Good luck finding the bullet, that it hit the buoyā¦or proving that I shot itā¦41 years ago. 
Heck, after 41 years, the buoy has probably been replaced ā¦ twice. 
Particularly after it has sunk to water level because someone shot a hole in it with a .357 magnum.
Not. If they sink, they donāt get hit by the boat. When a tow runs over them, the get pushed under water and they slide along under to tow until they get to the back of the boat. Then they either pop back to the surface or get hit by the prop. The damage to the prop can cost many thousands of dollars to repair
It happens often. A fully loaded large tow can be hundreds of thousands of tons and does not react quickly to steering commands. It takes miles to stop a large tow when going downstream. Some of the steering commands have to be initiated long before the tow actually gets to the bend in the river.
Hereās a short video of of a 15 barge tow going slowly down the upper Mississippi. You see a green buoy on the starboard side near the towboat and a red one on the port side farther downstream.
Tows on the upper Mississippi are limited in size. You can hear the narrator describing this tow and comparing it to some of the larger tows youāll find on the lower Mississippi where they donāt have any locks to go through.
This 15 barge tow is 22,500 tons.
My family business involved electrical work of all sorts. We serviced towboats on the Mississippi a lot. Generators and motors mostly, but electrical in general. Iāve fixed many a carbon arc spot light like the ones you saw in that video.
Oftentimes, Iād have to repair something on a towboat while it kept going up or down the river, because the owners donāt want to stop movingā¦costs too much. So Iād get picked up by a crew boat at a landingā¦work on the boat 'til I got done, and then get carried back to my truck at the same landing where I left itā¦or theyād have my truck waiting for me at the next landing when we got near it.
Most times, the repairs didnāt take long and Iād have an hour or so ride in the wheel house. Many times, the pilot would tell me to go to the galley and tell the cook to make me a meal. What a lot of people donāt know about towboat life is that the cook on a large boat is often the second highest paid on the boat. Captains get big bucks. Cooks get big bucks. Towboat workers eat like kings. Homemade pastries, steaks, shrimp dishes, biscuitsā¦whatever will keep the hands happy. Itās not an easy life being a deckhand, so the food better be good.
Hereās another video taken on a bigger boatā¦on the lower Mississippi. Iām not quite sure yet (Iāll have to watch it again),but I think the bridge shown near the end of the fast-forward portion (at about 6:34) is the new bridge at Greenville, my hometown.
With a .357 hole they donāt sink quickly. At some point and for quite some time, it will be awash near the surface.
Try again, Samm! If you read my post carefully, youād have noticed I was out of .357 ammo. I had switched to .38 special. Also you may noticed that the shots were made at steep angles (probably near 40 degrees upward) and the bullet traveled close to its maximum range before we heard it strike. Plus you may notice that the buoys are made of 3/8" plate steel. Additionally you may not be aware that the river goes up and down in level, often exposing things that sink during high water and are exposed in low water. Finally, you may not know that rednecks will do what they need to do to get sizeable scrap iron to turn into money. The crumpled buoy in the photo was obviously moved to a paved landing area.
Aside: Once, when getting back to my truck after servicing a gravel dredge, I notice a piece of 18" pipe, about 8ā long, laying on the bank. Since it was a Gravel Company landing, I asked where it came from and was told it was scrap from the dredge resulting from preventative repairs wherein they occasionally replace a section of the dredge pipe that is just after the point where the sand and gravel turns as it comes out of the river and heads toward the sizing screens. So I said why not just let me haul it off for you. It sat around my shop for about 4 years before I decided to make a grill/smoker out of it. The grill turned out to be a work of art and a study in heat transfer. I just recently gave it to a friend of mineās son as he is a die hard outdoor cook and my children didnāt want it because of its weight.
Here it is as a grill. The wood handles are long gone and the cypress work shelf and brackets are not installed. All of the flat plates are 1/2" thick. The rest, except for the cap (the only piece that I didnāt make by hand) is 3/8".
If you can see the line on the vertical stand pipe just below the mounting yoke, thatās where the entire grill can spin 360deg. The yoke has a pin the protrudes into the stand.
I still have the trailer hitch that I used to carry it behind the rear bumper (and in front of the front bumper) on my '78 F-250 4WD. The bumpers were also hand made. (Itās the same truck I used to brace myself in 1978 to make the artillery shots in 1978.)
I once had roast cooking in the grill as I went along the highway for two hours on the way to a weekend camping/dirt biking trip.
If Iām lyinā, Iām dyinā! 
Here it is as a smoker. It still has the grill meat racks in it, but I did have a set of four 18" round stainless racks for it. Those racks and the cap with the thermometer came from a standard 18" charcoal grill.
Hereās a view of the front. The engraving says THE ORIGINAL TRUCK GRILLE January 1983
So now you are stealing the buoys to make barbique grills? I bet the statute of limitations on that is a lot longer than for shooting and sinking them. 
They also wonāt sink completely. Unless thereās a hole right through the top there will be air left in them to keep them suspended at some level.
Thatās why they float awash such that a boat can run over them.
Do either of you realize how much these types of buoys weigh? Theyāre not made of plastic.
Once a steel enclosure has enough water in it, it will sink to the bottom. When theyāre floating normally, theyāre already roughly halfway underwater.
ā¦plus, they have to support a thick wire rope that goes to the anchor resting at the bottom of the river.
Youāre grasping at straws here.
I Donāt know about TWR, but Iām not grasping at anything; Iām just giving you a good natured bad time for admitting that you broke the law by shooting a navigational marker. 
So lighten up Nancy. 
Yep. Had I been shooting a high powered rifle with armor piercing bullets, my intent would have been evil. I doubt I put much of a dent in that buoy.
ā¦but Iāve never blasted a country road stop sign with a shotgunā¦or fired at a glass insulator on a pole line.
I did, once upon a time, shoot out every pane of glass in a neighbors garage side window. My punishment was to pay for and install every replacement pane. That was my introduction to glazingā¦at age 11.
So you have a long record of criminal behavior with guns. I hope you are on a watch list. 
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He is nowā¦ . ā¦