What calibre? What grain?

How far away was the shooter?

What was it shot from?

Did the bullet hit bone?

Was the bullet tumbling when it hit?

I have heard stories about people who have foreign objects left in thier bodies from accidents, etc. Sometimes the items work themselves out.

On the other hand, if the bullet is near a joint or against bone, then it could be very painful indeed.

The real question is would the bullet stick or just pass right on through the victim?

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An African sparrow or English sparrow? Or was it swallows?

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Swallows.

But Mike has an excellent point. Some ammuntion goes straight through a victim and does very little damage (comparatively). Some ammo, though, is designed to spread out on impact, making the wound bigger, more painful, and more dangerous. And the gun itself probably would matter, both because of its projection abilities and the ammunition limits each weapon has.

So, basically, we need to know more before we can really help you.

http://www.rit.edu/~smo4215/monty.htm

The answers to the questions is another question, what would it take for something to occur in line with what Josh has said, namely, "If the bullet is surrounded by soft tissue and is firmly lodged, you might not feel anything at all if the wound is well healed"

And what kind of gun and bullet would it take to stick instead of passing through?

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For those unlikely few who don't know about European and African swallows, go here, scene 1.

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That gets into medical now. That depends on how it heals and/or where the bullet is. If it heals enough where the nerves aren't being so completely obstructed that they can't compensate enough for the changes, then you'll feel it (which is the most common case). But then if it heals in a way where the nerves can compensate almost entirely, then... well... you might forget you were ever shot (watch Ripley’s once in a while, you'll hear about stuff like that all the time). This all depends on many different factors, most are not all that easily determined... sometimes it's just a complete fluke...

"And what kind of gun and bullet would it take to stick instead of passing through?"

Well… you have:
The .45 cal
http://tri.army.mil/LC/CS/csi/m1911a1.jpg

9mm (the usual military and law enforcement standard in pistols)
http://www.noda-ya.com/sinseihin/4sin0316/9mm.jpg

.38 Special
http://www.a-human-right.com/RKBA/_lifesaver.jpg

And the chart of their rounds
http://www.civil-defence.org/products/ballistics/photos/bullets/bullets_l.gif

All of those can actually follow in your scenario, it all depends on a lot of different factors of ballistic information... distance, angle, wind, etc (taking into consideration the amount of tissue in the leg)... fair to say... there's enough factors that all goes into it, that you could pretty much just pick the "pretty gun" and no one would find any reason to question what you say it happened to do. I'd probably just go with a .45 cal though...

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In the story so far, the POV character just sees a handgun. In time he decides to make a run for it, and the bad guy shoots him in the leg from behind...

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OK, that gives something to start with. Since it's not the wild west for the guy to hit him at all with a handgun, he's probably within 25 yards.

That means it is unlikely that the bullet would stay within the leg unless it hit a bone.

That hurts. A LOT, and even if the wound is immediately magically healed he might go into shock. At the least, I would expect him to hit the ground long enough for the bad guy to get close enough to pump some more bullets into him.

I was once driving down the freeway (for MaryRobinette's sake, coming out of the Vista Ridge tunnel onto 405) and in one of those freak encounters saw a man limping off into the bushes with his hand on his leg and a bright red spot on his pants. As I came through the underpass and up onto the freeway I saw a cop car parked to the side of the road and an officer standing there with a gun drawn, pointed at the guy. It occurred to me the man had just been shot, and was still trying to escape. I don't know if that helps your writing vignette any, but it's an illustration that even with a gunshot wound to the thigh, the guy could still walk... as long as you don't sever an artery or shatter the bone...

Several years ago I had a bad fall when climbing around some rocks at a park and did a pretty good number on my left hand. Some of the dirt and gravel got embedded into the tissue and ended up healing in there.

Now, this is soft tissue and muscle on the palm of my hand, and it isn't near any major connections or anything, but from time to time (maybe once or twice a year) it hurts like blazes for a few minutes, and we're talking ten years on from the incident. Even if the pain is psychosomatic it's still an occasional annoyance.

A key factor in whether you go into shock is whether you get hit by the first shot fired at you or a later shot. Once someone starts shooting at you, your body reacts in some important ways that make you faster, stronger, and somewhat impervious to minor injury. If you get hit by a bullet a few seconds after the first shots are fired, and you're already running, you may not feel even a very serious (like, fatal) wound. Of course, if the bullet blew off your leg, then you'd notice that, but it still might not hurt much before you died.

So that's my answer. Your guy starts running away, gunman yells and fires a few shots, on the fourth or fifth shot he basically gets lucky and bounces a round into your guy. Your guy probably notices this, but he's too scared of dying to worry about being hit in the leg. He may or may not be aware that it was a ricochet, you can leave some details realistically fuzzy.

A wooded scene might work as well or better. It would be more realistic to try outrunning an armed pursuit if there were a lot of trees and stuff, and bullets can be slowed down by hitting branches and stuff just as much as by bouncing off walls.

If the scenario is open terrain and a hit on the first shot, then the gun has to be pretty darn weak. A .22 pistol would fit the bill. The bullets are often slow and inaccurate because the round is actually designed to be fired from a rifle barrel, whereas .22 pistols often have barrels only a couple of inches long, so most of the energy is wasted since much of the powder burns after the bullet has already left the barrel.

As for what the bullet looks like, that depends. Various bullets are designed to do different things. Events between the bullet leaving the barrel of the gun and hitting the target can make a big difference too. If this thing is going to cause a non-catastrophic wound, though, then entering the guy's leg shouldn't affect it that much.

The biggest thing, though, is that the wound is healed "magically". I don't know what you mean by saying that, but once you heal the wound magically, all bets are off. The guy's muscle tissue could be "magically" bulletproof so that penetration would be superficial. His subcutaneous fat could be "magically" cushiony so that even with a bullet lodged in there he'd feel nary a twinge of discomfort. His skin could be "magically" hot so that the bullet would have melted and reformed into a dull spheroid.

Once you say that the wound has healed "magically" then that can do pretty much anything you want to the bullet.

The viewpoint character is so terrified by what he sees, he forgets all about the gun and bolts. It's an open field. When he's shot, he falls.

1) Perhaps the bullet has something about it that would allow the bad guys to track the POV character.

2) Not knowing he has a bullet in his leg could cause problems for POV-C when going through metal detectors at airports or security check points.

They're obedient to a fault. They're told, 'See that he lives', and they heal the protagaonist without removing the bullet.

Later, one of the bad guys will have a change of heart, and extract the bullet by "magical" means and find an unexpected use for it.

Call it fate, or happenstance...

Generally speaking, it feels like getting hit with a hammer. How big a hammer and how hard depend on the type of weapon and round. Usually you won't feel the kind of stinging associated with a penetrating wound, the nerves that report piercing/penetration don't tend to survive long enough to report much of anything during the initial event.

In other words, the initial impact simply feels like an impact

But if a round hits you at a low enough velocity you can feel the sensation of being cut/pierced. So it all depends. As per above, you might not even feel it at all.

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By the way, Miriel, if you can see it, why don't you try cutting it out?

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*shudder*

You know, I usually don't have a problem cutting out splinters or other things of that nature...but not something that has already healed over.

I also have a piece of graphite imbedded in my hand from a pencil accident in second grade. Mine happens to be in the middle of my palm, though. Considering that it causes few problems (it aches if I cough really deeply, strange I know), I'm not willing to go through the pain of cutting it out. If it causes major problems, a doctor can do it under local anesthesia.

Oh, and I've never been shot. Sorry for helping to derail the thread.

I'd guess that being shot, as Survivor has said, would be like being hit extremely hard.

I didn't feel any piercing/penetrating pain at first, just pressure. Even when I pulled the nail out, it didn't hurt, per se. Only when my eyes told my brain what my nerves were trying to signal to it, did I realize what had happened and I started to feel pain.