17hmr Ricochet ! a cautionary tale

Triggermortis

Well-Known Member
Every body i spoke to before i got my 17 told me they don't ricochet:-|, me being me i treated it as i would any rifle and having seen hundreds of 22lr's and the odd 243 richochet erred on the side of caution, now i'm glad i did;), i shot a rabbit at 25yds tonight straight in the head, a rabbit sitting 5yds behind and a yd to the right dropped stone dead at the same time as the first:confused:, when i looked. the second rabbit had taken i hit in the neck!
So the moral of the story is, as unlikly as the 17 may be to ricochet, it can and does so BEWARE, those that have shot them for long enough will probably already have discovered this, so i post this as a wake up and warning for anyone looking to get one

Cheers

Tikkat3
 
Nope. I have had HMR bullets shoot completely through a prairiedog body and kill his neighbor. Saying they don't ricochet is a bit general. Hell. I have two bricks of Hornady 17 grain in my basement that won't expand at all. They act like FMJ bullets 80% of the time.~Muir

(PS: Hornady didn't care when I told them of it...)
 
I've had the 17 hmr rounds pass straight through before, usually at either very close range, or when pushing it a bit.
If the bullet strikes hard ground at much more than 230 odd yards the chances of a ricochet increase as it won't have enough energy left to vaporize it's self in my experience.

Neil. :)
 
talking to someone last night about it, he said the blue tipped ones dont expand much but the red/orange ones do as do the 20g hollow points? i've only used the blue tips and they dont realy blow things up,in fact i get almost as many damaged by my 22 with eley hollow points ?

Tikkat3as
 
I have shot 30 or so rabbits over the last week with my HMR and in everyone, if I remember correctly, the shot was a complete pass through. Some had expanded more than others judging by the exit, but probably more to do with the size of the rabbit(?) as some were quite small. I was using 17grn Hornady blue tips.

ATB

T
 
I find that this can be a bit of a problem with the HMR maybe more so than some might like to admit, especially when you are shooting smaller relatively young rabbits for "Vermin Control" rather than shooting for the pot! There has been several occasions where I have shot 2 young rabbits with just one shot with my HMR using Hornady 17g Red Tips (I do have this on video to prove the point). I believe that this problem is more common than some might like to admit and is caused by the fact that unless the bullet actually hits a harder piece of bone it does not expand as well as it is designed to do and will pass straight through the rabbit and carry on tarvelling in one relatively undamaged piece, even with a head shot on young rabbits but more common with "engine room shots". I have also had ricochetes after the bullet has passed clean through a rabbit, especially if I have taken a "heart and lung shot" at relatively close range, say out to about 75 yards!
 
Samr tale as Muir............I had a box of blue tip Hornady that didn't expand properly either. Had loads of rabbits running on which just didn't happen with the red tips..........odd, must have been a manufacturing fault.
 
A 32grn VMax from a .204 disintegrates, but obviously a bit more expensive to buy than .17HMR, never had a richochet but not saying its impossible.
 
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