Do you agree? The effects of shooting in the rain ...

[Ol' Red]

View attachment 362056

One bottle should last a lifetime!

 

[lancetkenyon]

I live in AZ.

I do not think I have shot enough in the rain to give an educated opinion. I have hunted in rain and snow, but honestly, I could count on one hand how many shots I have taken in the rain. In no way does that qualify me to give an experienced answer.

 

[EdG61]

Not hunting, but "full bore target rifle" shooting. I am a "B grade" competitor.
Some years back I managed to shoot 47/50 and 48/50 at 900 yards on a day of steady, quite heavy rain.
Rainfall for the day was just on 2 inches.
None of the 70 (or more?) competitors reported any issues with other than the task of keeping ammo and chambers dry.
If it were a thing, one would expect that at least one of the 1400 + bullets sent downrange should have collided with a raindrop?
Yes, there were fliers, but no more than the previous day's shooting at the 600 and 700 yard ranges, and all were nominated as fliers by the shooter, so no mysterious deflections from rogue raindrops ....

 

[Chuckrub]

https://www.realclearscience.com/video/2018/11/02/bullet_shockwave_shadows_in_ultra_slow_motion.html

 

[DavidA]

Here is the physics behind it. Assuming the bullet somehow does not hit a drop . If you acount for humidity , temp and atmospheric pressure. There will be no affect on the POI. If you hit the a series of rain drops they will affect it. This is because as the bullet hits the drop it is no longer gaseous and there it as mass associated with that drop that will have energy transferred to it. The more drops you hit the more affect on velocity and imparted directional changes. The finer the rain , the heavier the rain the higher the probabilities of many multiple impact. Sort of reminds me of a saying my dad had when we would play golf and there was a tree between the green and the shot placement to the green. He would say " Dave just shoot through, the trees are 90% air. Damed if taking this advise I wouldn't hit a small limb, a leaf , or something almost every time. My shot it turn wold be deflected proportional to the mass of what I hit. Same goes with bullets in rain. What happens depends on what size and how many items you hit. PS There were times doing this that I would pass through hitting nothing. Go figure.

 

[Justice1327]

I think shivering in a cold rain would effect the shooter more than the bullet. I do not think rain changes bullet path enough to matter. I did like to vote knowing it was not along party lines.

I cant believe they didn't ask for my ID!

 

[TR1Hemi]

Here is my issue with the OP. 300 yards, but the dropper is set at 260 yards. So the groups opened that much in 40 yards. If you extrapolate the data and move the dropper to 40 yards (or the muzzle because it will be actually raining there too) and the bullet then having to travel 260 yards after hitting a drop that would move the bullet HOW far? 260 yards is 6.5x as far as 40yards.

At the end of the day, if it is raining hard enough to have a good chance of bullet deflection, chances are visibility is low enough that the shot is not far enough to warrant serious contemplation. Therefore take the shot.

 

[Chrsm]

How can anyone say that all rain our anything else has no effect on point of impact. I know for a fact everything has some effect on the point of impact even ever so slight. Hell if I have gas from from the dinner last night it has an effect!

 

[orkan]

How can anyone say that all rain our anything else has no effect on point of impact. I know for a fact everything has some effect on the point of impact even ever so slight. Hell if I have gas from from the dinner last night it has an effect!

That's the difference between academic and practical discussion.

Academic discussion threads go on and on because people think it is a game of who can be the most clever. Practical discussion hinges on the reality of whether the effect can be perceived in the real world.

Here you can see Keith shooting in a downpour at 600yds. Pretty respectable group wouldn't you say?


I've experienced similar results in pouring rain. Prairie dog standing at in excess of 600yds is not a large target... and I had no problem engaging during a rain storm. The biggest difficulty was seeing. A set of polarized sunglasses helped quite a lot with that. I experienced no discernable POI shift, but I did have my ammo in a pack, dry... and I did have a jacket over my rifle action. No water was getting into the chamber or on my ammo. I consider that to be a very big thing to control if possible. The bullets flight was very predictable out to beyond 1000yds in the rain... but it can't be raining very heavy to see targets at 1000.

You get water in that chamber however, and it can drastically affect how the rifle shoots. At that point it is just a game of how forgiving your rifle is and how forgiving a node you're working with.

So, academically, sure it could potentially be a factor. Though myself and other shooters I respect have seen no worthwhile POI shift when shooting in rain, no matter its intensity.


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[coop2564]

Why do so many ignore all the experienced shooters that have shot in rain? All shooters that have shot in rain say no effect.

 

[Ray Gross]

but I did have my ammo in a pack, dry... and I did have a jacket over my rifle action. No water was getting into the chamber or on my ammo. I consider that to be a very big thing to control if possible. The bullets flight was very predictable out to beyond 1000yds in the rain... but it can't be raining very heavy to see targets at 1000.

You get water in that chamber however, and it can drastically affect how the rifle shoots. At that point it is just a game of how forgiving your rifle is and how forgiving a node you're working with.

I'll second this. I have shot and coached in the rain a lot. I have seen droplets vaporize while watching the bullet trace and watched those shots go into the group at 600-1000 yards. Interestingly, it doesn't happen very often. That may be because it is only visible in certain atmospheric condition or there is just a lot of space between drops; not sure which.

What will affect the point of impact is getting water on the ammo and/or in the chamber. Those shots will generally go high. Also getting water between the bedding and action can change the POI.

 

[WiscGunner]

I think the idea that shooters aren't "hitting"raindrops most of the time is utterly ludicrous considering a light rain will have a droplet every few inches in a continuously flowing 3 dimensional pattern.

Since there is no video of the "water droplet" apparatus in action I would suspect severely flawed and oversimplification of the experiment. Was the "droplet" a 5 gallon Home Depot bucket?

As others have pointed out, drastic change in POI in 40 yards of flight in the "experiment" would equate to massive changes of the bullet flight at the distances many of us shoot. Heck, if you were so unlucky as to hit a raindrop at the muzzle you would likely shoot the guy next to you.

Theory says any disturbance will have an effect however Reality says you missed something major in an effort to over simplify. Shooting through a waterfall might be like deflection shooting through a windshield but rain drops do not actually touch supersonic bullets in flight. Even when in the path of the bullet the small light weight maleable rain drop is very easily out weighed by the hard dense FAST, spinning projectile. Thus a bullet "hitting" a raindrop at supersknic speed is not like a subsonic blet hitting a raindrop and neither are remotely the same as belly flopping into a pool where hydraulic pressure makes the water harder than concrete.

Summary: flawed "experiment" overlooking much in physics and ignoring mathematic probabilities associated with both rain density and high volume of fire under rainy conditions.

Conclusion: our fact checkers have determined this to be fake news

 

[WildernessBob]

Many years ago, we were shooting 308s through a 30" barrel at 800 yards. We had a medium shower come over ahead of a big thunderstorm and the wind was blowing in at least two different directions. We were not shooting through the rain. We had a cease fire from the line officer. From our shooting position the dust was going left to right and halfway to the target it was going the other way. Before the cease fire order came, we were all off the targets we think by feet not inches, but we saw that the wind was the problem with our accuracy.
I am convinced that when the 168gr. bullet traveling at 2800 fps hits multiple 4mm or 5 mm water drop falling at 30 fps must have an effect even if it causes a small deflection. Newton's third law is: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

 

[Pro2A]

Technically, I'm sure that rain hitting a bullet in flight does effect bullet flight. And presumably each bullet fired in the rain would hit rain drops in different ways. However, I have tested this myself over the years and found no noticeable effect on impact. I normally shoot at 400yds and had groups on paper before the rain started and continued to shoot as the rain picked up. I was surprised to see that there were no changes when firing in the rain.

I assume that if you were shooting in a complete deluge that the change in impact would be apparent, but I just wouldn't be shooting targets or game animals in such conditions.

In really drown-a-monkey serious torrential downpours, keep shooting, no discernible change in DRT terminal performance, distinguishable bullet flight. But, no precise group measurements; minute-of-gook good to go. IMHO. YMMV.