Member 34319
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Thanks for the stories, good hearing from experiences.I can tell you from first hand experience just how dangerous shooting can be for starting a fire! A few years ago, I was doing some praire dog busting in my lower fields, with a . And a .243, I didn't even know it was there, but there was a piece of old steal fence sticking out of the ground about a foot, I got it with the .22 from about 70 feet. And with in seconds I had a pretty good grass fire going! I grabbed up my stuff and ran for the dozer and got the wife to fire up the water truck and bring it Down! In less then 10 min time I had a full blown fire that burned about an acre before I managed to get it put out! The part that really surprised me was that a copper jacketed lead bullet could set off a spark and light off a fire! Normally my fields are not that dry, but we were going through dam renovations and expansion, so I wasn't irigating nearly as much, so the conditions were ripe for a fire!
Another time, I set a pretty good brush fire from the muzzle blast/flash from a .30/06 prone, that one I got out quick with a shovel, but it also showed how quick you can get a fire going in hot and dry conditions!
Bullets hitting things get hot. Very hot. Hot enough to burn something, get the right something and you got fire.
I have one experience to share, and I learned dearly from it. Now, even in the pissing rain, I have a shovel, a bucket, and a 5 gallon BC fire extinguisher.
My whole fam was out once in NV on a hot very dry day. My dad was ringing steel out at I want to say 200 yards, didn't realize he mixed in a magazine of tracers in the lot. Proceeded to ring steel after reloading to a different mag, the one with tracers. After he was done we were sitting there for a bit and my younger brother in a calm demeanor states, "Did we start that fire?" I about lost my bubblegum. We were not well equipped, and learned from it. I sprinted uphill to the brush, by the time I got there two brushes were fully aflame. Kicked dirt into it like a mad man. Then my brother got there with a piece of wood, makeshift shovel, and proceeded to dump dirt onto it. My dad got there and the three of us kicked shoveled and poured water all over the two bushes until we were 110% certain they were out. Crazy part was we found the projectile, it was a miss, it was easy to locate as the mixture inside it was still burning bright red.
Since then we all go out better prepared, and I try to educate as many as I can.