Shooting horizontally to water - ricochet hazard?

[SHIVAN]

I always see people shooting horizontally to water, as a "backstop", or bullet trap. You see it in a lot of 3rd world countries with videos online, as well as a lot of back country shooting videos.

My questions are:

Are the bullets really trapped/stopped in the water? Or are they hydroplaning off the surface and going God knows where? If they are trapped in the water, is there a potential for lead contamination in the short term, or would this only be a long term concern with high volume?

[Gutshot John]

When you say "horizontally" do you have a particular angle?

I've shot at water and have seen richochets off into the backstop behind it. That there was a second backstop was the only reason I would do it.

In terms of lead contamination, the potential would depend on the velocity of the bullet.

The higher velocity will cause fragmentation in water which will increase that potential. Lower velocity projectiles FMJ projectiles should remain mostly intact.

Mythbusters - Bullet Proof Water

[SHIVAN]

When you say "horizontally" do you have a particular angle?

Essentially anything where you are at or close to the level of the water. Not downward as if elevated from a treestand, hill, etc.

[Gutshot John]

Essentially anything where you are at or close to the level of the water. Not downward as if elevated from a treestand, hill, etc.

When I was shooting I was probably at no more than a 20 degree downward angle into the water and there was still pretty noticeable ricochet.

[mr_smiles]

Shoot at a water bottle, shit comes back at you

[Crow Hunter]

In my experience the chance of ricochet depends alot on the speed of the bullet/bullet construction.

Growing up we used to do alot of .22 lr shooting off of bridges around home. .22 lr is very bad about "skipping" on water. Unless you were on a pretty steep angle you would often see a skip. My brother and I used to compete to see how many we could skip into the rail embankment across the swamp.

I currently have a large pond (about 3 acres) behind the house and have been at war with muskrats all year (I am up to 9)and I have been using a mixture of .22 mag 40gr HP and .223 50gr hp and I have not had a ricochet firing at between 15 and 30 degrees downward angle depending on the range to the target. (Between 75 and 150 yards)

[FromMyColdDeadHand]

I just got the Art of the Tactical Shotgun and I remembered your post. I thought for a second that you were commenting about them.

[SHIVAN]

I just got the Art of the Tactical Shotgun and I remembered your post. I thought for a second that you were commenting about them.

I honestly haven't seen anything from that vid except the trailer and the outtakes. I can assure you that they weren't even in my mind when I posted this, and do not recall them shooting at, or near water.

Even if they did, I would presume there was most likely an adequate backstop behind the water source knowing how thorough Chris and Travis are at shooting.


ETA: See it now...they most likely had a backstop beyond the tree line after the pond. I'm more talking about people shooting DIRECTLY in to water, on purpose.

[Mac5.56]

I was always raised with this being a no-no based off of one of my father's group (could have been him) having a ricochet with a large caliber. Never really thought to test it, just figured it seemed logical considering that you can skip rocks across water ext.

[FromMyColdDeadHand]

There is a small pond behind the targets. Gives a nice way to see patterns. Use birdshot at the right angle and you've made a couple of hundred square feet an uncomfortable place to be. Might be hard to find a range in Louisiana that doens't have some water on it.