Whenever I did this(as a kid) I would fire such rounds into the ground.
Now I believe anyone who gets out in the middle of the night on New Years Eve in the freezing cold to shoot a gun for the sake of making noise has some issues.......
My father and I use to fire a shotgun into the ground for New Years until some wadding got lodged in the barrell. The next blast made the gun resemble a Warner Brothers cartoon with Elmer Fudd.
Years later we found the end of the barrell well over a hundred feet away down a hillside I was clearing. We never bothered with shotgun reloads after that.
Happy New Years to all!