Bullet Fragments through a NS

[Crosswind]

Just need some clarification for the following question:

In IPSC Handgun, if only part of a bullet strikes hard cover (e.g. metal target) and the other portion of the bullet (in the form of fragments) continues on to hit a no-shoot, will it count for penalty?

I'm curious because some items in the rulebook seemed to be contradictory.

The following rule seemed clear cut:

"9.1.6.3 Bullet strikes partially within hard cover, and continues on to strike the scoring area of a paper target, the hit on that paper target will count for score or penalty, as the case may be."

But then I read:

"9.5.4.1 Enlarged holes in paper targets which exceed the competitor's bullet diameter will not count for score or penalty unless there is visible evidence within the remnants of the hole (e.g. a grease mark, striations or a "crown" etc.), to eliminate a presumption that the hole was caused by a ricochet or splatter."

This rule seemed to imply that ricochets and splatters don't count for score/penalty.

Obviously individual RO's will use their best judgement to figure out the bullet's flightpath and what exactly happened; but for the RO's out there, how do you usually score splatter holes on paper targets and no-shoots?

Thanks

 

[Snapshot]

As you say the specific situation will require the RO to use their best judgement.

In the abstract I would tend to favour 9.5.4.1 over 9.1.6.3 unless I could see a bullet hole as opposed to a slash, rip, tear, slot, or other indication on the paper target.

Note that 9.1.6.3 refers to "... the hit on that paper target ..." .

A mark caused by a fragment that breaks off from a bullet impacting steel may be difficult to distinguish from a mark caused by piece of shrapnel.

It is easy to make an error in scoring when there is a bullet hit with a rip, slash, tear, etc. on top of it.

This is something for course designers / builders to consider. Placing steel targets or hard cover where splatter from them can impact paper targets can create scoring issues and is best avoided whenever possible.

 

[BCRider]

With metal targets and stands and other stuff around it's not uncommon for targets to get small cuts in the cardboard. The key is that the RO's are looking for proper bullet holes. Holes that have greasemarks around them and that are circular. Those are the only ones which count. This is also why the targets and no shoots all have a rim around the outer line. It's so that a proper round with greasemark bullet hole is easily differentiated from a spatter shard.

It's extremely poor stage design to have a metal target positioned ahead of or on the same plane as a cardboard target such side spatter or edge hits can cut into a cardboard target. But I've seen it occur where a cardboard target was "in plane" with a steel target. The match was already underway so the cardboard target was getting a lot of side rips from the spatter. The RO's simply sighed and changed the target more often. But even there it was easy to see the rips from spatter compared to a proper bullet hole. It was a lesson to all in how NOT to set up a stage.

Proper "hard cover" isn't hard at all. It's simply a painted cardboard overlay or a painted portion of the target. No proper stage designer worth their bullets would ever use actual steel as a hard cover with a target behind it for exactly the reasons of edge hits.