bullets bouncing back to hit shooter?

sometimes i am concerned shooting a .22 at something solid at close range.

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"sometines"?????? I would be worried about it for each shot.

I suspect you will receive many responses verifying this can happen.

My own experience with steel at 15 yards on an active target, with a .22LR from a handgun is that you can get hit--I had a scratch on my forearm, enough to bleed--and I saw another guy get a nice little slice on his cheek. Functionally, this was a splinter, or shrapnel, not a full-weight, deformed bullet.

It didn't change the range rules, however, as we all agreed it was quite unusual.

Sigh...

Under 10 yards or so, if you're shooting dead-on, you may get crap flying back at you. I've seen people get er-visit type wounds like that. Generally it's jacket material - sharp shrapnel-type wounds.

At 100 yards? Not too darn likely.

And at 25 yards, you probably won't have to worry about the .22 or 9mm. But it _is_ a reason why we should always wear safety glasses.

I shoot thousands of pistol rounds per year at a gong target 25 yards away. I shoot 95% lead. There is absolutely no risk of an intact bullet bounding off the thing. The faster the bullet is driven the more completely it fragments. However, pieces, the thickness of tin foil, will rocket up, get caught in the wind, and tinkle on the roof, or touch people. Bigger pieces, the size of nickels, most will fall within three feet, a few pieces out to ten feet of the target. Depends on the angle of the plate when hit.

As for shooting something with an AK. You will find that rifle bullets tear stuff up. Your piece of steel will soon have as many holes as a cheese grater. I find that lead bullets fired out of rifles will pot mark my steel gong targets.

Like some indoor ranges

Angle the steel so that it deflects the bullets into the ground.

I have been hit by rebound from steel 25 yards away. GOOD eye protection is absolutely necessary.

This one time I drove back into the old WWII .50 cal. ranges at FLW. I had the place to my self and could shoot all day and not be bothered. I set up my own rifle and pistol range. I would set up clay pigeons on the berm and shoot at them with my combat commander. One time I was shooting at about 15 yards and had a bullet bounce back and hit me in the leg. It hurt but didn't penetrate my jeans. I had a nice welt for a few days. I still have the bullet.

This summer my buddy and I were shooting his .41 and my .357 up on his mountain property in OR and picked up some bullets that bounce back about 5 yards or so.

The important thing is to get a piece of steel that is rifle rated, not just a "great piece". Any steel that craters and pocks is going to return fire at you. I have seen a rifle bullet make it back to the firing line from 100 yards because the steel was cratered. Same thing shooting non-flat objects like wheel rims. With good steel I could care less the distance, ten yards is the USPSA safe distance but I would have no problem shooting closer. With hardcast lead or JHP you may catch a sliver, wear eye protection and toughen up, it's a mere flesh wound.

Years ago, I was using a pile of brush as a backstop. .22lr solid lead bullet bounced back and hit me square in the big toe. Hurt like hell but didn't penetrate the heavy boot I was wearing.

In cowboy action shooting we're touching off lightly loaded, soft lead rounds at between 7-20 yards. I have had a .45 bullet from an SAA pistol spang off a 7 yard target, arc up, and land right in my front shirt pocket like I was performing a magic trick. A little warm but no injury and I kept the perfectly mushroomed round as a souvenir.

I have also had a chunk of .357 "cowboy" round from a rifle splash back from 15 yards hard enough to give me a tiny little nick on the jawline.

I'd say shoot all lead .22 and keep back a ways. Quality eye protection is, of course, a must have.

I wouldn't worry at 100 yards but...

at 25 yards or less, maybe even further than that, it is a definite problem. I have been shooting Cowboy action for the past 5 years and splatter is a real problem. There are ways of mitigating this problem, like angling the steel downward so as to deflect the bullet into the ground. The more a steel plate is shot the more likely splatter is to occur. The steel becomes dished and pock marked increasing the chances of ricochet. If you plan on shooting steel on a regular basis, your best bet is to use armor plate. It is much harder than regular steel and does not tend to dish and dent.

I shot at a brick wall too close once, 9mm out of a SMG in full auto.
I was about 10 yards away from the wall or less. I let go a 4 or 5 round burst and they came right back at me, 124gr FMJ projectiles. The flattened projectiles hit me with very little strength, no bruises or cuts, didn’t even damage my clothes. Ricochet is worse when you hit concrete or metallic surfaces, but plaster and brick absorbs much of the energy.

FerFAL

I'll tell you what NOT to do :

In the bad old days a quarter century ago we had an improvised shoot house in an old adobe with 3 foot thick walls and a couple 3 small rooms. No window glass was left in the chest high openings and an old table and couple chairs were the furnishings. I had been to shoot houses in the 70,s and discovered Dr. Pepper's 'Poppers in the late 70's. So we put a couple poppers I had made from armor plate (they worked great for 20 years) on the chairs ect. A guy would barge into the rooms and we would time how long to knock over the poppers. It worked OK (we were lucky) with pistols (.45s mostly) and bird shot, only some stinging and we wore plexi face masks and leather coats. One fatefull New Years Day we had some doctors and nurses out for a Bar-B-Que and they wanted to 'see' the shoot house. Of course I had my badist a** gun to show off, an HK 93 .223 with 50 round mags and I must admit I had a few rounds under MY belt
Well I'm sure you can see where this is going, after clearing the house some good doctor, laughing his butt off, used forceps to pull out the inch plus deep 5.56 frags out of my upper thigh, with Vodka as the only antiseptic/anastetic!
After that we used old department store manikins until we shot the house down and it collapsed in the rains in 96 or so!

I have a couple of stories about bullets bouncing back. Neither are real specific to your question but they go to show that bullets can do strange things.

I was once shooting with friends into a hard packed dirt backstop. I was standing behind one friend who was shooting a .44 magnum. I had my back turned facing the other way. I heard the shot and felt a tap on my shoulder. When I turned she was still 10 feet away aiming for the next shot. There on the ground at my feet was a warm .44 slug. Strange but true.

The other story happened when I was young and stupid. Someone had given me some old WWII armor piercing 30-06 ammo. Typical teenage boy thought "let's see how much armor it will pierce". So I found several pieces of 1/2" steel from the scrap pile in front of the machine shed on the farm, set them up against a dirt bank behind the barn, stepped back 40 or 50 feet, and fired one shot through my old Remington.

I now know that the old military 30-06 armor piercing bullets have a soft copper jacket over an extremely hard tool steel or tungsten carbide core. When the bullet strikes steel, the jacket sheers off like a banana peel while the core can penetrate over one inch of steel. I found out the hard way that that jacket can easily bounce back 40 or 50 feet, hit you right square between the eyes, and leave a scar that is still visible many years later.

To this day I am still quite careful when it comes to shooting at anything like steel or rock.

I've been hit in the boot tip with what I assume to be a piece of jacket from a 7.62x39mm before. It wasn't fast enough to stick, but I felt a thud. We were shooting at a dirt berm out in the middle of nowhere and I would assume there was a big, flat rock embedded in it at the proper angle that some of the splashed material made it's way back to us.

I guess you never really know what kind of large rocks or whatnot might lurk behind big piles of dirt.

Can shrapnel and metal from rounds fired down range come back to haunt you? You bet they can. The attached images show films of one of my patients. He had been out in the local desert shooting 7.62 Nato from a semi auto HK type rifle. The hills used as backstops here are loaded with rock, much of it can contain ores of various types. One of the rounds he fired struck a rock, the round disintigrated with enough force to send a small piece of shrapnel back at him with enough velocity to penetrate his jeans, skin and to lodge in the muscle just above his knee. So remember, be careful while shooting and especially use eye protection. The injury this young man sustained to his leg is painful but he will recover fully with a bit of time. The same thing striking an eye can cause blindness.

Sorry, the images are too large for the forum too allow. I will try and edit them and post them later.

Shooting at the water trough with my pellet gun, I got a rocochet. The pellet hit me in the cheek but didn't hurt too much. Another time shooting a BB at something, maybe the same trough, hit me in the shoulder, didn't hurt much because it was a red rider. The first one was at like 20 yds and the other at point blank.

As promised....

bounced a 22 short off a target , out of a snub pistol, didn't know what I was seeing, thought it was a fly, turns out 3 rounds had bounced back past my head!!!

How common is it?

I have fired more than 50,000 rounds of ammunition, so far.

I have been hit with ONE riccochet, from the guy in the lane next to me.

I was nailed in the forearm with about 200 grains of rebounding, mangled .45acp, which felt more or less like being hit with a paintball gun at 10 feet, and left a welt.

I finished my string of fire, found the still hot bullet at my feet, juggled it in my hands till it cooled, and pocketed it.

30/06 AP

Was standing near a friend while he shot a sporterized Johnson rifle at a block of steel.
He ended up with a scalp wound, I had a piece of bullet jacket two knuckles deep in my chest.
We were about 15 yards away from the target.
Stuff happens.

I've got 2 scars from 30/30 shrapnel from 20 or so yards, so yes, it happens if you suffer from momentary stupidity.

Dan

At a local, active bowling pin range. One shooter had a .22 bounce off the pin sail in over his glasses and frog his eyeball pretty good. Fairly long recovery and I don't know if it did permanent damage or not. Same range, a .45 hit a pin at 25 feet, bounced back past the shooter and shattered a shatter resistantant rearview truck mirror 45 feet away. Ive also seen bowling pin flybacks at an indoor range.

Any hard object, shot up close can cause big time problems. decades ago, we poured molten lead into an iron container. real smart move since it was too big to get back in the furnace and the pot wasn't good for remelting either. It layed around for a while and one of the guys took it to the gravel pits and started whanging at it with his 45 from less than 20 feet away. He said down. He produced a 1,000-yard stare. Then a big red knot rose out of his forehead centered a couple of inches above his eyeballs. Same guy was trying to cut a steel plate in two with 30-06 steel core aps. Jacket fragged and came straight back blowing his glasses apart at the nose piece and putting several deep razor cuts right between his eyebrows.

A thing not to shoot at is a wheel rim. The semi-circular shape of it will allow a lead bullet to curve around and come more or less straight back at you at speed.