TFL Mythbusters: Jed Clampett ricochette shot

T

TXAZ

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Clearly there are safety issues... I just watched a Beverly Hillbillies episode where the Clampetts were shooting at flies about 100 yards away after bouncing off a large rock near the flies. If there were a TFL Mythbusting section, does anyone have any experience intentionally hitting a target (not the size of a barn, assume a deer sized one) after bouncing off some hard object?
 
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'Barking' squirrels is the closest thing I can think of. Put the bullet into the tree next to the squirrels head and let the bark that flies off kill it. Nope, never did it. Yep, know people who claim to have.
 
^Have also heard reports of this. Usually in the context of a rifle typically too powerful for squirrel, one can aim at the tree limb beneath them or beside them and the bark/wood shrapnel that comes off the tree is apparently capable of killing them.

Sort of skeptical about this, but i have seen high powered rifles rip trees apart, and had there been a squirrel beneath or beside some of these impacts it seems violent enough that it might do the job.
 
Myth Busters did do a segment some years ago on richchet shots.

I don't remember the exact context, but I seem to recall a .45 auto being involved.
 
I've done that with a muzzleloader and clay birds.

The club I used to shoot at had muzzleloader field competitions. They had a very nice walk-through course with reactive targets.

On field days, the last challenge was to split your roundball with the axe and break the clay birds.

It was TOUGH. IIRC, it was from about 15 yards.
 
Never barked a squirrel, but when we were younger I saw my brother kill several by aiming his Marlin 39A to barely crease the highest part of a squirrel's back. Cut a tiny slot, and the shock/damage to the critter's spinal cord killed it instantly, with zero meat damage. It wasn't a fluke--he aimed the shot.

The guy who did the balloon trick, a gunsmith and trick shot named Badlands Bill something-or-other, was one of the featured marksmen on a History Channel piece which I recall was called "Sharpshooters". He also did the ricochet shot off a steel plate, if I remember correctly--may have been one of the other featured shooters, but somebody did it.
 
Not a hard object, but ....

I have seen more than a few prairie dogs "launched" in my day ..... large centerfire rifle, light bullets at maximum velocity, and the bullet placed just under a p-dog......... or several of them clustered together. IIRC, my Uncle used a 300WinMag and plastic saboted "Expediters".....

I have shot p-dogs using Speer's .277 90 gr TNT HP and killed p-dogs that were next to the one I shot, with bullet and/or bone fragments..... or maybe it was just concussion ..... they were dead either way.
 
Could very well have been ...... but IIRC (that was 30+years ago), the plastic sabots were red ..... they were handloads ..... he also used FMJ loads to shoot through mounds when a p-dog was only showing it's head ....
 
I remember seeing a shooting show where the shooter was using ricochets to hit his targets by bouncing bullets off carefully placed steel plates. At the end he tried it with two revolvers, one in each hand, off of two angled steel plates, one on the left side, one on the right, and managed to get both bullets on target.
 
sure did with a bb gun

I was shooting a bb gun pistol when I was a younger and was skipping it off of a mud puddle. It was hitting a stop sign about 50 yards away. I could do it everytime once I found the "sweetspot".

Again with a 22, me and a buddy were skipping bullets off of a lake and hitting a 36"x36" piece of scrap metal at 150 yards.


Don't try this at home kids...
 
Never barked a squirrel, but when we were younger I saw my brother kill several by aiming his Marlin 39A to barely crease the highest part of a squirrel's back. Cut a tiny slot, and the shock/damage to the critter's spinal cord killed it instantly, with zero meat damage.
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I used to love squirrel hunting -- until I shot my first squirrel and had to eat it. :D For me, it was about tramping in the woods with a gun in hand.
 
Here is a true story of a ricochet bagging an antelope. It really happened.

I was using my S&W 626 Classic .44 mag while hunting Pronghorn. A nice buck was standing broadside at what I estimated to be about 40 yards. Using a rest, I squeezed, and watched the bullet hit a rock directly under the goats front legs. About 16" low! The range was actually 65 yards, and I had misjudged.

Well, the antelope ran over the hill, so I decided to see if I could put another sneak on it. When I reached the top of the hill, about 30 yards down the other side was laying a very sick buck! Another shot put him down for good.

Field dressing reviled that the bullet that hit the rock had fragmented and the fragments ricocheted into the antelope's gut. Many of the lead fragments had penetrated the stomach and liver!

Believe it or not! (But I have witnesses!)
 
The lead ball splitting trick is not too difficult to do. Used to do it on a regular basis at Longhunter shoots but was always shooting either a .50 cal. long rifle or a 20 gauge smoothbore at 15 yards. It would be more difficult with a squirrel rifle in .32 or .36 caliber. Some matches involved splitting a playing card in two edgewise. We also had cracker matches. Start with a Saltine and work your way down by elimination to an oyster cracker.
 
I used to love squirrel hunting -- until I shot my first squirrel and had to eat it. For me, it was about tramping in the woods with a gun in hand.
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If you didn't enjoy eating that squirrel, maybe it wasn't cooked quite right. It can be delicious, but then I'm an old East Tennessee boy.
 
Remington Accelerator sabots were always an off white/putty color, sort of like the cases on IBM computers in years past.

If the sabots were handloads, they were most likely purchased from Midway or another company like that. I remember sabots being offered for sale in the 1980s for a variety of calibers.
 
acute angles up to 45 or so degrees

I was trained to use a hard surface for bullet redirections. If you fire a projectile into a hard surface plane at an acute angle the bullet does not bounce off as a billard ball bankshot, but instead parallels the plane from 6 to twelve inches out. Applications were for shooting under cars or down a wall when it was not prudent to raise your head.
 
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