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Suppressor sound/action videos positioned down range???

HeavyAssault

Dog-Face One-Horse Pony-Soldier (AVN RGT)
Full Member
Minuteman
  • Feb 14, 2011
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    6,053
    Florida
    Okay. There's tons of videos from the shooter end of the action. Guy with a cool weapon, shooting suppressed...yea yea yea. Seen/heard tons of them.

    Cool...now what about at the receiving end (target) of the action?

    What I'm hoping to "hear" is the difference at the target, or what the target would "hear". Rifle use preferred, any area (range, back yard, personal shooting area, etc etc etc) More distance the better but whatever people have captured on video (100 yds, 300 yds, 600 yds...etc etc).

    I know it's not what most people think of when looking up videos of suppressors, but when hunting there is an element of noise effecting the target(s) response.
     
    Okay. There's tons of videos from the shooter end of the action. Guy with a cool weapon, shooting suppressed...yea yea yea. Seen/heard tons of them.

    Cool...now what about at the receiving end (target) of the action?

    What I'm hoping to "hear" is the difference at the target, or what the target would "hear". Rifle use preferred, any area (range, back yard, personal shooting area, etc etc etc) More distance the better but whatever people have captured on video (100 yds, 300 yds, 600 yds...etc etc).

    I know it's not what most people think of when looking up videos of suppressors, but when hunting there is an element of noise effecting the target(s) response.

    From back when I used to watch him. He got too annoying for me.
     
    Hit your target and the sound they care about for milliseconds won’t be muzzle report, hehe. I know, I know… I had to say it.

    I’ve done downrange defilade spotting and you can definitely hear the difference, but it’s not as disruptive as you would think (1200 yards roughly). The sonic crack from the projectile is far louder than the muzzle report. Suppressed at that distance you may hear nothing depending on the wind.

    Closer in there is a point where the dB of the suppressor matches the dB level of the sonic crack, but obviously they are at quite different frequencies so sound propagation will be more limited for the higher-pitched sonic event. Terrain would also make a massive difference obviously.

    There are probably people here more qualified to answer all of this better than I can though.
     
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    While I sort of already knew the answer I just wanted to get some other thoughts. Hard to say if the use of suppressors has any real advantage on the "down range end" as compared to the weapon shooter.
    Yea, the muzzle blast/flash should be better controlled. So a spotter could have a harder time "seeing" where the shot originated. So I guess what I'm thinking is with all the environmental aspects ( location/ weather /atmospheric conditions changing quickly sometimes) the use of a suppressor could have significant effects: some very positive, some very negative.

    Is there a line of thinking like..."Don't shoot suppressed under high humidity conditions." ???? I may be getting down a rabbit hole. LOL
     
    While I sort of already knew the answer I just wanted to get some other thoughts. Hard to say if the use of suppressors has any real advantage on the "down range end" as compared to the weapon shooter.
    Yea, the muzzle blast/flash should be better controlled. So a spotter could have a harder time "seeing" where the shot originated. So I guess what I'm thinking is with all the environmental aspects ( location/ weather /atmospheric conditions changing quickly sometimes) the use of a suppressor could have significant effects: some very positive, some very negative.

    Is there a line of thinking like..."Don't shoot suppressed under high humidity conditions." ???? I may be getting down a rabbit hole. LOL

    The times I have been shot at under 800 yards I could never tell how far away the shots were coming from. In fact it was hard to tell for sure which direction initially.

    Over 800 yards you hear the bullets breaking the sound barrier but at that distance you start to hear the the muzzle report after the bullet comes over.

    Others getting shot at offset from my position it was easy to tell where the shots were originating and roughly how far away because you could hear less of the bullet breaking the sound barrier and more of the report of the muzzle.

    Wtf would you ever not want to shoot suppressed I can't think of a single reason?
     
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    It's not that I don't want to shoot suppressed, just thinking while typing. LOL I'm about to spend more money than I really should.
     
    While I sort of already knew the answer I just wanted to get some other thoughts. Hard to say if the use of suppressors has any real advantage on the "down range end" as compared to the weapon shooter.
    Yea, the muzzle blast/flash should be better controlled. So a spotter could have a harder time "seeing" where the shot originated. So I guess what I'm thinking is with all the environmental aspects ( location/ weather /atmospheric conditions changing quickly sometimes) the use of a suppressor could have significant effects: some very positive, some very negative.

    Is there a line of thinking like..."Don't shoot suppressed under high humidity conditions." ???? I may be getting down a rabbit hole. LOL

    I would think a suppressor would help make it a bit harder to locate - at a long distance - where the first shot came from *especially if comparing dust signature in an urban environment to an aggressive muzzle brake, or flash signature at night. Close in, or when there are no other 'ambient' noises (traffic if urban, equipment running etc...) and I don't think there's going to be much benefit.

    Where people will "boo" me is that I firmly believe, after killing hundreds of hogs, that a suppressor virtually has no difference in outcome of where the hogs go after the first shot. 75 percent of the time they'll run to where their last safe haven was (direction they came from). The other 25 percent is a crap shoot. Ive had quite a few run in my direction while I'm blasting away with a brake too.

    What I'm getting at is that whether your report is 170 or 140 decibels, you're going to be heard pretty well by whatever you're shooting at, especially if it is close. Last time I had a buddy out hunting with me suppressed he shot a hog, and 1.28 miles away (Google Maps) a neighbor texted me and asked if I'd got anything within three minutes of the shot.

    Leaving out the obvious benefits to the shooter and everyone in the immediate vicinity, I'll agree with you that their effectiveness downrange is difficult to say.
     
    @diggler1833 That's what I was thinking all along. Great feedback! Thank you!

    Thanks to all who have shared their info and thoughts. Videos were great as well. Not that I'm huge YouTube fan but it sure helps keep this hobby cheaper. LOL
     
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    I'm quite relieved to see that I'm not the only person who gets weird ricochet sounds out of my 220gr subsonic .300 BLK ammo, when running suppressed. 😂 With my Sandman-S cans on it, the bullets make weird sounds. You hear the ricochet, but you also hear that weird high-pitched twang sound signature coming from the can. I never experienced this with my subsonic 210 Berger handloads, but only with my Berry's 220gr subsonic handloads. Anyone else experience this phenomenon?
     
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    I've got a go pro that I've been looking for something to do with, maybe this is a good experiment. My range runs over a mile.

    Anecdotally, when I've killed deer with a muzzle loader, there is definitely a difference in behavior vs when I'm rifle hunting. Obviously hits do what they do, but a miss or other animals have very different responses to the two. Most deer kills have been with a 308 or the musket going about 1800 fps at the muzzle, by the way.

    So, anything shot at with the rifle reacts as you'd expect. Maybe a slight pause, but they always bolt. Most things shot at with the muzzle loader will literally go back to whatever they were doing. I've shot at the same animal, in the same place, like 5 times with the ML and they don't move more than a few steps, must've bumped the sights on a tree before that.... I've witnessed the same behavior probably 100 times between myself and hunting buddies.

    Same animals, same place, only difference is the muzzle loader season is later so the critters have already been hunted for 2 months and should be spookier.
     
    I shot F-TR for a few years so in the pit with bullits wizzin 4' over your head you had to wear earpro for the sonic crack, that being said the boom came later so I would think suppressed depending on distance it would be hard to tell direction. the video's are misleading because they are so far off center of the shot. Shoot a video from the target... haha