you talk about lucky..............

check out this video of a guy shooting a .50 cal Barrett sniper rifle at a metal plate 1000 yds away............the bullet ricochets off the plate ( you can hear the ping when it hits the plate ) and you can hear it whistling back at him.........it hits just in front of the shooter, bounces up and hits his earmuffs...........he is damn lucky that didnt take his head off.

 

I've seen that video before. The guy was lucky. He's also stupid!

 

Ive shot plates with a 6.5 Creedmore from that distance and I’ve never heard of anything like that happening. But a .50 cal Barrett is much more powerful. I don’t think a 6.5 or a 708 could come back that far, but with that video. I’ll just use paper next time.
Scary!!
Metal targets are common for distance shooting due to the noise they make when you hit. But a .50 cal. Never shot anything like that!

 

I looked it up, .50 cal Barrett shoots a 398 grain bullet at 3150 ft/s! My 6.5 Creedmore is 140 grain at 3,000 ft/s. The .50 cal is a 10.5 mm compared to 6.5 or 7 mm diameter casings that are common for hunting calibers. Almost 3 times the fire power!

 

the 2 longest confirmed sniper kills were with a a McMillan Tac 50 and a Barrett............both at over 3000 yards...........its hard to imagine hitting a target at that range but a 50 cal will reach and touch someone. I think Hathcock was using a modified M2 Browning when he made his shot during Vietnam

 

I qualified expert in the Army with both M-16 and .50 cal. With a broken rear sight where I had to visually self adjust to hit the targets I hit 37 of 40 targets with my M-16 including hitting 1 of 4 targets at 300 meters. This was at Ft Sill, Ok where it is always windy.

Now with all that said 3000 yards is over a mile and a half away! The pop up target, which is roughly human sized from the waist up, at 300 meters with a rifle sight is almost completely hidden by the front sight needle and you have to make miniscule adjustments for wind and the rise/drop of the round flight path while keeping track of your breathing patterns and smooth trigger squeeze under pressure with a second or two to maintain accuracy. Even with a super powerful scope under perfect conditions that 3000+ yard shot with a probable moving target is practically impossible. I have to believe at that distance the target is not even visible behind the cross hairs of the scope. Or you have to slightly lead or trail the target even though you've adjusted the clicks on the weapon to account for wind. So many factors to consider it's almost unbelievable. That is amazing and I would love to shoot with serious experts like that to see how they do it and learn.