Man loses leg after shooting lawnmower packed with explosives (VIDEO, GRAPHIC)

Graphic footage showing the moment a man in Walton County, Georgia lost his leg while shooting a lawn mower loaded with three pounds of explosives has been released by local police as a deterrent to others.

In the video, David Pressley, 32, moves closer and closer to the unused lawnmower as he peppers it with bullets from a semi-automatic rifle. 

Pressley and his friends had filled the lawn mower with three pounds of Tannerite, a binary explosive that can be purchased legally in Georgia and – when mixed – ignited by gunshot.

Shooters should be 100 yards (300 feet) away from their target per pound of Tannerite, local sheriff Joe Chapman told USA Today.

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Pressley was just 14 yards (43 feet) away from the lawnmower when it exploded and a piece of flying shrapnel hit him, slicing his leg off below the knee.

In the gruesome footage, blood spatter hits the camera lense as Pressley yells: “I blew my leg off!” Another man shouts: “Call an ambulance!”

Pressley is still recovering in hospital from the incident, which took place on March 19.

Many videos of people improperly using the explosive mix can be found online.

Sheriff Chapman says he receives several complaints about the explosive on a weekly basis, and released the graphic footage to demonstrate just how dangerous it is. “It’s not a toy,” he warned.

A video of a barn being blown up using 164lbs of Tannerite has been viewed over 1 million times on YouTube.