Had a bounce back today, some assclown shot up our clubs pistol plates with a high powered rifle. I love shooting steel, and will continue to do so......but, I'll always have a 9mm souviner with me. The bullet stayed shallow, came to a stop after about 3" just beside my left knee
Double check your plate racks before you start shooting, I sure wish I had!
10 yds ? No sympathy from me ! 25 yds minimum for handgun and the plates should be angled 45* so the bullet is deflected down or at least swinging to absorb the energy.
Falling plates DO absorb the energy....unless there is a crater, that turns the bullet, before the plate falls...
I'm not going to argue what distance is safe to shoot reactive targets, the reason for my post was to give everyone a heads up about checking your targets. Two weeks ago, they were fine, this morning they were not.
10 yards is the accepted minimum safe distance for shooting steel.
It's pretty rare to get hit with a ricochet off steel that has enough power to break the skin. I have been hit twice. Both times were due to poorly designed targets that had a plate on the bottom that sent fragments straight back at the shooter. Never had any problems with USPSA or steel challenge targets.
Oh, and I also question that your targets were shot by a high power rifle. Most rifle rounds .223 and up will punch a hole right through 1/4" steel. I've cratered steel with hot 44 magnum loads though.
I use AR 500 steel plates, I have a few. They will not dimple, splash, etc. I have shot them with everything from 30-06 fmj, 6.5-284, to 220 swift not even a dimple. Good stuff for sure. I have had a few bullets whiz past me when shooting old cratered mild steel plates also...not fun. Here is a link.
Generally I get hit at least 1 time a week at a cowboy shoot with splatter. Can vary from something landing on you to drawing blood. I always wear glasses, like ones with sideshields and try to stand back a bit farther off the line when not shooting.
Posts: 5713 | Location: Ohio | Registered: 02 April 2003
In my ignorant youth (I am now in my ignorant old age), I shot 22 at the internal surface of a metal shell of an old TV screen (the glass was gone). Bad idea; ricochets all around me.....
The art of this is pretty well established after millions of rounds of IPSC, Steel Challenge etc. Plates must be hard AR500 or AR550 so that they will not dimple (If you dimple it, it becomes a 100 YD plus target), hung perpendicule to the shooting line (angles will give much more splash as more intact projectile fragments bounce off the ground, mounting posts etc) and hung with hardware that does not impede the 360 degree radial splash of the bullet fragments. As someone pointed out above the old knock over plates mounted on a base were notorious for this. MGM or Action Targets can fix you up with the right stuff. I have a bunch of it on my home range and have had no splash incidents after >50k rounds
Posts: 572 | Location: Escaped to Montana | Registered: 01 March 2004
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