Target Shooting A Thousand Yards With .22 Long Rifle

[JimT]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NztX_o-055I

[GunnyMack]

2867" of drop according to the Federal ballistics calculator. Just slightly better than a 25-20 !

[CowboyTutt]

The recovered bullets after impact sure tell a tale! -Tutt

[Grizz]

this is genuinely interesting. only thing better would have been a mag or two out of America's metric 22 to dial in a direct comparison. and, how cool is it to be able to walk on water?

[marlinman93]

The recovered bullets after impact sure tell a tale! -Tutt

Yes, and not the tale they thought. The bullets maybe aren't tumbling, they're just hitting at such an extreme angle that the bullet is deformed from the angle.
Their test shows if you toss enough shots downrange with a .22 at 1000 yds. eventually you'll get lucky and hit something.

[JimT]

I think most folks on this Forum understand that a bullet in flight does not "tumble" .. it will "yaw" ..

Yaw is the angle the centerline of the bullet makes to its flight path as the projectile travels down range. Although the bullet spins on its axis as a result of the barrel's rifling, that axis is also wobbling slightly about the bullet's flight path. Yaw is not instability; it occurs naturally in all spin-stabilized projectiles.

FOR101.gif

With very accurate loads, the bullet precesses toward stability and sort of settles down. At least for quite some time. With some loads the precession is to yaw more and more until the bullet is almost sideways. It will continue to precess as it flies. Shooting 400 yards with a 1 in 38" twist .44-40 using 250 gr. SWC bullets, the bullets were almost completely sideways and struck the paper target with the nose sometimes pointing toward 7 o'clock, sometimes at 2, sometimes at 4 etc. Interesting enough was that all shots landed inside a 12" even with the extreme yaw.

[Grizz]

that's a good illustration. I was thinking that the shape the .22 bullets took on impact reflected the down angel of the flight path on final approach.

I tried my 405Gr 44mag handgun load in a 44mag marlin. it was doing strange things, like coming out the side of water jugs, so i got the muzzle a few feet from a sheet of plywood and the bullet went thru it exactly sideways. the bullet never stabilized to begin with

that rifle was a successful hunting gun, made lots of meat, and grouped 240Gr standard loads reasonably well. but the tricky little 405 turned it into a trick shot.

[JimT]

Grizz .. I have had 200 gr. RN .38 Specials do that from a 2" barrel. Completely sideways at 3 feet from the muzzle. Guy shot a dog with one ..dropped it like a rock .. made a heck of an entrance wound.

[Grizz]

Grizz .. I have had 200 gr. RN .38 Specials do that from a 2" barrel. Completely sideways at 3 feet from the muzzle. Guy shot a dog with one ..dropped it like a rock .. made a heck of an entrance wound.

That's super interesting. I had never heard of it. Makes me wonder if artillery has gone sideways. Or ships guns? I'll pass on that research, the shop is calling.

[GunnyMack]

JitT is on the right track. Case in point is my 257 AI Robert's, doesn't shoot groups at 100 but at 200 its accurate. An engineer friend said the bullet needs to 'go to sleep' that takes distance/ time of flight.
That being said any bullet will tumble in flight once the velocity drops enough and the rotation just doesn't keep it straight. If I remember, the federal ballistics calculator had the 22lr about 400fps at 1000 yds maybe less, strange things happen when speeds change. Just my .02.
I took a screen shot-

Screenshot_20210825-150041_Federal.jpg

[marlinman93]

At longer distances I've had a lot of bullets that went through the paper almost sideways, yet surprised me by having fairly small groups. My .40-65 Rolling Block with a 420 gr. bullet traveling out the bore at 1375 fps was shooting 12" groups at 700 yds., and almost all the holes showed yaw on paper.
I was happy with the group size, but wanted to eliminate the yaw. So I played with speeding up the velocity, and got to about 1475 fps, and the group size got a little smaller at just under 10", but still the same oblong shaped holes. I eventually dropped to a 350 gr. bullet at the same velocity, to see if it might stabilize better. Nothing changed about accuracy, or yaw, but felt recoil was less.
I tried shooting closer ranges, and at 500 yds. the bullets were stabile. So it seems somewhere after 500 yds. they began to destabilize.
This yawing doesn't seem to hurt my accuracy as much as I would have thought. But since lighter bullets were more comfortable, so that's what I shoot.

[JimT]

JitT is on the right track. Case in point is my 257 AI Robert's, doesn't shoot groups at 100 but at 200 its accurate. An engineer friend said the bullet needs to 'go to sleep' that takes distance/ time of flight.
That being said any bullet will tumble in flight once the velocity drops enough and the rotation just doesn't keep it straight. If I remember, the federal ballistics calculator had the 22lr about 400fps at 1000 yds maybe less, strange things happen when speeds change. Just my .02.
I took a screen shot-Screenshot_20210825-150041_Federal.jpg

Just because velocity drops does not mean the bullet will tumble. What keeps them more or less point on is rotational velocity. That is not affected by air resistance as much as forward velocity. Case in point .. the 220 Swift. Standard loading in the original guns gave about 220,000 rpm. At 400 yards the little bullet has slowed down to less than a 1200 fps but it will still kill coyotes like a hammer because the bullet is still spinning nearly 220,000 rpm.

I have shot 300 gr. .45 bullets straight up at just enough velocity to get them up 15 or 20 feet. When they hit the ground they are still spinning.

I am not sure but I do not believe aerodynamically that a bullet can tumble in flight. At lease not without hitting something beforehand. The bullet can yaw drastically, but not tumble end over end.

[GunnyMack]

Its always been my understanding that at a certain point in a bullets flight when velocity drop to X there is the possibility of the flight being disrupted. What that velocity is I dont know per say. Your 15 or 20 foot flight doesn't necessarily prove anything other than your barrel has imparted spin. Agree to disagree
As for the angle the 22 impacts at yes the arc of the bullet is why those look funny and not the expected mushroom.
This was an interesting video, something most of us wouldn't have tried.

[JimT]

Its always been my understanding that at a certain point in a bullets flight when velocity drop to X there is the possibility of the flight being disrupted. What that velocity is I dont know per say. Your 15 or 20 foot flight doesn't necessarily prove anything other than your barrel has imparted spin. Agree to disagree

GunnyMack .. Not arguing sir. I am not good at explaining myself at times so please forgive me. What I was trying to says is as long as there is rotational velocity, the projectile, be it a bullet or a football, cannot go end over end. The rotational velocity keeps it more or less point on.

As far as the flight being disrupted, yessir. Even a big bullet like a .50 BMG .. if in its flight .. hits a tree branch, it's flight is drastically changed.

[GunnyMack]

All good here Jim!
I have been doing a little investigation, https://www.accurateshooter.com/ballist ... bility-bc/.
Let's face it a 22 lr is NOT a long sleek high bc bullet, the trans sonic shouldn't really effect this testing but we may never know without a rocket scientist Do we have a physics professor here?
I can say for a fact that at altitude (6,000 agl) i kept my 22 sighted in at 100 and could plunk pasture poodles at 300 with fair regularity. Higher the altitude = thinner air= better velocities and less resistance. Had friends from home visiting, got them to sight in at 100 and we went out to a dog town. They were amazed at how far a 22 could shoot.
Hmm, I wonder at what elevation those guys were shooting in the video...?

[JimT]

Bullets do very interesting things at different elevations and in different environments. Once, at The Whittington Center, I was with some guys who were shooting old .450 Wentworths. 400 + gr. bullets. We were shooting close to 2000 yards or so and this one guy had his gun dialed in. I mean he was dropping those big slow slugs right on target. A light rain squall moved in and he shot through it to the target. That bullet going through the rain hit a good 2 or 3 feel lower than the shots in clear air. As long as it was raining he had to change his sights in order to hit the target.

I know elevation makes a difference. As does the 'thickness' of the air. I often wondered if you fired a .30-06 on the moon, would you be in danger of shooting yourself in the back?

[octagon]

Jim I think I asked you before if your familiar with "The Bullets Fight" by FW Mann. My copy had notes by Pope in the margins and my Brother absconded with this volume years ago. Only guy I know who is crazy for this level of nerd info. Mann discussed these very topics at great length, 110 years ago. I'll need another copy.

[AJMD429]

One of the big inducements for decreased stability and increased yaw is when a supersonic bullet transitions to subsonic. I imagine if they had been using supersonic high velocity ammunition the 'group' would have been even larger.

It looked to me like the target wasn't angled enough towards horizontal so the bullets were angled on the front because of that, rather than yaw. If they are all bent to the same angle that would validate what I'm thinking, because otherwise unless they were lucky enough to have the target exactly 90° from the impact angle that difference would have added to any yaw and made it different for each bullet.

.... my phone must be made in the south, because whenever I voice texted yaw it typed out y'all ...

[kragluver]

Older style round nose bullets are less affected by transonic instability than modern Spitzer bullets. I suspect the .22 bullets were still flying reasonably stable even at 400 fps. Most BPCR shooters know that their bullets are quite stable through the transonic and subsonic Mach ranges. Those bullets often start out transonic! (For reference, transonic flow generally occurs 0.8 < Mach < 1.2. Mach 1 at sea level is 1116 fps in a standard atmosphere.) Bullet stability is affected by other forces and moments than just the over turning pitch stability (which we stabilized with spin). Magnus moment also plays a significant effect. These moments change dramatically with Mach and are strongly affected by bullet shape.

[CowboyTutt]

Jim T. has a good grasp on the subject (now, there's a surprise! LOL) I'm currently working on a custom 303 Brit project and have been for over 6 months with McPherson and some other friends of his (I am sooo blessed, let me tell you!!!) I don't want to hijack Jim's thread but wanted to post what Mic wrote me and our team recently as it may be pertinent to this thread. I did edit and redact it. But it shows how a slower bullet at 1538 yards might be better just as was pointed out by Jim T. and our posters to give it time to "settle down" as it moves through the transonic barrier and goes subsonic and has time to stabilize again.

Just trying to create a bullet that will allow the 303 to shoot 1538 yards without the bullet losing stability. No pointed bullet will reliable do that without going to a custom $5 each lathe-turned bullet -- I have the design. By (Smalley) and I did it with the 45-70, came up with a 362-grain brass bullet that he could launch at 2700 fps from his rolling block and that would remain stable to terminal range. That was 20 years ago and those bullets were $3 each then, have not gotten cheaper, that is for sure! The affordable way to do this is to create a heavy, round-nosed cast bullet and launch it slow enough that it will drop through the transonic velocity range before it is falling so fast that the aerodynamic forces along with the collapsing shock waves along with the tipping force conspire to destabilize it. Been working for Sharps-class rounds since Whitworth offered his 45-caliber muzzle-loader back in the 1854. Still works just fine.

I would add that it depends on the overall bullet design, whether its balanced or not (think the original 408 Chey Tac) on as to how much it yaws and at what velocity. There is no formula to predict the yaw that I am aware of so far (that's not really saying much however, but the 408 has been improved upon by a large margin and the .375 bullets seem to be the current favorites). Some say a balanced projectile is what is needed. Some say a nose heavy, hollow based bullet, is what is needed and it can act like a "shuttle cock" in your latest game of badminton that does have yaw, but the heavier head keeps it going straight and not so sideways. Bottom line, you don't know until you try it.

As a brief aside, here is a little bit of unusual 303 Mark VIII ammo trivia and worth a look at bullet design. I won't be using it, but still very interesting considering the time period and how advanced they were at the time.

https://forum.cartridgecollectors.org/t ... iiiz/12677

Atmospheric conditions matter a whole lot, which is what lead me to working on this project in the first place as I have seen the 303 shoot perfectly at 1538, and seen it totally fail the next year.

I give "kudos" to these young men for doing what they did. They are what we need in our shooting society. They attempted something that most of us would never do.

Major Kudos!

Regards, -Tutt

[CowboyTutt]

(My comments in parentheses)
Older style round nose bullets are less affected by transonic instability than modern Spitzer bullets (Yes, that is what I have been taught too!). I suspect the .22 bullets were still flying reasonably stable even at 400 fps. Most BPCR shooters know that their bullets are quite stable through the transonic and subsonic Mach ranges. Those bullets often start out transonic! (For reference, transonic flow generally occurs 0.8 < Mach < 1.2. Mach 1 at sea level is 1116 fps in a standard atmosphere.) (Yes, my 500 grain 11mm Mauser load is slightly super sonic at 1175 fps at 5 K elevation so would agree!) Bullet stability is affected by other forces and moments than just the over turning pitch stability (which we stabilized with spin). Magnus moment also plays a significant effect. These moments change dramatically with Mach and are strongly affected by bullet shape (bullet design, yup!).

I apparently have a new friend here! LOL -Tutt

[JimT]

Jim I think I asked you before if your familiar with "The Bullets Fight" by FW Mann. My copy had notes by Pope in the margins and my Brother absconded with this volume years ago. Only guy I know who is crazy for this level of nerd info. Mann discussed these very topics at great length, 110 years ago. I'll need another copy.

Yes! I read that many years ago. My Dad had a copy and when I was 16 or 17 .. nearly 60 years ago ... I poured through it. I need to pick up another copy and read it again. I see WalMart has them for about $30.

EDIT .. Amazon also .. https://www.amazon.com/Bullets-Flight-P ... 1167012542

[octagon]

I found my copy at 1/2 price books in San Marcos in the sporting section about 15 years ago. I recall his cool method of lining up many many paper targets in line to measure bullet drop from "the rock of Gibraltar. "
Thanks for the link .

[JimT]

I found my copy at 1/2 price books in San Marcos in the sporting section about 15 years ago. I recall his cool method of lining up many many paper targets in line to measure bullet drop from "the rock of Gibraltar. "
Thanks for the link .

My Dad did that with newspapers to measure a bullet's yaw.

[Bullard4075]

Very interesting.

[Bill in Oregon]

Oh to be young and insensitive to frigid temperatures again ...