[Bead Drawer]

I saw an article in a magazine that made me wonder a bit about this subject. It was something about varmint rifles and centerfire .22s.

How heavy of a rifle/light of a cartridge would you need to see the bullet impact in your scope? Does anyone have any thoughts, opinions, or experience here? I'm talking the riflescope never losing sight of the target due to recoil; you wack the hostile prarie dog (or other target) and see where the bullet went and what happened.

Lets avoid the obvious answer, "a 30 pound .22 Long rifle" :wink:

The article also opined that with today's bullets and glass, the .223 was a capable 500 yard varmint cartridge, I know this will probably raise some eyebrows. Let's hear it gents.

 

[spade]

I agree with a 223 being a 500 yard varmint cartridge. I have personally seen bullets hit from my DPMS at 150 yards...off shoot-n-c's. Now as far as reactive targets or plain paper, i cant comment.

 

[muzzleblast]

Honestly man, about what rifle it takes, thats a good question. With my 22lrs, of course I can, but with the centerfires (I have no 20 cals or heavy rifles, but building one) I can't usually see it. Calling your shots is still a skill you just gotta have though, and it helps.

Lots of new shooters like to look up from the scope to see the impact. Fun! problem is they never see the impact because it makes them miss lol.

Hopefully with a 15 pound 30-06 it will stay on target. 10 pound 300 Win Mag does not, really.

 

[Ballistic_Coefficiency]

As far as medium sized calibers go (such as a 30-06.. .308... ect.)... you would need a "very" heavy rifle with a very good muzzle break to even think about the rifle not moving enough to see your own bullet trace... as far as seeing impact goes... it depends on the range. If you can get your scope back on target quick enough you can see the impact.

If you are using an AR-15 or other rifle with a hand guard that fully covers the barrel... you can allways sling a sand bag over the handguard (granted that the handguards are free floating). I do this with my DPMS AR15 all the time.

BC

 

[mele]

Well, to put in my opinion.

With the shooters rifle, you will never see bullet trace, you have the possibility of seeing bullet impact though. And I've done that with M24's and other sniper rifles, but only on targets greater than about 600 meters away, and that is because you have enough time to reaquire the target if the rifle did not jump very far off target during recoil. Because of the various shooting positions you find yourself in, this is NOT something you will be able to do 100% of the time. Now, to top it off, this will just about NEVER work in a real world sniping situation, because about 70% of bullet strikes are not visible due to weeds, grasses, and other obsticles. That percentage does down or up depending on terrain.

Bullet trace is not visible because the optics on a rifle have a very hard time picking up trace if its held perfectly still because of magnifcation and more limited field of view than a spotting scope or even binocs. Add in recoil and it'll never likely happen.

MEL

 

[Yimmy]

re

For my two cents, any 5.56mm assault rifle with a 4X scope is easy to se the bullet impact, especially when the backing is sand.

 

[Ballistic_Coefficiency]

I wouldnt say "any" 5.56mm semi auto rifle... but i would say the most used (such as the M-16A2 / A4) rifles are capable of seeing bullet impact when toped with the 4 power ACOG or similar optics... the rifle its self does not reciol enough when on semi auto (and shouldered properly) to cause sight of target loss.

BC

 

[Bead Drawer]

Thanks for all the great comments everyone!

 

[snowy]

I remember a friend of mine had a snub nose .357 revolver and he had a big square piece of stainless attached to the end of the barrel.

He called it a slab and he said that some guys who like little guns with big bullets use them to make recoil more manageable when firing rapidly.

This is probably a bench rester question, but does anyone know of anyone who does this for rifles?

I've personally never seen it, but I thought I'd mention it.

-snowy

 

[Ballistic_Coefficiency]

Sounds like a half moon AKM muzzle break...

The muzzle blast will bounce off of the bottom and push the muzzle downward... thus helping reduce muzzle rise during automatic / rapid fire. Same reason why the M-16A2 "bird cage" flash supressor only has slits on the top. Ill post a pic as soon as i can get one uploaded.

BC

 

[Ballistic_Coefficiency]

Here is a pic of an old beat up AK-MSU. You can see the half moon muzzle break. It redirects the muzzle blast upwards... pushing down the muzzle to help control / cancel out muzzle rise.

BC

 

[AK]

AK-MSU

Doesn't exist. That is an AKM rifle with a modified foregrip including the pistol-grip fore of the magazine well that seems to be so popular amongst Iraqi troops. I hate to nitpick, but I'm sure that if I came here and said that an M-16A1 is a M-16A4, you'd also point that out.

 

[Ballistic_Coefficiency]

From what i have learned... the AK-MSU is your standard AK-M... but the selector is inverted (like that on the RPK)and it has a forward pistol grip. The ones with the backwards selectors are hard to find... the ones with the forward pistol grip and the backwards selectors are even more hard to find. I think these are simply a few different AK's slaped together to make a complete rifle.

BC

 

[AK]

"SU" would denote a shortened barrel and a folding stock, a'la the infamous "AKSU" which in reality is an AKS-74U; a shortened-barrel AKS-74 assault rifle.

Most AKs in "The Great Sandbox" are going to be, as you said, slapped together pieces of *Expletive deleted.*

 

[Ballistic_Coefficiency]

Kinda sorta like this. Just missing the wire triangle stock.

BC

 

[AK]

Rolled steel triangular stock, aye. And God, I hate that particular version of the AK.

 

[Ballistic_Coefficiency]

That stock hurts the cheek of your face when you fire on full auto... rattles your teeth pretty good too.

BC

 

[AK]

Yep. A lot of Russian troops tape up a IAP (Individual Aid-Packet, field-dressing) to the stock of their AKS-variation to form a "Poor-man's Cheekpiece." It's a real whore for Dragunov operators to keep their cheekpieces as well, those are always "procured" by other troops.

Had an experiance with an AKS-47 rifle a while back. Chinese one with an odd stock and 'odder' sights. Wasn't a real joy to shoot.

 

[Ballistic_Coefficiency]

Yea ive seen some weird stuff... especially in Asscrackistan... i found an SKS with a folding stock that accepted AK mags. :? Ive seen an RPG-7 launcher with an SVD scope on it... ive seen a T-34 with the main gun removed and a Russian 12.7X109mm DSHK machinegun mounted in its place... alot of weird stuff.

BC

 

[muzzleblast]

LOL thats some Mad Max stuff, BC...Thats crazy! As for the SKS, could it be Chinese? I dunno about the folding stock but they imported a bunch here that are made to take the AK mag.