[Little Pig]

“Because this was a heavy bullet its trajectory was an arc.”

This is true for even very light bullets, or any unpowered projectile really, is it not?

[ctdonath2]

All travel in an arc, but for light fast bullets this is negligible at most distances. For slow heavy bullets the arc is more pronounced so it does become a targeting issue. (Weight actually doesn’t matter, it’s just speed ... but a fast heavy bullet will produce intense recoil.)

[Wyrd bið ful aræd]

.45-70 has much more of an arc than many other calibers, or so I’ve been told. Supposedly the Indians took comparatively light casualties during the western Indian Wars after the army switched to .45-70 (160 at the Fetterman massacre compared to 40 or so atthe Little Big Horn) was because the sldiers shoy iver the heads of whoever they were aiming at. I thought yhat was a common problem in all conflicts, but I’m certainly no expert.

[JAKraig]

“Because this was a heavy bullet its trajectory was an arc.”

This is true for even very light bullets, or any unpowered projectile really, is it not?
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Yes, all bullets travel in an arc, sort of.

The reality is that they simply fall to the ground. If you were to shoot a gun level, and drop a bullet at the same time as you fired the gun both bullets would hit the ground at the same time.

Usually we think of an arc as going up and coming back down in a curve, half a sine wave if you will but the reality is more like a quarter sine wave. This is true of anytime you shoot either level or aiming below your straight line of sight. When you aim down it is possible to reach the ground with your bullet before the one you dropped at the same time, the speed of the bullet outruns gravity.

Some people think that a bullet falls when it runs out of energy from the firing in the gun, it is not true. The bullet starts falling the instant it leaves the barrel of the gun. It gets to its target simply because it is traveling horizontally faster than it is falling vertically.

I realize that all sounds counter intuitive but it is true.

[kitchen]

Everything on earth falls at 32 feet per second, per second. For purposes of illustration, if we assume 2 bullets of similar ballistic coefficient and maintaining their initial velocity, a bullet leaving at, say, 3,000 feet per second would fall 32 feet in one second over the 3,000 foot distance. The other, with an initial velocity of 1,000 feet per second, would fall that same 32 feet in one third the distance.

There are a number of components besides velocity and gravity in the real world: wind direction and speed, temperature, humidity, altitude, compass direction are a few. For a 100 yard shot at an elk those factors can be disregarded but for a 1,000 yard shot could be the difference between an exploding whistle pig and an embarrassing cloud of dust.

[trebb]

Yep - gravity has that effect.

4" drop over 100 yards is the same as a .22 LR.