythBusters crew has done a lot for the image of recreational shooting as firearms are presented as tools that are fun to use rather than evil racist killing machines that must be eliminated for "the children".
 
Not a tree, but equally impressive.
30-40 Krag Gattling Gun shoot 5 miles from my home in 2002.

Gattling2.jpg

Piano & Maytag man!
Gattling3.jpg

Gattling6.jpg

About halfway through the ammo supply.
Gattling7.jpg

This is all that was left when we ran out of ammo.
Gattling8.jpg

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rcmodel
 
The second tree burst into flames before it went down.

(Note to my inner-survivorman -- use minigun to start campfire.)
Click to expand...

Just watched the vid. It appeared that some if not all of the 7.62NATO ammo was tracer. I'll have to watch it again to see if it was mixed belt or all tracer.
 
And from the pages of history.

Near "The Bloody Angle" at Spotsylvania.

battlefield012.jpg

And a piece of the tree.

Spottstump.jpg


Picture from http://www.bivouacbooks.com/bbv1i1s6.htm
 
At an Appleseed shoot last October (Osage Beach, MO), we managed to bring down a 5" diameter conifer tree of some sort. I suspect the tree wasn't in very good condition prior to our shooting at it, it was nearly barren of needles. Wasn't intentional, it just happened to be behind the target stand. Just after lunch on Sunday, it gave up the fight and slowly fell over. It was pretty darned funny at the time :)
 
I cut down a decent size pine in the Osceola Forest with an SKS and wolf HPs. Only took about 25 shots.
 
A good friend of mine took his .30-06 and took the top out of a LARGE ice covered pine tree that was threatning to fall on his house one winter(It was starting to bow over his house). 2 well placed shots and the top snapped out of the tree and it popped right back upright!
 
The rifle range at MCB Camp Lejeune, NC, is situated in a pine forest. There is no impact berm and rounds simply stop amongst the trees. All of the trees for several hundred yards beyond the target line have been cut off by the decades of continuous small-arms fire, essentially giving the forest a "flat top" look.
 
An old bee-keeper friend of mine used to shoot off tree limbs containing swarms of honey bees with a full choke Model 12 Winchester & trap loads.
Usually One shot = One kill!

My dad had pictures from WWII when he was in the Philippines islands right after the invasion. There was not one tree left standing anywhere on the island he landed on.
Nothing left but stumps as far as you could see in any of the pictures.

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rcmodel
 
We took down an old stump on my Grandfather's farm with .22LR fire when I was a kid. Not exactly trying to, it just happened to be what we always shot at. It went from about 6 ft high and 2 feet in diameter to pretty much a foot or so high. Best thing we had for a reactive target.:D It was blown away in chunks over time and untold thousands of rounds. Fun times.
 
did not see the mythbusters, but...

on weaponology there was a crew from england that used a wwII machine gun in 7.62 to cut down a tree with about 3 hundred rounds, and the tree was about 2 foot or larger round.

the tree was leaning so it would fall, and they marked a white line so they had an aiming point. the gunner was a trained machine gun shooter from the service.

if they knew what they were doing. they could have done that in a lot less time and with a lot less rounds.

sorry if this had been mentioned. I did not read the entire post.
 
Caught that one too and it was cool.
Mythbusters does a lot with guns though.
Just off the top of my head, there was the episode where they used the cannon to fire improvised loads at a pig, the one with the civil war reenactors shooting muskets, the one where they used the 12 gauge slug to punch a hole in a truck tire to see if it would kill a bystander on a motorcycle, and the one where they tried to shoot through floor with a subgun.

I like it for more than just the shooting but it's still cool to see a show where guns aren't an off limits item.
 
You can cut down a pretty good sized tree with 3" magnum slugs PDQ.
shot placement is key. you want the weight of the tree to assist in pulling it over.

What I'd really like to see is the effect of a direct hit from a small cannon on a good sized tree trunk. heh, heh, heh.

I had the chance to fire a flamethrower at a tree once (in another country). But then I looked up and noticed that there were nests up there.. and I figured I could light something else up just as good that wasn't somebody's home. It would have been quite a sight, thought, I"m sure... the tree was already full of old sap and more than a little dry. Tall, too at about 50ft.
 
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