Here is a good one: Oblivion with any type of weapon!!!

Referring back to the dismay expressed concerning the practice of filling the .30-06 case with H-4831 and then seating the bullet to compress this powder, be advised this is entirely safe when done with bullets up through 168 grains. Unfortunately, velocities are much lower than is standard for the .30-06, but due to the consistent volume of the charge, accuracy usually is excellent.

This method of loading works in varying degrees with powders such as H-4831(old) and slower, but as mentioned, some attention must be paid to bullet weight.

This was a very common reloading practice some 35 or so years ago, when H-4831 was wholesaled as cheap as 30 cents a lb. in 100-lb. drums. At that time, UPS delivered the drums to your door, and there was no HazMat fee. When one is getting decent powder as cheap as 30 cents a lb., one tends to not use other powders.....

Paladin

Here are a couple of incidents:

As a kid:

When I was about 16, growing up in Texas, we belonged to a membership lake north of Dallas where we hunted & fished. Once a school friend of mine & I were up there to go rabbit hunting.

We ran into another guy our age who was also going hunting. This other guy and I were talking while my friend rummaged around in the back seat of his folks' car. I wasn't paying attention to him and didn't realize he was loading his bolt-action 12 gauge shotgun.

The other fellow and I were standing next to the car's back door, facing each other about 2-3 feet apart. Suddenly I heard a muffled "whump" and looked down at the car door. There, squarely between us, and just about groin-high, was a hole some 4 inches in diameter. My idiot friend had slammed the bolt home and shot a hole in his parents' car door. If either of us had been any closer we would've gotten a full load of #6s right in the upper thigh or groin. Probably wouldn't have made it to the hospital.

My friend--who by then was just about off my "friend" list--got out of the car cussing like a sailor, loaded another round, slammed the bolt home, and shot a big hole in the dirt road. I didn't hunt with him any more.

Much later:

I spent 22 years in the Army as a Military Police officer. I was the Operations Officer at Ft. Sill in 1980 when one of my duty officers called me just before the midnight shift was due to go on, and said one of our MPs had shot himself. This was back when we used 1911s, not Berettas.

I went to the station and found out that the young MP had accidently chambered a round after drawing his weapon from the arms room. The procedure was to clear the weapon by letting the slide forward, then pointing the gun into the clearing barrel and pulling the trigger. Then a magazine of ammo was inserted into the pistol. Stateside, our MPs carried their weapons loaded but without a round chambered.

This kid went to the briefing room and was attending guard mount when he looked down at his holster and saw the hammer was back on his .45. He reached down and pulled the trigger, sending a round into his thigh which then exited just above his knee and ricocheted all over the briefing room, narrowly missing several other soldiers before finally lodging in the ceiling.

Seems instead of releasing the slide and loading a magazine, he loaded a magazine and THEN released the slide. Not knowing there was a round in the chamber, he decided to let the hammer down the fast way.

I went to the hospital to visit him, and after being assured he was going to be OK, told him we were going to court-martial him for unauthorized discharge of a weapon and damage to government property--himself and my briefing room. Naturally, we left him off with an A/C and time served.

I know almost for a fact there is not one MP briefing room or gate shack in the Army inventory that doesn't have 2 or 3 holes in it.

This one is a little different. Years ago I was down at the local gunsmith picking up some primers and having our usual bs session when a guy comes in hard up for money. He has 5" shell casing thats about 4" tall. The gunsmith looks at it and says, it looks like you have used this for an ashtray. The guy says yea. This shell is used to ignite bag charges in a 5" gun and it still had a live primer in it. The primer was about 1 1/2" in diameter!! Fuzz

I was at the local gun shop, when a guy came in with a powder measure for Black Powder.
The know-it-all owner put the charge in the balance scale and pontificated that it was 35 grains. The problem is that Black Powder is always measured by volume, never by weight.

I was hunting with a friend, who had brought along his buddy. While we were trying to sneak through knee high grass, I noticed that his friend had his Winchester 94 on full cock. I told him about it, and he said that it was ok, because the deer could hear it when he raised it from half cock. We never hunted with him again.

One time, while out with my brother in law, we were loading our 94 rifles prior to setting out to the deer stands. As he was lowering the hammer to half cock, on a loaded round, it slipped and went all the way home. Fortunately, it did not fire, as he was pointing it straight at my stomach, 2 feet away. I ripped him a new one.

Once at the public range, a loudmouth, know-it-all, big-shot wannabe was shooting tracers and set the berm on fire. I saw him do it, he looked around and, confident that the range officers had not seen him, he began to yell that the berm was on fire. The officers picked up anything they could and made a 110yd dash to put it out, while he quitely picked up and left. They were PISSED!

At a local indoor pistol range, the guy next to me was teaching his girlfriend how to shoot his semi-auto. She was wearing a peasant blouse, and a hot casing went down her bra. She was busy hopping around and waiving the pistol with her finger on the trigger, while he was desperately trying to grab the pistol. I also saw this same thing on a different range, where the girl was in hotpants and cowgirl boots. The casing went down the boot with the same effect.

Once, on the public range, the range officer came up to my loading bench, where I was loading Black Powder. He was smoking, and I asked him not to. He got all huffy and made like he was going to flip his hot ash into my open 1# can of powder. I almost got him fired for that one.

Another good story!! My buddies wife worked here in Ohio as a emergency operating room nurse! During gun week here in Ohio a guy came in that had shot himself in the thigh pulling his 1100 12ga. up into his stand. The trigger had caught on a branch and discharged . My buddies wife was talking too the now drugged-up guy as they awaited surgery to repair him when she asked"how the #@&* did you manage to shoot yourself, pulling a loaded gun up was stupid enough and espeacially stupid that your safety was off" His reply" It missed me the first time it went OFF"

One more I forgot. I was at the Police range on a public shoot date. When the line was called cold, we went forward, and upon returning, we heard shots. THE RANGE OFFICER, during a cold line, was shooting into a canal behind the firing line, in the opposite direction. A road was behind the canal.

I thought that a range officer should set the example...

Years ago, I managed to buy a Winchester 94 Big Bore Angle Eject in .356 Winchester, rare as hens teeth down here in New Zealand. Interesting story how it got here, A bloke wanted the same rifle but in .307 Winchester, so the gunshop got one sent from the distributor. The guy collected it from the store with a packet of .307 ammo, but when he shot it at the range, the group looked like it had been fired from a shotgun. So he took it back to the shop and the guy in the store saw .356 on the barrel. They seem to think an Olin Employee had put a .356 in the box marked .307.

I have a lot of these stories, some stupid, some tragic. Here is a stupid one that could have turned tragic:

Male and female deputies respond to a house alarm. Airhead female homeowner is home and doesn't feel safe in her own home, so she requests the deps to search the house. Deps split up with bubble-brain female dep going upstairs.

Bubble-brain goes into a bedroom and opens a closet door. She sees someone inside and shoots the person. It turns out who she shot was was a caricature of a cowboy. She missed the cowboy and hit the pony he was on. Round goes thru pony and closet wall, ending up in a child's room. Fortunately, the child was gone. Dep was suspended and made to attend patrol tactics training.

While I was in the Army and stationed at a nuclear weapons storage site in Germany, one of the bunkers was open and two infantry-types were inside it guarding the open bunker and whatever might be inside.

One grunt gives his M16 to his partner (for whatever reason), so he can go take a piss. Once the guy was gone, the partner decides to play a trick on his friend. He drops his partner's magazine out of the magazine well a bit and waits till the guy comes back into the room.

The guy comes back in. The grunt with two weapons "pretends" to chamber a round, points it at his partner, says something stupid, and pulls the trigger.

I was the first to arrive. The victim was lying in a pool of blood and long dead. Since this occurred in the uber liberal 1970's when those of color could do no wrong, the shooter was merely reduced in rank to E1 and given a General Discharge.

A USMC Hawk missle crew got to do a live shot. Off the rails it went and far down range, and farther down range & past the drone, and farther down range, and farther down range, and farther down range, and farther down range, and farther down range, and farther down range , and farther down range, and farther down range, and went into the desert out of fuel.

The Hughes Corp geeks all came piling out of their trailer (they monitored each live shot) and said: "We think it was locked onto that airliner 180 miles down range".

Whoops/

From another site:

"When I was stationed at Ft. Knox, a Kentucky National Guard artillery battery got their grid square coordinates wrong during a live fire exercise and wound up dropping a couple of rounds on Ireland Army Hospital- fortunately it was in the area that was under construction at the time.

After that, the Kentucky National Guard wasn't allowed to play with live ammunition for awhile... "

And another artillery "whoops" story:

There is a famous, but probably apocryphal, story about an Australian Army Reserve 105mm battery doing a live-fire at a range called Holsworthy near Sydney.

Actually it was 8/12 MDM REGT, in 1981, and it was just the one 5.5" shell, splashing at a range gate near Heathcoate Rd- nowhere near the reactor. A battery was firing a mission and there were two versions of what happened being told when I was posted to 8/12:

1. The rounds of two guns collided, with one landing outside the range and the other outside the impact area, near some engineers (1 FER) (conveniently moves blame to Dame Fate).

2. One gun fired a 1200ml line error, putting the round near Heathcoate Rd, while the other fired a charge bag short, scaring said engineers.

The story has changed and grown since then (including pinning an ice cream truck to the road and having a whole battery laid on a block of flats in Liverpool). The battery members still in 8/12 in '89 were rather touchy about the subject and didn't want to discuss it- especially not with a RAEME bloke.

At least once, when I was with 8/12, a gun fired a 1600ml line error (at Singleton). Not even the BG and BK picked up the fact that the gun was laid off because it was emplaced on an old scrap metal land-fill- so the prismatic compasses used for the line safety check were all reading off. The detachment commander (SGT) had moved the survey stakes when they emplaced the gun, because they didn't agree with the compass bearings he and the BDR had taken. He's a WO1 now, so it didn't hurt his career at all.

And a mortar whoops:

Not QUITE the same as artillery, but close enough. Anyone who attended Infantry Mortar Platoon Course at Fort Benning, GA in the late 1970's will remember this story. I was stationed in the Panama Canal Zone two years after this incident and it was still related to new officers in their safety briefings, and evidence of the craters were still visible.

The Canal Zone Empire Training Range is primarily small arms ranges with a small impact area with firing points surrounding it. As we only had a single battery of towed 105mm howitzers, most of the indirect fire on the range was from 4.2" (107mm) mortars and the 81mm mortars. Our only restriction for firing was that we could not fire over the Panama Canal, and that the rounds impact within the impact area. There was no "safety buffer zone" because if we had adhered to that Army Safety Regulation, the impact area would have been reduced to about 1km x 1km.

In 1974 a 4.2" mortar platoon moved into a designated firing position in the early morning, just at BMNT. Using their aiming circle they set up their firing position. Here is the catch, as those of you who have used the M2 circle know, you have to verify north using a lensatic compass because sighting through the aiming circle at the small marks can be tricky, and 3200mils reads just like 6400 (0000) mils.

Anyways, the mortar platoon set up in the firing position without check a lensatic compass for verification of north and fired one round each, three rounds total, to settle baseplates. The Forward Observers reported hearing impacts but not observing them. Fortunately before more rounds were fired, one of the observers turned around and looked back ACROSS the canal and saw dust from the explosions of three rounds impacting in the Pariasio Elementary School parking lot. Two automobiles destroyed and the school playground with an impact crater. Again, fortunately, the schoolchildren had just finished arriving and were all inside the school at the time. No casuaties, except the Lieutenant Platoon Leader, the Platoon Sergeant and the Gun Chiefs.

The platoon had been laid 3200mils out.

Wow!!!! 8 year resurrection!!!

quote:

Originally posted by ted thorn:
Wow!!!! 8 year resurrection!!!

Trust a Kiwi to do it.

The same guy did these things... let's just call him Joe.

Used my MEC single stage loader to reduce his Rem 870 to a mangled piece of metal. I found him laying beside the car with a target set up so I know he was testing some "new and improved" load through his new cuts compensator. He suffered a concusion and lost about half his hearing in his left ear. He never admitted to what he was "testing". That was his one and only time he attempted shotgun reloading.

I came out of my deer stand to see what all the shooting and ticking noises were all about... there was Joe with his .357, box of reloads, hammer and screwdriver. He told me that he had loaded some heavier bullets, which needed MORE powder. The hammer and screwdriver were for removing the spent brass. "They're sticking for some reason."

When the new 50 caliber Desert Eagle came out, Joe got one. In an effort to test it's true potential, it had to be rested on sand bags. Not knowing exactly how to do that, he put his left hand on top of his right hand. Upon firing, the slide opened up a nice gash in the web of his left hand. I mean, a good one too. I could see the tendons. After the bleeding stopped, he tried it again. This time he was going to hold extra tight. The gash got larger. I took the gun away from him when he was going to try a third time.

While deer hunting with his 300 Win Mag, he had to make the shot left handed and the stock wouldn't quite go on his shoulder. "I had to put the stock in my arm pit... I figured it would hit the same". Yep, there's a scar on his head for that one too.

I used to frequent the shooting range in Santa Clara County, CA, when I lived there and it was not uncommon to see wild animals (deer, pigs, turkeys, coyotes) on the hillsides behind the target berms. One time there were some pigs up there and some genius on the rifle range shot one. The range officer called an immediate cease fire and demanded to know who killed it. No one 'fessed up so he called the sheriff and a deputy came out and threatened to arrest everbody and confiscate their guns. That convinced the shooter to step up and he was arrested and hauled away. Don't know what happened to him but I imagine he lost his hunting license and his gun.

quote:

Originally posted by ted thorn:
Wow!!!! 8 year resurrection!!!

Yea, but you have to admit, there's some....unintelligent....folks in the world.

Reading these stories all I can say is WOW..just wow.

quote:

Originally posted by 284Win:
Yea, but you have to admit, there's some....unintelligent....folks in the world.

I fear that most of them or maybe an even greater number is still around. Fortunately, the usually encountered average density is lower on shooting ranges than on roads and highways.

quote:

Be assured that I'm not recommending this, but I think it would actually work well. Given that H4831 is a slow-burning powder, the amount that one would load for a max load with a lighter bullet (150 or 165 grains) would fill up the case to the mouth.

When I was in college, my friends and I went together and bought a 100 pound keg of 4831 from Hodgdon for $1.00 a pound (you can figure out how long ago this was).

One of us was shooting a .25-06, and we loaded it the same way, simply dipping the primed, resized case into a bowl of 4831 and seating an 75 grain bullet on top. Since there is no way that you can get an excessive load of 4831 in a .25-06, using bullets that light, we never had a problem, and the rifle shot like a house afire.

I was visiting with my gunsmith friend, Harry Creighton, in his shop, sometime in the late 1950's, when a customer came in with a Lee Enfield, which appeared to have been totally demolished. The stock was splintered and the bolt was firmly wedged closed.

When asked for an explanation of how this mishap occurred, the owner replied that he had heard of hand loading ammunition, and decided to try it himself. He assembled the tools and componants, but found that he had no powder. What he did have, however, was a supply of .30-'06 military blank cartridges, so he simply removed the powder from the blanks, filled the cases up to the neck with the powder thus obtained, and seated the bullets on top of it.

We explained to him that blank powder was the same substance used at the time to fill hand grenades, and that he was lucky to have escaped injury.

Amazingly, the action remained intact and was still useable, after the barrel had been removed.

Fools rush in....

I know this dope who took his 30-06 to the range, fired a shot, wouldn't extract the brass. Fired another, no extraction. Examined the extractor, nothing wrong, fired another, still no extraction. Examined the bolt again then realized that it was the bolt from his 300 magnum. I won't pull that stupid stunt again!

I wonder how long it will take for Walter to find and delete that one.

Once upon a time on the opening day of deer rifle season, there arrived in an emergency room a man who:

1. Was dressed in hunter orange having been hunting.
2. Was drunk.
3. Wanted to kill himself.

Well, I guess he was fairly close to his last goal.

A few years ago while stationed in Kalifornia I was in a local Gun Shop and an elderly Black gentleman came in with a semi automatic in a pouch and wanted some ammo for it. Standing at the same counter I strained a bit to see what he had and realized it was an old Colt mean while the young 'Clerk' picked out a box of ammo and said 'this will fix you up'. I guess it would have fixed him and his pistol up as it was a box of 38 Super +P and his old Colt was marked 38 ACP. I quietly informed the Gentleman what the problem was and the 'Clerk' overheard and said it was ok as they will inter change. I explained about the difference in pressure of the two rounds and the Gentleman gave him back the ammo and thanked me and left. The 'Clerk' said I shouldn't give advice as I didn't work in a Gun Store. Not sure what model that old Colt was but it sure was nice.



I was working at a small Gun Store back home in the mid 80's when a local guy brought in a 22 semi auto pistol in to trade and he and the Store Owner him hawed over it for a while all the time passing it back and forth not paying particular attention where the muzzle was pointing and finally making a trade. The Store owner called me over and handed me the gun to go clean and log into the books, well the first thing I did was drop the mag (out came a full mag) and rack the slide which popped out a round onto the table. After that he put up a sign on the front window about clearing all weapons before entering.

Steve E.......

I went to a gunshow once at a National Guard armory. It was a busy Saturday morning and the aisles were packed. All of a sudden I heard the "pop" of a .22 going off. Someone had picked up a gun from a table and pulled the trigger.

Everyone froze and it got real quiet, real fast. Eventually someone yelled, "Anyone hit?" When no one answered, business resumed.

quote:

Originally posted by tasco 74:
I'M SPEECHLESS.......................................................................<br /><br /> THE 2ND AMENDMENT EVEN PROTECTS MORONS........

Yes, it sure does....yet it's cases like these that gun-control freaks love to speak of to take the 2nd Amendment away!

However, they never think of all the morons misusing the First Amendment, to take it away from them...!

One day at a small club in Pennsylvania, a guy pulls in, in a cloud of dust, hops out and sets up a big piece of cardboard (one side of a refrigerator shipping box) at 25 yds. with a tiny black spot in the middle- the aiming point. We all stopped shooting and stood back to watch. The goof ball unlimbered a M94 and proceeded to lever a full magazine onto his target. The group he achieved was about 3 ft. square and not one shot close to the aiming point. He profoundly pronounced it to be sighted in "good enough for deer", threw the gun (literally) in his trunk and left in what could have been the same cloud of dust from when he arrived, it happened that quickly. My buddies and I were speechless.

Another time, at the same range, a shot went off while we were downrange changing targets. It seemed that a 10 year old kid was monkeying around with his dad's M1 Carbine that his dad had laid down on the bench with a round still up the spout when the range went cold. Needless to say they both got an ass chewing and told to never come back. We agreed that M1 would have looked pretty funny hanging out of the guy's ass!

Someone I know was deer hunting with a friend for the first time. they were walking to their designated spots before sunrise and the guy starts shooting till his magazine is empty. The person I know asked what the hell he was doing and his reply was, "I heard a deer." The guy I know grabbed his gun and shoved him on his ass and told him he was done. That is scary.

At the local range in MN I got a call from the police about an investigation. They were questioning everyone who signed onto the range that day. Apparently someone had shot over the 20 ft birm and the 30 ft hill behind it and planted a bullet right through a farmers barn where he normally sits down to work at his bench. I told them I was a shooting a 338. They were looking for someone shooting a smaller bore rifle. Because of this, the range was closed for about a year. The local police were banned from this range also because they were known for letting rounds fly everywhere.

Was at the gun club one day, testing some deer loads. There was a guy about 2 stations away from me, shooting a nice Remington Pump rifle. After a few shots, I heard him complaining that he couldn't hit the target. I took a break and watched him shoot his next round. After he fired, I observed him struggling to work the action. I went over to assist.

As I approached, the man was able to eject the spent case. He told me that this rifle never shot so poorly before, and he just couldn't figure out what must be wrong.

As we chatted about the gun and the loads he was using, I noticed one of the spent cases on the ground, picked it up, and asked the man what caliber of gun he is shooting. The man replied that his rifle was chambered for 30/06. I asked him if this case was one of his, and he said yes. I then asked him to read the base of the case. It read "35 Rem".

This guy had fired three 35 Rem cartridges in a 30/06 Remington Pump. I could tell he was very embaressed about his mistake, and appologetic for causing an avoidable hazard at the range, so I took it easy on him.

He asked if I thought it had hurt his gun, and I calmly recommended that he not shoot the gun again till he has a gun smith look it over, and to take one of the spent cases with him.

I still have one of the spent cases down on my loading bench.

I saw some blown 308 cases at a range and asked the shooter if perhaps he had the wrong gun? Turns out he was shooting 308 ammo out of a 300 wby.

quote:

Originally posted by djtjr:
I saw some blown 308 cases at a range and asked the shooter if perhaps he had the wrong gun? Turns out he was shooting 308 ammo out of a 300 wby.

Well, at least he had the correct bullet diameter... It amazes me how people that think they are familiar with guns can do this.

quote:

Originally posted by mike_elmer:

quote:

Originally posted by djtjr:
I saw some blown 308 cases at a range and asked the shooter if perhaps he had the wrong gun? Turns out he was shooting 308 ammo out of a 300 wby.

Well, at least he had the correct bullet diameter... It amazes me how people that think they are familiar with guns can do this.

They are called Democrats!