Bad luck stories of shooting/reloading/gunsmithing

[johnfred1965]

A good friend was gracious enough to allow me to hunt on his family's farm. He gave me directions to the back gate, and advised me to walk from there to one of his stands. The path I followed was the wooded edge of a cattle field. At one spot, the woods opened up into some tall grass. I look over and I see a deer head with a beautiful, perfect 8 point rack. I stared and stared at it and it never blinked. I pulled my rifle off my shoulder and not even a twitched ear. Finally I figured my buddy was playing a trick on me and had set his decoy right on the path he sent me on. I shouldered my rifle again still without a blink so I knew it was fake. I took two steps and up jumps the biggest bodied buck I have ever seen out hunting, showing me nothing but a white tail waving "Goodbye, DUMBASS!" I didn't think my friend would ever stop laughing!.

 

[hillbillydruggist]

A good friend was gracious enough to allow me to hunt on his family's farm. He gave me directions to the back gate, and advised me to walk from there to one of his stands. The path I followed was the wooded edge of a cattle field. At one spot, the woods opened up into some tall grass. I look over and I see a deer head with a beautiful, perfect 8 point rack. I stared and stared at it and it never blinked. I pulled my rifle off my shoulder and not even a twitched ear. Finally I figured my buddy was playing a trick on me and had set his decoy right on the path he sent me on. I shouldered my rifle again still without a blink so I knew it was fake. I took two steps and up jumps the biggest bodied buck I have ever seen out hunting, showing me nothing but a white tail waving "Goodbye, DUMBASS!" I didn't think my friend would ever stop laughing!.

I was coming home from work late one night, in area that is “world famous” for their duck hunting. It was the night before modern gun deer, on the side of the road i saw a Huge deer standing dead still on the side of the road. Assuming the area,the time, and size of deer i was sure it was a deer decoy. I pulled off of the side of the road about 100 yds away. Just waiting on the wardens to come out, then slowly the deer walked across the road! It was real!(of course I wasn’t going to hunt/shoot it)

 

[338 Mollett]

Oh Boy ! Now we are getting into hunting stories ,let me get out my list .

 

[johnfred1965]

Oh Boy ! Now we are getting into hunting stories ,let me get out my list .

Oops, didn't mean to knock us off course!

 

[Capt. Oblivious]

My dad decided he wanted a silencer on his lite weight CZ 300WM, no problem any decent GS should be able to spin up some thread on the front. Dad send off the rifle and silencer to some unknown that the shop suggested, 2 months later rifle came back and I almost dropped dead when I saw it.
First they couldn't get the front sight off so they proceeded to heat the thing to the temperature of the sun, sight came of but obviously the factory blueing did't like the heat so about 8 inches burned away, easy fix off course just slap some cold blue on there to give it a nice 2 tone look, then they hooked him up with the wrong thread for the Silencer (pitch or what ever it was), here they decided to first try and rectify the problem on the silencer itself and when that failed they just chopped of a inch of barrel and started over. Thread done they focused on the silencer again as the barrel is now a little thicker after chopping of the front bit and some how managed to get the silencer and barrel to work together and leaving just enough of a mess on the back of the silencer to make sure you remember them every time you "try" to screw it on.

Same poor rifle was bedded in such a way that the thing struggled to hit a target at a 100y let alone leave any sort of group on the target, luckily with a beer or 2, a little bedding compound and a dremel I sorted that abortion out. First time I saw you bed half the recoil lug and the other half you just use electrical tape

 

[Adam in WI]

Forgetting that the Hornady powder dispenser has an opposite sequence than my old Lee (Handle up to drop powder vs handle down). I picked the handle up to recharge the measure. Of course there was no pan ready to catch the 38 grains of Benchmark escaping...

 

[Joe Maisto]

Forgetting that the Hornady powder dispenser has an opposite sequence than my old Lee (Handle up to drop powder vs handle down). I picked the handle up to recharge the measure. Of course there was no pan ready to catch the 38 grains of Benchmark escaping...

And I ruined 4 lbs. of great powder. Inadverdantly poured 1 lb. of VV 133 into a 3 lb. Container of RL.-11, one of the great ones I have had since the 60's, and was using it as well at short range BR in my 6 PPC, with decent results as well. Now I can bury it...

 

[rjtfroggy]

Back before Al Gore invented the internet I had a Browning high power with a broken firing pin spring, dropped it off at a very slow gun smith to have it repaired. After a couple of months I stopped in but was told it was not ready and to come back in two weeks, well in the interim he had a massive heart attack and passed away. After about 5-6 weeks of family and friends rummaging through all his stuff his sister placed an add stating anyone with an item in the shop to come on the week end with your claim check to recover your item. Even with my claim check I never got my hand gun back it was no where to be found.
Someone got a very nice unblemished little 32 auto and I got nothing except a visit from a detective from Ct. S.P. to take down all of my info.

 

[MislMan]

I was thinking about painting the bottom half of the drain ring flourescent orange. Should help to make sure I check it.

I have the ChargeMaster Lite. I wrapped an anti-static wrist strap around the powder hopper and attached a label saying “Check Drain” to the strap. The wrist strap provides dissipation of static and the note is staring straight at me when I go to fill the hopper. I guess you could place a sticker on top of the hopper cover just as well.

 

[T-shooter]

Years ago I got a new Firestorm/Bersa 22LR pistol.It was a little sensitive to underpowered ammo. I tried a few, then bought a brick of Thunderbolt. It cycled fine. After a couple hundred rounds it was key-holeing at 7 yards and couldn't hold a 10" group. Hmmm??? Took it home to clean and looked town the barrel. No rifling visible in most of it. O.M.G. What I found was a layer of lead, some of it so thick that when I got it out, it maintained it's shape and had the rifling imprinted on the back side. After a few hours I got all of it out without damaging the barrel. Glad I didn't fire any of it in my rifle. I never fired any of it again and sold the crap for about half of what I paid.

 

[Tim a]

had just got an rcbs uniflow powder so start load 223 with no problem decide i want to loads some 38 spl so take it apart clean all the rifle powder out. set it up to throw 2.8gr bullseye with 148gr wadcutter load 50 rounds then the next day for some reason wanted to load more 38's but not using the powder measure so i us the lee dippers well i look at the case and realize the 50 i loaded with the powder measure looked like they had more powder. so i take one apart and come to find out it had 12 grains of bullseye in them. so look at the powder measure and some parts had come loose and were never tightened back up before load. so had to pull apart 50 rounds. fun fun fun

 

[Plumsask]

I was aligning a magnetospeed chronograph using a piece of a cleaning rod. Got distracted by another range member and when I came back to my bench I had totally forgotten about the piece of rod in the barrel and I proceeded to send one down range. Witnesses claim to have seen a two foot flame come from the muzzle and I I instantly knew what I had done. Luckily noone was injured, pride was hurt a bit. Barrel was damaged and needed 3" cut off and a recrown on a 6 creed barrel with less than 300 Rounds down it. I'm still angry with myself over that one. On a side note the pressure opened up the last 3" off the barrel to the point that you could drop a 6mm bullet through it with no resistance........

 

[338 dude]

I don't need to tell anyone that setting a 209 shotshell primer on the floor and tapping it with a hammer is a bad idea. I knew a kid (~14) that tried it.

When my brother and I were young we used to take 22 caliber blanks for nail guns that my father used in construction and hit them on the road with a hammer for laughs it was great and then one day a piece of brass flew out and hit my brother in the stomach dropped him like a rock

 

[338 dude]

I was aligning a magnetospeed chronograph using a piece of a cleaning rod. Got distracted by another range member and when I came back to my bench I had totally forgotten about the piece of rod in the barrel and I proceeded to send one down range. Witnesses claim to have seen a two foot flame come from the muzzle and I I instantly knew what I had done. Luckily noone was injured, pride was hurt a bit. Barrel was damaged and needed 3" cut off and a recrown on a 6 creed barrel with less than 300 Rounds down it. I'm still angry with myself over that one. On a side note the pressure opened up the last 3" off the barrel to the point that you could drop a 6mm bullet through it with no resistance........

I arranged to acquire a new barrel for a range member from another member that I knew for a 65 Creedmoor when I asked about why he was replacing the barrel on a fairly new rifle he told me a story and it was the same story that you just told me it bulged the barrel about five or 6 inches from the muzzle

 

[TAJ45]

Bulged bbl, yep, circa 2005, at the outdoor range. A guy brought his brand new .260, ss pencil bbl, put bore sighter spud in . . . fiddled around, put it back up - almost. Spud? What spud?
It looked like a garter snake with a 3" hot dog in it.
Never found the spud.

 

[Capt. Oblivious]

When my brother and I were young we used to take 22 caliber blanks for nail guns that my father used in construction and hit them on the road with a hammer for laughs it was great and then one day a piece of brass flew out and hit my brother in the stomach dropped him like a rock

My son use to love smashing used deprimed primers when he was 4 or so years old. Every time I saw him I would tell him not to do it as you never know when a unused one might slip in there with all of them.

Sitting in my reloading room one Saturday and my Amstaff lying in his spot sleeping behind me and my son playing lego on the ground next to the dog my wife moans about something in the pool so I put everything down to go look whats going on.

As I step onto the deck I hear boom and I knew exactly what happen, walk back into my reloading room with my son no where to be seen and this Amstaff of mine sitting against the wall with eyes as big as a UFO mother ship. What happen was that my son saw a "unused" primer lying about 2 inches form the dogs nose so proceeded to give it a whack with the hammer. Till the day i gave the dog away he would fly out of that reloading room as soon as my son stepped into it

 

[Twicepop]

.......if it warn't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all, gloom, dispair and agony on me. I have two, count 'em TWO different rifles currently that are in need of some serious gun doctorin'. One is a Savage LA single shot that I had re-barreled to 6.5X55 by what used to be a very competent gun schmidt. He asked how do you want it necked and throated, I told him I don't want to turn brass and I plan on shooting 130-145 grain bullets through it. It got necked and throated for what appears to be military ammo, neck diameter of fired brass comes out at .300-.3005", and I can barely touch the lands with a 142 grain Sierra MK. The other rifle is a Winchester M-70 SA in 22-250 that I took a BLANKin' on, I did some horse trading at a gun show and wound up with this turd. A much closer examination after the fact revealed a totally shot out barrel, so the plan now is a rebarreling to 22-250 AI, plus the stock replacement (wanted but not necessarily needed) and scopes for both rifles. The scopes that were on both of them got "re-assigned".

Another issue about the Savage I forgot to mention. Fired cases from this gun checked with a brand new Wilson case gauge and measured with a depth micrometer come out at -.005". A straight edge laid across the gauge with a case in it shows light between the straight edge and the case rim to verify this.

 

[Just Say Moe]

My son use to love smashing used deprimed primers when he was 4 or so years old. Every time I saw him I would tell him not to do it as you never know when a unused one might slip in there with all of them.

Sitting in my reloading room one Saturday and my Amstaff lying in his spot sleeping behind me and my son playing lego on the ground next to the dog my wife moans about something in the pool so I put everything down to go look whats going on.

As I step onto the deck I hear boom and I knew exactly what happen, walk back into my reloading room with my son no where to be seen and this Amstaff of mine sitting against the wall with eyes as big as a UFO mother ship. What happen was that my son saw a "unused" primer lying about 2 inches form the dogs nose so proceeded to give it a whack with the hammer. Till the day i gave the dog away he would fly out of that reloading room as soon as my son stepped into it

My youngest son was about the same age when he too discovered a live primer (with a hammer) amongst the used ones.