Shocking power: fact or fiction

[John Y Cannuck]

Hollywood has on at least one occasion used a high speed winch hooked to a stunt man to cause the effect.
It's total BS.
I've shot a lot of big game, with a lot of different rifles. Many have gone straight down, a few have leaped upwards, but none have been blown sideways.
Now, if you shoot a groundhog with a 12 gauge slug, you may see a bit of movement. We did, he went back about three feet. Nothing left but hide and blood stains

 

[the_big_mike]

People do not fly back when hit by bullets.

There is a traumatic shock to the person/animal but they do not fly back.

 

[rainman]

the flying backwards is all hollywood.

if it did make a deer sized or bigger animal fly when hit. it would likely knock you over. each force has an equal and opposite force. so the force required to push a buller big enough an hard enough to knock a deer over would require a blast big enough to knock the shooter over.

if you mean shock that destroys internal organs, then all it akes is a bullet moving fast enough with a surface big enough to make a shockwave inside the body.

umm,not really,what if you shot a full metal jacket 300 grain bullet at 3000 fps at a deer at 50 yards ,the deer wouldnt move,but you would

 

[.264 Win Mag]

The Flying backwards is all hollywood.
The Shock value though is very real. Roy Weatherby studied this lots. He figured that a smaller bullet travelling at a higher velocity had better killing power than a bigger bullet moving slower. Whether or not this is true will cause much debate. But Shock vaule of a bullet is very real and you see this with many of todays popular cartridges like the fast magnums (which all where basicly designed to compete with Weatherby's cartridges).

 

[SandRoad]

You guys are all correct. There is a big difference between moving an object and transmitting a pressure pulse.

When you throw a rock into a pond, you can see the (pressure) waves moving away from the impact, but you don't MOVE the water in the pond.

The energy from the rock is transformed into a wave in the water, a wave transmits energy but the actual water doesn't move.

 

[Boomer]

Depending on where and by what a human target is hit, there could be a strong involuntary reaction that might be misinterpreted by an observer, leading him to believe that the person was propelled by the impact of the projectile. We only need to look at the most famous shooting in history to see the effect.

Consider the number of people (some who should know better) who believe that JFK was shot from the front because Kennedy's head snapped back at the shot. Yet still pictures from the Zapruder film show without a doubt the shot came from the rear because the material ejected from the head wound flew forward, in the same direction as the bullet's trajectory.

It takes an experienced trained observer to determine the effect of a gunshot wound on a human target at range, particularly if no blood splatter is evident.