Hunting House » Hunting Equipment » heavy hunting bullet explodes in mid air
heavy hunting bullet explodes in mid air
Question:
Well almost anyway, let me explain In my 7mm08 yesterday, I went to check the scope settings,, I placed a card board box of the far side of my little 1/4 acre pond, I put it next to the water, so the bank of the pond, would be my back stop. I got back a 100 yds, and shot the box. Ok I did a stupid thing,, we all have little lapses,, mine was using the wrong cross hair on this scope,, all of my other range finding scopes have the range cross , below the actual target cross,, but not in this scope,, the range cross, is above the target cross,, so I aimed with the top,, and the wrong cross, on this first shot, the bullet hit the water first, instead of the box. I saw it hit right in the center of the pond, then the box blew up. I went to check the box,, and found a hole bigger than my fist, the card board was covered with "gray" lead residue all over the hole area, the bullet was in fragments,, or even a lead dust cloud, before it hit the box. I was shooting a 139 grain 7mm Hornady BTSP at 2925 FPS. Some way, hitting the water at such a slight angle, the jacket must have been stripped from the lead. or the bullet exploded due to the rapid tumbling caused by the bullet hitting the water. I just can’t believe it happened. Has anyone ever encountered such a failure, with this style bullet? is it even feasible?, what else could have caused the destruction of the box this way? — Rodney Long, Inventor of the "EZ Knot," http://ezknot.com/ Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Response:
Sounds about right! What would you expect a bullet to do when it hits something as hard as water at 2900+ fps? Ken.
…snip… > Has anyone ever encountered such a failure, with this style bullet? is > it even feasible?, what else could have caused the destruction of the > box this way?
– "You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do." – Olin Miller Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Response:
> Sounds about right! > What would you expect a bullet to do when it hits > something as hard as water at 2900+ fps? > Ken.
I thought it would ricochet, bounce. skip, tumble, and at least stay together, it hit the water at much less than 1 degree angle, a bowling ball will bounce at that angle — Rodney Long, Inventor of the "EZ Knot," http://ezknot.com/ Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Response:
I wouldn’t call it a failure with the bullet! When something traveling 29 hundred feet per second hits something as hard as water it tends to explode on contact. Kind of like the same reason airplanes don’t do so well when they hit the water. They don’t really ricochet off the water and take back to the air like nothing happened. Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Response:
> I wouldn’t call it a failure with the bullet! When something traveling > 29 hundred feet per second hits something as hard as water it tends to > explode on contact. Kind of like the same reason airplanes don’t do > so well when they hit the water. They don’t really ricochet off the > water and take back to the air like nothing happened.
Wait a minute… isn’t a body (deer, elk, etc.) about 98% water? And don’t we shoot deer & elk at angles which vary from 45 to 90 degrees? And don’t we also expect a "heavy hunting bullet" to mushroom and penetrate when it hits a deer or elk? Well, I would expect a bullet, unless it is designed with a very thin jacket, to hold together and ricochet, not come apart (I don’t like the word "explode" since that’s not really what its doing). An airplane, on the other hand, is designed to land on it’s landing gear, not on it’s nose. When it doesn’t land on it’s gear, it tends to behave badly regardless of the surface on which it lands. Just my opinion, you understand! Roy D. Sacramento Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Response:
>I wouldn’t call it a failure with the bullet! When something traveling >29 hundred feet per second hits something as hard as water it tends to >explode on contact. Kind of like the same reason airplanes don’t do >so well when they hit the water. They don’t really ricochet off the >water and take back to the air like nothing happened.
Couldn’t resist. You know if the made the whole dam plane out of the stuff they make the black boxes out of, it would be a whole different story 
Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Response:
The bullet performance was perfect. It could have skipped off the water and impacted four miles away. I’m not sure your scope crosshairs are the problem, it could be the nut behind the buttplate. Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Response:
> The bullet performance was perfect. It could have skipped off the > water and impacted four miles away. I’m not sure your scope crosshairs > are the problem, it could be the nut behind the buttplate.
I wasn’t paying attention when I approved this post. If I had, I wouldn’t have approved it…. — + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Chris Barnes AOL IM: CNBarnes Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Response:
> >I wouldn’t call it a failure with the bullet! When something traveling >29 hundred feet per second hits something as hard as water it tends to >explode on contact. Kind of like the same reason airplanes don’t do >so well when they hit the water. They don’t really ricochet off the >water and take back to the air like nothing happened. > Couldn’t resist. You know if the made the whole dam plane out of the > stuff they make the black boxes out of, it would be a whole different > story
There wouldn’t be any room for "payload"…. Paying passengers, freight, crew, etc…. The "black boxes" are substantially filled with something resembling epoxy, or Bondo, or ???? to protect the recording equipment. -jc- Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Response:
> >I wouldn’t call it a failure with the bullet! When something traveling >29 hundred feet per second hits something as hard as water it tends to >explode on contact. Kind of like the same reason airplanes don’t do >so well when they hit the water. They don’t really ricochet off the >water and take back to the air like nothing happened. > Couldn’t resist. You know if the made the whole dam plane out of the > stuff they make the black boxes out of, it would be a whole different > story
Yeap, they would have an intact airplane full of mushy dead people. Think of scrabbling an egg without breaking the shell. Any volunteers to clean it up? — Jim carry on Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Response:
> Couldn’t resist. You know if the made the whole dam plane out of the > stuff they make the black boxes out of, it would be a whole different > story
I have always thought the same of matchbox cars. How great it would be to crash them around and never do damage other than paint to our real cars eh? Course I imagine we would have to have bodies as strong as action figures to live to see this though eh? Chris Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/
Response:
> > I wouldn’t call it a failure with the bullet! When something traveling > 29 hundred feet per second hits something as hard as water it tends to > explode on contact
I tend to agree with the bullet failure guys. But I wanted to throw another number into the mix that may open some eyes. We all think of the tremendous speed and how that affects things such as these. The bullet does begin to come apart on contact with the animal. Because of the speed it is soon inside the body that tends to hold the bullet together since it is a lot denser than air. The number I was refering to is RPM. A bullet at 2900 fps that left a 1 in 12 twist barrel is spinning at 174,000 RPM. Quite a gyroscope! No wonder it tends to stay in a straight path. Spinning at such a high speed only takes a bit of external energy to make it an unstable mass. Centfigal forces will take over. Visit the rec.hunting and rec.hunting.dogs FAQ Home Page at: http://sportsmansweb.com/hunting/