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The bullet bow shockwave is the result of air being greatly compressed at the front-most tip of the bullet as it slices through the air. As the bullet moves forward a broadening wave of the compressed air trails out diagonally from the bullet tip and all sides of the bullet sides creating a conical waveform. This conical waveform may be audible to a witness as a whip-crack sound.

A bullet bow shockwave can be heard by any witness as long as the bullet speed is faster than the speed of sound, whether the bullet was fired from a weapon giving off an openly audible muzzle blast, or a mechanically-suppress-fired muzzle ( silenced weapon) blast. If a bullet is fired from a silenced weapon, a witness can mistake the bullet bow audible shockwave whip-crack for the weapon muzzle blast audible wave, which is a separate, slightly preceding, audible event.