Is this real?

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Nate1778

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Saw this a ways back, but I always wander if it was real. It would seem shooting a steel plate would make the bullet disintegrate, not bounce directly back at the guy. How is this possible. I can understand it bouncing off and heading in a different direction, but back at him. Can someone explain this to me and how the bullet survives the initial impact.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ABGIJwiGBc
 
I have no explanation but it has been posted before and appears to be true. A search should pull up a previous thread with the answer for you.
 
I have often wondered if whatever he hit exploded from impact an shrapnel is what actually came back at him. what ever it is you can see it hit the ground right in front of him before it gets to him.

I don't really think the video is fake but I do question whether or not the projectile is what came back after him. Either way he is fortunate.
 
If it is - that'd be some serious pucker factor.

From the citation -- 6/27/2007
6-27-07: BOOM HEADSHOT! This is amazing. Willie, the father of Tina, who made the sandbag rests fires a .50BMG, an Armalite AR-50 and it ricochets off of a steel plate that it should have easily penetrated. The bullet comes straight back and hits him in the head. You can see it hit the dirt about 15 feet in front on him before it clobbers him. Luckily he was uninjured. He's a bit sore today, but otherwise fine. Lucky lucky bastard. He has been advised to buy lottery tickets while he still has so much luck. I don't know about the timing, but you can hear the hit on the steel plate. Time that till the impact on Willie's head... how fast is that 750 grain slug traveling? The range is 100 yards. Amazing.
Click to expand...

-TK
 
Try shooting a little steel and you'll find out it's real enough.

Yes, rounds ricochet. They ricochet especially well off of hard surfaces like steel and sometimes they'll ricochet right back at you.

That's just another reason to wear safety glasses.
 
About 10 years ago, I had a .357 Magnum bullet, fired from a lever action Marlin rifle fracture upon impacting an old (probably 100 years or older) Bois D'Arc fence post and come straight back to me and hit me below the left eye. Fortunately, I was not injured, but I came away from the experience with two pieces of information:

1. Bois D'Arc wood is hard (it's in the Ebony family)
2. When you shoot at something very hard, there's at least some chance of a ricochet or bullet fragment coming back at you.

YMMV,


-Matt
 
You'd be amazed at how far chunks of lead bullets can fly after hitting a steel plate,jacketed bullets I"m sure are even more dangerous.Shooting streel is not as safe as ya might think.
 
I understand that bullets can ricochet, but its the sudden stop and reverse direction that gets me. I understand if it were a rubber ball, like what my kids play with, but its not, its a bullet traveling at what 2200 ft per second? Just seams crazy to me, deifying physics if you will, but sounds like it happens more than one would think.

My other question is, if it is possible and it does happen, why do Cowbay shooters and others use steel targets?
 
I always thought that a lead round would flatten and/or fragment more so than a steel core rd. I would asume that there is a bigger ricochet threat from steel vs. lead ammo.

Can anyone confirm or deny this? Not saying its true, just my assumption.

That said, I always thought shooting at a steel plate that was 90 degrees to the ground was a bad idea.

And to original question, yes, I have no reason to believe the vid is fake. Also I dont know what came back and hit the guy, but I think it is more likely the bullet than a target fragment. Seems to me whatever hit him was fairly aerodynamic judging by the initial ground impact and where it ended up.
 
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It's real; I've seen this guy interviewed. The round knocked of his ear protection & grazed his ear, leaving a pretty serious gash. If it had been .5 inch to the right, he would have been DRT. This was a long shot as well; like 600 yrds if I remember right.
 
The guy in that video is actually a member here, Head Shot Willie. Looks like he's inactive, but I can remember when that video first popped up here.

And as I recall, the plate wasn't facing him flat. It was angled facing the ground, and angled off to the right, which makes the ricochet even more bizarre.
 
Elasticity Of Steel

Experiment for the day: go get a ball bearing, take it out on a hard surface that has next to no give in it (concrete is pretty good), and drop the ball bearing. Dropping it on a steel plate is even better.

It will bounce.

Steel can and does flex. Remember springs?

If you hit it hard enough, you can bend it, break it, or make a hole through it. If you hit it hard, but not hard enough to bend/break/penetrate, then what you're left with is the flex-return snap of the steel (kinda like a spring).

Get it just right, and you can get a high velocity projectile to bounce back whence it came, and sometimes with real authority.

 
I understand that bullets can ricochet, but its the sudden stop and reverse direction that gets me. I understand if it were a rubber ball, like what my kids play with, but its not, its a bullet traveling at what 2200 ft per second? Just seams crazy to me, deifying physics if you will, but sounds like it happens more than one would think.
Click to expand...

Taking this to a very large scale, look at meteor/asteroid impacts here on earth (or any other easily viewable celestial body, like the moon). What you see is not a hole, or giant divot, but rather a giant divot with a "hill" in the middle. That hill is actually earth that has "bounced back" immediately following the impact. And were not just talking steel, were talking iron ore along with every other ore and lots of solid rock that is elastic like this.

My other question is, if it is possible and it does happen, why do Cowbay shooters and others use steel targets?
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My understanding is that CAS is limited to lead only, no jacketed, semi-jacketed or gas-checked bullets allowed.
 
For a .50 BMG round--any non-cast .50 BMG round--I'd personally say that you would need one heck of a steel plate to cause a straight-back ricochet. Like, bordering on ship armor.

What I'm inclined to think happened is that 1) he destroyed something or flipped the plate and it's debris returning or 2) the round bounced down, hit the ground, and then returned. Wouldn't surprise me if it had hit the ground, bounced up at a high angle, and then came at him at a more level angle from the impact you can see there. Tumbling bullets are horribly unpredictable things. Ever watch a fumbled football?
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jim in Anchorage
The fake"ricochet" sound effects are probably a good give away. Sounds like a pop bottle rocket.

The video is real, as far as I'm aware.
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Some people refuse to believe that anything on the 'net is real, unless it's something they did themselves. EVERYTHING they see has been faked or Photoshopped, and the first thing they'll do is run to Snopes to disprove it.
 
My very first CAS shoot included a ricochet using soft lead 45 Colt rounds that somehow came straight back and opened a 1/2" gash in my right eyebrow.

3 stitches and a new CAS nickname later I've learned a good lesson. Put the odds in your favor, but fully expect Murphy to appear.
 
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