I had an interesting ricochet today. I was firing my R55 at 25 yards from the bench, at a target pegged to a frame at 25 yards. Ammunition was RWS Target Rifle, target was just a paper card pegged with wood pegs to a corrugated plastic backing. Here's the range with the frame removed, and the impact point of the rounds arrowed:
It was all going well, I was firing a 500 round brick and was down to the last 100 rounds. After the last round in one magazine there was a 3 second pause then I heard what I thought was a stone landing on the tin roof. I've had this happen twice before and I always thought it was kids throwing pebbles from the adjoining field (there is a football pitch alongside).
However on this occasion the "stone" rolled down the roof and fell to the ground in front of the firing line. I picked it up and it was a deformed .22, still warm from being fired. The round matches the ammo I was using. This is it:
When I went down to the berm I saw a loose stone in there. The round must have hit the stone, deflected up into the breeze blocks, then bounced a high arc back down the 25 yard range to the tin roof. Here's a view from the berm back to the firing point:
So I lifted the camera up and photographed the roof and found two other rounds that couldn't roll down because of their shape:
Quite an eye-opener, I wouldn't have thought the rounds could ricochet back that far from a brick wall, although it is obvious these impacted the wall from an angle. None of my rounds hit the wall directly, so these have skated off loose stones.
Seems they need to sift that berm a bit better...
It was all going well, I was firing a 500 round brick and was down to the last 100 rounds. After the last round in one magazine there was a 3 second pause then I heard what I thought was a stone landing on the tin roof. I've had this happen twice before and I always thought it was kids throwing pebbles from the adjoining field (there is a football pitch alongside).
However on this occasion the "stone" rolled down the roof and fell to the ground in front of the firing line. I picked it up and it was a deformed .22, still warm from being fired. The round matches the ammo I was using. This is it:
When I went down to the berm I saw a loose stone in there. The round must have hit the stone, deflected up into the breeze blocks, then bounced a high arc back down the 25 yard range to the tin roof. Here's a view from the berm back to the firing point:
So I lifted the camera up and photographed the roof and found two other rounds that couldn't roll down because of their shape:
Quite an eye-opener, I wouldn't have thought the rounds could ricochet back that far from a brick wall, although it is obvious these impacted the wall from an angle. None of my rounds hit the wall directly, so these have skated off loose stones.
Seems they need to sift that berm a bit better...