i am worried about ricochets but i make sure to use a large woods or ditch bank for a backstop. if there is not backstop i'll still take the shot if there's not a house within a mile unless the ground's right between a house and me. besides even if it does bounce it's not going to go a mile. it will be tumbling and loosing velocity rapidly. they're not like fmj's in that repect. i'm more intersted in terminal preformance. some ppl say they pencil through and others say dramatic expansion/exit wound. the later is what i want. i can't get 40 gr vmax's to exit at .22-250 velocities. i'm basically going for max accuracy with devistating terminal result. these bullets (smk) are more accurate than any other bullet i've loaded and i want to take shots out to 6-700 yards. the 40 vmax's shoot extremely well too but i would like to try a new bullet for ground hogs.