Is shooting up into the air safe?
Adam made me wonder, but if you’re taking a shot at a crow in a tree and you’re pointing at like a 60 degree angle, would that bullet be dangerous while it’s falling? 🙄
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That’s not the way it works here for sure. In a nearby town there’s an Army base that’s been there since ‘before the war’ (in fact local troups in the SF bay area left for the buildup for Normandy from there….) that is now closed to all shooting due to a single round ending up in a residential area.
Likewise, clubs that cannot control their shotfall have been shut down. As for hitting a roadway, rattle a little shot off someone’s car and see what happens next…..
While your dismissive attitude WRT random pellets falling may cover you, I bet your neighbor makes an issue of the pellet you shoot that ends up in his yard. In the end it’s not the attitude of the shooter that matters, right? Firing a pellet that comes down on someone else’s property is not only illegal and IMO irresponsible, but as I have said hurts the sport. The likelyhood of other shooters suffereing the backlash is very real.
IMO it’s dangerous to do, even if nobody is hit. And no matter how minor the energy involved.
Doug Owen
You are indeed an expeptional fellow then, most folks over here would object. Do you think other folks in the UK are OK with being shot this way?
Doug Owen
Well, I wouldnt say I was “expeptional”.
If “I” were to shoot straight up in the air as was the example for this case and get hit by my own pellet, then no I wouldn’t beat myself up over it….
shotgun pellelts are tiny
size, diam in inch, weight in grains
12 .05 .18
11 .06 .25
9 .08 .75
8 1/2 .085 .88
8 .09 1.0
7 1/2 .095 1.25
6 .11 1.95
5 .12 2.58
4 .13 3.24
2 .15 4.86
BB .18 8.75
You are indeed an expeptional fellow then, most folks over here would object. Do you think other folks in the UK are OK with being shot this way?
Doug Owen
I wouldn’t give a toss personally, but I wouldn’t be too happy about one of my kids getting one in the eye.
Do you think farmers give a toss about where their shotgun pellets end up? They come down on roads and residential areas in the UK every day, never heard of an injury or complaint due to it yet. Ditto airgun pellets.
You are indeed an expeptional fellow then, most folks over here would object. Do you think other folks in the UK are OK with being shot this way?
Doug Owen
I wouldnt want a FMJ centerfire round landing on my head at terminal velocity – but I think I’d cope with a 16gr (or better yet 7gr) diablo pellet.
Small world. In a mispent youth we played a similar game with our ‘Ben Pearson’ bows, shooting (wood) arrows straight up (and slightly into the wind) in open fields. Only we didn’t have a barrel, so we’d run downrange (over rough ground sometimes) to get to the impact point in time to throw our bows down, the goal being to have the arrow land between bow and string (not into one of us….).
We were younger then, as I recall everyone survived. Although I did get a nasty nick in the limb of my bow from a near miss.
Hatcher, in his highly recommended ‘Hatcher’s Notebook’ discussed just this idea in the chapter ‘Bullets From the Sky’. He did calculations for the service rifle ball round, then a series of tests to confirm it. 60 seconds or so round trip (about 20 up, 40 down) with a return energy about half the 30 fpe the military considers a ‘incapacitating injury’ worst case. The fun bit is he found out ‘after the war’ that the Brits, Germans and Japanese had done the same calculations for their service ammo.
Years ago I got interested in this. I asked my insurance agent how many car winshields he’d replaced due to sky shots on New Years and Fourth of July. He never had. Then again, he’d only been selling insurance in Oakland for 35 years. So he asked the other 7 agents in the office. Nobody had. 20 or so years back a guy posted on rec.guns about a roofer friend that found a .30-06 bullet stuck in the tar on a roof near Kent State, apparently from a guard cartridge (1800 fps) from a Nation Guard m1 firsed into the air during the riots.
Even though probably not lethal, it is still dangerous and irresponsible to let one loose where you don’t know where it’s coming down. If one of your pellets shows up in the neighbors pool it’s not going to be good for the sport. Rule number 3, ‘be sure of your target, and what’s beyond’.
Doug Owen
During the Mythbusters sessions, the projectiles they found that they fired straight up (90°) all fell at terminal velocity and penetrated about 1.5″ into the desert floor.
I would think if that hit you on the top of the head it would be more than painful.
I shot arrows into the sky as a kid, and had one come down through my Dads garage roof. Just a simple aluminum shaft arrow with a 35# draw strength bow.
We were trying to have an arrow land in a barrel out in the pasture. I guess I didn’t shoot straight up enough LOL.
Like “love my talon SS” said.. if you shoot STRAIGHT up… the pellet will just be falling under acceleration due to gravity….. be the same as if someone dropped it from a decent height.
If its still on the arc of a ballistic trajectory… then it could be lethal depending tons of different factors.
So the best method of making sure your safe is to make sure you always know where that pellet will go which will be into a good backstop if it misses or passes through your intended target.
It’s a 1 in a million chance. But you really don’t want to be that one.
I’ll add to that.
KNOW YOUR BACKSTOP.
if the pellet will fall in a forest, NBD; if it will fall in a residential neighborhood………kids at play, car windows, etc. not a good idea.
It’s one of those things where it isn’t powerful enough if it hits you in say, the leg, to do any real damage. It’ll hurt, and might break the skin, but won’t blow your leg off. But if it hit you in the eye or punctured a big artery or something, you could be killed.
It’s a 1 in a million chance. But you really don’t want to be that one.
It said 30 fpe when it came down….thats like being shot by a Theoben Eliminator…not fun
http://www.loadammo.com/Topics/March01.htm
A 30 cal bullet would barely even have a chance of being lethal much less a pellet.
A boy with a 22 long rifle setting on top of a barn shooting at birds killed a woman 2 miles away with a bullet in her neck. A 50 foot bullet drop not counting the angle he was shooting.
The police collected all the rifles in the area for balistics testing before anyone knew how it happened.
Know your back stop.
Dave
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I think your mistaking what I believe to be true for actual practice…. I’ll refer you to an earlier comment I made –
I could off course make up some horror story about the world collapsing in on itself if anyone dare shoot an airgun straight into the air if that would please you.