No, the steel was at the minimum safe distance (7-8 meters from the shooter) required by the IPSC rules, it was a level III match. I was also standing to the side and behind him at like a 30 degree angle from the target (I was helping out at the range). Just a strange fluke of angles and so forth.

When we use metal plates (outside of poppers) they are always set up at an angle so that they lean a bit forward at the top to ensure that ricochets don't come back at you. So it was likely off a popper.

It's actually a golf thing. When one makes a divot (hunk of grass from an iron thrown up from the fairway), one should replace the grass back over the scrape so that it can grow back - and replace one more, the one some craphat didn't.

Many moons ago I worked as a caddie, so learning the rules of golf and course etiquette are now second nature. I still cringe every time I see someone throw a wedge or putter across a green into the frog grass or to another player.

Sorry but too many posts and I don't have time now to
check the whole thread if this has been mentioned
already, but it is, if you think about it, logical:
if a bullet hits something softer, it will penetrate;
something harder, it will splatter. Something the same
hardness, it will bounce. A friend of my father's
discovered this, playing around out of curiosity,
in about 1962. He was lucky to survive as he'd put the
the lead plate square to his position, and the bullet
went past his ear so close he could hear it.

Hats also keeps it from going behind your safety glasses and cuts down on the amount of lead that settles in your hair.