A Little About Noise -- Updated Link Fixed

Recoil does not bother me too much.  Muzzle blast does bother me.   Growing up, I thought hearing protection was for sissies.  OK, so now I'm a sissy.  Actually, I have survived with a considerable amount of my hearing intact more by accident than design.  One reason I can still hear is that most of my youthful shooting was done with a .22 rimfire rifle with a fairly long barrel.  The second reason is that during some of my less prudent post-college years my circumstances precluded much shooting at all.  A third reason is that somewhere along the line I bought a pair of very comfortable earplugs with metal baffles in them.  I used those plugs extensively and exclusively for years until the silicone finally came apart.  I liked them because I could hear pretty well with them in but they kept me from flinching.

Many years ago I was briefly involved in what might be called law enforcement, and I had to qualify with a shotgun, a handgun, and a rifle.  The standards were pretty lax, and most of us in the group of twenty or so passed the tests easily enough.  A few had trouble with the rifle course and had to have two tries.  The shotgun qualification was brief and amusing for almost everybody.  The handgun qualification was just plain fun.  Except for one man.  He was a small, slight fellow who seemed a little nervous all the time.  Apparently he was terrified of the  ancient — even then — Smith and Wesson M&P (Model 10) .38 revolver he was handed.  He failed his first attempt at qualifying.  He failed a second attempt.  Since the handgun portion was not a big deal — in fact firearms usage at all was not a big part of what we were employed to do, the instructors set the rest of us down and took the man alone to the handgun course in an effort to coach him through to qualification. 

As we watched from a safe distance, his problem was obvious.  Allowed to fire that smooth old Smith in single-action, and despite having excellent hearing protection, he was contorting his entire hand as he appeared to be trying his best to back away from the revolver.  Occasionally a round might strike the full-size human silhouette target, but most threw up eruptions of red dirt on the backstop far wide of the mark or on the ground between the shooter and the target.  It was painful to witness.   It was even more painful when the instructors gave up and sent the poor fellow on his way.

I would guess that the leading cause of misses for most people is The Flinch.

The noise issue is one that our friend John brought up a few days ago, and it applies to both the shooter and the environment.  If you live in a rural area with a relatively sparse population, most of your neighbors are not going to know if you fire off a .22 rimfire rifle or shotgun, but they are likely to notice if you start target-practicing with a .308 or .30-06.  There are two components to the report of a firearm, the most obvious being muzzle blast from the exploding powder.  For a shotgun that is typically contained mostly within the chamber and barrel.  The relatively heavy load of an ounce or more of shot in a long barrel tends to use up a considerable amount of the blast from a shotshell.  The same is true of standard velocity .22 rounds from a rifle.  In fact, for .22LRs, in a barrel longer than the optimal sixteen inches, muzzle velocity decreases in some cases.  If only everything we made were so efficient. 

The second element of noise from a firearm is the sonic boom as the projectile accelerates past the sound barrier.  The speed of sound in air is usually quoted as 1126 feet per second.  My Remington #8 low-brass game loads claim a muzzle velocity of 1290 fps which is transonic but not by a lot.  Some of my .223 rounds exceed three times the speed of sound.  A .30-06 round, especially from a shorter barrel, like 18 or 19 inches has a huge muzzle blast plus it is accelerated to more than twice the speed of sound.  I know from experience these are very loud — crack of doom loud.  I have a .30-30 with a 16.5 inch barrel.  It does not burn as much powder as the '06 and barely crosses twice the speed of sound, but it is loud enough to freak out a disagreeable and contentious neighbor even out here in the boonies.  Again, I know that from experience.

You can create a subsonic load for almost any rifle that can be both quiet and effective at shorter ranges.  These are Frank "Paco" Kelly's famous "silent loads".  I can't find his "Silent But Deadly" article, but this one is about light loads — kind of interesting.  Greg Mushial has an extensive list of low velocity loads here  — specific calibers are listed on the right left side (d'oh) of his page. 

Paco's formula was to use a soft cast bullet that is heavy for the caliber, e.g., a 60-grain bullet for a .22, 100-grain for a 6mm, or a 200-grain bullet for a .30 caliber and load the cartridge with a small amount of a pistol powder like Bullseye, Unique, or 2400.  Usually you work up to a load.  But Paco worked backward down to a load that would just clear the end of the barrel.  He would occasionally stick a few, so it was always important to check the barrel during load development.  A crude explanation is that all the propellent gases and explosive noise are "eaten up" getting the bullet out of the barrel so there is little to no blast.  Being subsonic, there is no crack, yet you have a fairly substantial piece of lead flying along at pistol velocities from your rifle.  These are not high energy loads, obviously, but they will do quite well for eliminating pests and vermin without upsetting the neighbors. 

I sometimes get on a kick of using reduced loads in my .223 NEF single-shot to mimic a .22 Hornet or .22 magnum load, but I am not trying for silent, just "kinder and gentler" so I often use a 40-grain bullet and Blue Dot or 2400, whichever I happen to have the most of at the time.  Last time, it looks like I used 40-grain Sierra Match King bullets and somewhere around 13 grains of 2400 — NOTE:  I am not recommending this load or suggesting it would be safe in a particular rifle.  


I have used Remington subsonic .22LR rounds in my Savage Mark II on small game, pests and varmints.  In some cases, particularly on squirrels, the subsonics performed quite well.  The bolt-action Savage, of course, has no problem cycling such rounds and is both quiet and accurate.  In other cases, on armadilloes digging up the yard, for example, I found subsonics to be somewhat less effective than higher velocity rounds.    You just have to find what works.

Noise, especially loud noise, is a good way to attract unwanted attention.  Filling out the paperwork and getting registered for a silencer, which is legal in many states, is a way to attract the government's attention.  That should not be the case, but it will put the purchaser on a list.  I would like to be as stealthy and low-profile as possible, not because I am doing anything wrong but because I am shy and introverted.  Or whatever.   Thus, there is a certain ineffable attraction to weapons that don't disturb the neighbors or the local fauna. 

I am in the process of making my own longbow, but I have been "in the process" for the last two years, and it isn't done yet.  I have a quite serviceable compound bow that I shoot on occasion though not nearly as much as I should to be proficient.  Recurves, longbows, compounds, and crossbows are all quiet and very effective at taking game or removing undesirable pests and varmints.  The crossbow is obviously the easiest for most people to master.  Good crossbows are fairly expensive but so are good compound bows these days.  A bow will take down anything that walks.  Arrows and bolts are reuseable and can be made by hand if necessary.     

Another quiet option is the air rifle.  Air rifles have changed a lot since the old Red Ryder BB gun.  It is easy to acquire a good one which is accurate and powerful enough for humanely taking small game and eliminating pests.  With no requirement for powder and the ammunition being easily storable in large quantities, a quality air rifle or pistol might not be a bad addition to the arsenal of the stealthily prudent. 

There is no way to silence a revolver, despite what is frequently depicted on television and in the movies.  Also, a "silenced" firearm is hardly silenced, it is suppressed.   That is, it is not AS loud, but it is still pretty loud, especially in larger calibers.  And with rifles, you still have to deal with the sonic boom, though, I will say that it is much harder to figure out the point of origin for a suppressed rifle even with transonic rounds.   The sonic boom echoes off objects as the projectile passes and thus tends to confuse the ear. 

Once again we consider the benefit of a good old .22LR.  From a rifle or an autoloading handgun with a barrel of six inches or more, the report of a single .22LR shot is unlikely to attract much attention even in a fairly populated area.  If someone shoots several rounds, hearers might start to realize a firearm is being discharged, but one round could be mistaken for a door slamming, someone using a hammer or the classic "car backfiring".  If there is other environmental noise, say, on a warm Saturday morning, when people in the 'burbs are mowing their lawns, a shot or two is even less remarkable. 

Power is good.  As Ruark said, "Use enough gun."  But there is a down side to using more gun than you need that includes recoil and noise and potentially unintended destruction.  Prudence says there is no need to waste energy or powder or whatever when the same job can be accomplished while expending less.  One of the arguments for reloading is the ability to produce reduced loads for centerfire weapons that will provide more versatility and are less likely to draw attention to the shooter.  Sometimes it is fun to shoot a heavy-recoiling weapon, and sometimes it is not.  Sometimes we like a big boom; sometimes we like quiet.  In every case, it is wise to take some of these points into consideration when planning for the years ahead.