Shooting through brush.

earlyagain

This is interesting.

Im not critiquing. I like this guys videos. Especially when he gets rained on.    ...
Im not advocating shooting through brush. Im am advocating the satisfaction of curiosity.

Sometimes setting up targets in the woods for recreational shooting can involve trying to avoid potential deflection from brush. I've always just assumed anything from grass to twigs would effect bullet flight. Regardless of bullet size, weight, or shape.

It looks to me like bullet shape and length could be the biggest factors. But Ive never conducted any experiments. Ive been so successful at avoiding brush, I also lack any experience with it. It is easy to imagine circumstances where sighting through a scope or intense focus on a distant target could cause a failure to see brush in the line of fire. So I think its worth examining. Thoughts or experience????

Zee

Inconclusive. 

If the same amount of obstruction is not repeatable for all test subjects, it’s an inconclusive and incomplete test. 

Piss poor test. 

earlyagain

I had that thought. He does point that out in his comments.  Maybe I haven't given it enough thought, but I can't imagine a protocol that would insure consistency???

waipapa13

Last time I got curious this was what I looked at. More cartridges used would be nice.
https://www.theboxotruth.com/the-box-o-truth-40-deflected-bullets-and-the-box-o-truth/

Gene L

About 30-40 years ago, someone did a pretty good test for shooting through bush on video (or film, probably, back then.)  He used hardwood dowels of different diameters for control and placed the target at a given range behind the brush construct. I don't remember how far. He changed the dowels when necessary and tried every caliber then available from .223 to 45-70.  None of them bucked the brush and hit the target reliably.  His conclusion was there isn't a viable brush cartridge.  You hear of "brush-busting" cartridges, usually heavy, slower moving rounds, but it didn't work with him.

GunNut

Gene L said:

About 30-40 years ago, someone did a pretty good test for shooting through bush on video (or film, probably, back then.)  He used hardwood dowels of different diameters for control and placed the target at a given range behind the brush construct. I don't remember how far. He changed the dowels when necessary and tried every caliber then available from .223 to 45-70.  None of them bucked the brush and hit the target reliably.  His conclusion was there isn't a viable brush cartridge.  You hear of "brush-busting" cartridges, usually heavy, slower moving rounds, but it didn't work with him.

That was a rather interesting article in G&A.  I remember it, roughly early 80s.

earlyagain

waipapa13 said:

Last time I got curious this was what I looked at. More cartridges used would be nice.
https://www.theboxotruth.com/the-box-o-truth-40-deflected-bullets-and-the-box-o-truth/

That's great! A better test I think. I do wonder if newer longer and heavier 223 bullets might fair better though.

Bigslug

Zee said:

Inconclusive. 

If the same amount of obstruction is not repeatable for all test subjects, it’s an inconclusive and incomplete test. 

Piss poor test. 

AND the list of potential variables here is HUGE, and the ability to control them all out in the world pretty much impossible.  Never mind the possible combinations of bullet shape, weight, twist rate, and speed: even with only one, you have to hit an IDENTICAL combination of obstacle and target separation, and you have to hit it IDENTICALLY for the results to have any meaning, and you need a large enough pool of impacts to pull some measurable statistics out of them. 

Instead, this guy shot through a random assemblage of twigs. 

We don't know which bullets hit any twigs at all, what size they were, or what angle they were hit at.  Did his deviated .223 hit a single pine needle?  Did it take a veritable log to deflect his .45-70?  Or was it vice versa?

Seven minutes of video to tell us "Newtonian physics may be involved".

earlyagain

It looked to me like the guy titled a video Shooting through brush. Then he shot through brush, examined the targets, and afterward claimed in a general way the exact same things being critiqued.

Maybes he's just all wet?

tennmike

For shooting in brush, a 16 pounder cannon and grape shot is the only sure killer, I bet. Like Bigslug said, the list of variables is huge. Wait until the animal is out of the brush or a hole in the brush gives you a clear shot. And I can confirm that a 1 oz. 12 ga. rifled slug will deflect badly on hitting a 1/2" dia. limb.

Spk

earlyagain said:

...
Maybes he's just all wet?

My first clue is he's standing in the rain. 🌧️

I'm with Zee on this. Inconclusive at Best is giving this guy a huge pass. Did anyone else noticed that when he was shooting the 45-70 (around 7:10-7:20), his last round took out a whole branch and still hit the target while the other rounds sailed through the "brush" relatively unhindered.

This was a piss poor test and unusable information but it does get the clicks and the fuds march on.

The physics tells you there's a response (Newton's 3rd law) what it doesn't tell us is by how much because of all the reasons Slug pointed out (Bullet shape, construction, velocity, angle of impact, brush density, time duration of deflection forces and so on...) And then there's the shooter himself. If you want to at least give the appearance of a professional test then sit your ass down and use a rest, don't stand in the rain and shot offhand. You just can't claim any kind of repeatability that way. As Zee already said, "Piss poor test."

Well, obviously I can criticize, but how does one go about making a better test. First off, few tests are ever perfect but reducing the variability is a start. To the gentleman in the video I would say, "Get a rest." then go out and find some plastic palm or any other fake branches which will serve as obstruction. Remember, we're testing for deflection when obstruction is present and not necessarily how pine needles in the wild affect bullet trajectories. Mount your plastic leaves at the same angle (again, where using plastic leaves for the same reason we use jello, repeatability). We're only trying to determine if different size, shape, weight, speed bullets behave differently to the same test medium. Notice every variable above can represent a individual test.

It's not a difficult thing to do but it requires a time, expense and a place to shoot. I, for one, don't have the time or place to shoot.

Any volunteers, you could post it on YouTube and generate 💰

earlyagain

What about the dowel rod test? That one looked better to me.

I don't care about soggy sam's pine tree pour down. Other than entertainment and observation.

Linefinder

The only time I've seen shooting through something being effective was a Thompson through a wall in "Saving Private Ryan".

In a hunting situation.....don't try to shoot through things. Your life's not at stake.

Mike

Spk

earlyagain said:

What about the dowel rod test? That one looked better to me.

I don't care about soggy sam's pine tree pour down. Other than entertainment and observation.

The wooden dowel test was a much better test than the first one. He chose a good sunny calm day, the wooden dowels are symmetric (it's repeatable), he used a rest. That's the good news. What I found lacking is it seems he only used one round for each caliber and that's hardly an adequate sample size to make a determination. If you want to determine "Brush Busting" characteristics decide early on whether a "glancing" or "straight on" (branch) hit  is going to be the event under scrutiny. In the video he had a little of both. Compare the two conditions separately. Glancing as one category and Straight On as a separate category. The key is to reduce the number of variables to a minimum and then take an adequate sample size of all the calibers and conditions involved. Disregarding samples that don't meet your criteria for acceptable (i.e. a Glancing hit during your Straight On tests)

All in all, it was a much better test than soggy Sam's though.

👍

earlyagain

Seems like a big subject for little gain as far as trying to make a comprehensive and conlusive test.

Just for clarification. My interest is mostly academic with some focus on target shooting. I wouldn't chance a shot on game through brush, and have intentionally passed up shots where such conditions existed.

Gene L

A chance to bag a Boy Scout by shooting through brush.  About 10 years ago, a guy shot what he thought was a groundhog and it was a guy with a beard. The shooter, I believe, was shooting from the road.  The victim's family didn't take any measures legally at the time as they were staunch 2nd Amendment supporters and didn't want to make gun owners look bad.  

earlyagain

The slats on wood privacy fences shrink over time revealing spaces between that allow limited visibility from one side to the next. Some years ago officers from the Englewood PD were attempting to apprehend an armed felon at a residence with such a fence. An officer fired at a person through the fence assuming hostile identity. It was a fellow officer that was hit. 

Spk

Linefinder said:

...

In a hunting situation.....don't try to shoot through things. Your life's not at stake.

Mike

Absolutely. 👍

Unless I'm risking starvation in a survival situation, I'll just wait till the target is in the clear and I know what kind of backstop/background there is. Early even said his interest is merely an academic one and that's how I'm approaching it. No one wants an accident.

I'm just pointing out the difference between a credible test and a sloppy one.