BAD: I made a negligent mistake the other day.

[Sharkie308]

So I screwed up. I have been shooting for 21 years. With some time off in there due to living in nazi states with terribly strict gun laws. I know the do's and dont's of shooting. I made the biggest mistake I have ever made in my life this weekend. So me and my buddy have a good place to shoot. It's a fairly large open field and we have built up a 15-20 ft burm. Where we shoot is uphill of the burm so we are shooting down into the base of it not even into the burm. We have steel plates and stand for cardboard and whatever else we decided to shoot at. This weekend Melons couple phone books taped together. Last but not least my buddy's son come up with a golf ball and wants us to shoot it. We decide to oblige. We set it on one of our stands that had some indentations that would allow it to sit still. It was about 3ft off the ground yet again we were still shooting slightly down hill.

So we hit it with a .22 a few times. Didn't even hardly scuff up the golf ball. hit it with the .40 still nothing just knocked it around. Hit it with the 9mm and yet again knocked it around but didn't do anything near the dmg I thought it would. You would think having been an engineering major I would have been thinking about what is actually going on. when the projectile hit the round surface of the golf ball. As we are cleaning up about 10 minutes later the neighbor pulls up the drive in his truck holds out a 9mm FMJ that was essentially whole no distortion or anything and asks if it belongs to one of us. Turns out it hit the second story of his house and he found it lodged into the drywall just poking through. At first we were perplexed about how one of my 9mm round would have ended up over 300 yards almost directly to the left. Turns out golf balls are great at deflecting bullets. The round hit the golf ball just right that with the slight downward pressure on the golf ball which was resting on a fairly solid wood stand which didn't budge at all redirected the round into a completely different direction than it's original trajectory.

At the end of the day I'm still beating myself up for not thinking of the consequences of shooting a little golf ball. Someone could have been seriously hurt. Thankfully noone was.

Anyways feel free to flame me. I'm tossing this out there as a warning. While it may be fun to shoot a small target like a golf ball the way they are built makes it not a very good idea. . . something I never thought of. When we originally started shooting at it we thought it would be like a bowling pin where there's be some damage to the pin but nothing catastrophic. Not so much. Anyways I'll shut up now sorry for the long post.

[DefensiveCarry.com]

[azchevy]

Thank you very much for the heads up on the golf balls. Interesting. Glad nobody but drywall got hurt.

How did it go with the neighbor?

[ErnieNWillis]

Wow! I never considered that. I shoot golf balls at my place all the time. Most of the time the bullet penetrates the ball. I have noticed that occasionally the round will only leave a black mark on the ball. I never thought about a ricochet. Glad I read this thread.

[barstoolguru]

round hard objects are not good to shoot

[Olduser]

I learned a long time ago that all pride and ego wants to do is defeat me. I've never thought about ricochet with an unorthodox target and doubt that I would have before reading about your experience. Thanks for posting this and like others I'm really happy to hear that no one was hurt.

[Hoganbeg]

Wow! You got lucky! I'm not sure I would have thought of that either and I hope you can make it right with the neighbor. Thanks for manning up & posting this. Now, go and sin no more.

[Mike1956]

Why flame you? Live and learn, and I suspect many learned a little something with your post. Thanks for putting it up.

[sgb]

WOW ....... talk about 1 in a million

[Inspector71]

Seems like I learn something everyday on this forum. Thanks for posting!

[Sharkie308]

The neighbor was really cool. I went to school with his son. He shoot as do all of his boys. They had an incident when they were shooting back into their private woods of some people walking back there without permission but trying to enjoy a nice summer day and one of them almost got hit by one of his Sons not their fault as the people were trespassing but an eye opener none the less. So he was really cool an understanding. I swear i've shot golf balls in the past and I vaguely remember the rounds penetrating. I should have realized when nothing was this time that something was going on.

[Sharkie308]

Oh an of course I offered to pay for the damage to his house. He has paint. My buddy and I are going to go patch his drywall. Thankfully it's something we have experience with drywall and construction so we will be making things right with him. And he isn't worried about the hole in his siding we will work out a way to patch/seal it up so it doesn't leak at all.

[N8rfastback]

Does that sound fishy at all to anyone else?

So the golf ball redirected the 9 mm round 300 yds at a 90 degree angle and it still had the umph to enter the house and lodge in drywall?

Ever have issues with this guy before? If hes a shooter he has access to rounds he has fired, so maybe the bullet wasnt yours?

I could be completely wrong as I don't know your setup, but I shoot golf balls on the regular and have never heard of this.

Nate

Sent from Nates Droid X

[mkh]

I never would hav thought of that. Thanks for the heads up.

[Sharkie308]

I thought it was pretty crazy too. Wasn't quite that extreme of an angle but it was a high degree of change especially to lob the round high enough into a second story wall. If I was trying to hit his house at that range where it hit I'd have had to aim for the sky above it assuming around 60ish inches of drop at 300 give or take yards. So yes it does seem odd and fishy. My buddy's dad owns a construction company so a 2in patch and some sealer will be 0 out of our pockets to fix the damage.

[ctr]

Oh an of course I offered to pay for the damage to his house. He has paint. My buddy and I are going to go patch his drywall. Thankfully it's something we have experience with drywall and construction so we will be making things right with him. And he isn't worried about the hole in his siding we will work out a way to patch/seal it up so it doesn't leak at all.

Very good. So few people today understand what doing the right thing and taking responsbility means.