With all the disturbing news (terrorists, anthrax etc) I thought I would try to lighten things up a little bit. With that thought in mind this thread asks members to contribute some of your STUPID things you have done while out hunting/shooting. Stupid things by you, your hunting partners, guides, practical jokes, etc. Anything goes as long as it is NOT a serious problem, nobody got hurt and people can get a good chuckle out of it.

After 30 years of hunting big game I have more than my share of stupid chuckles so I will start the thread. This spring I bought a single shot handgun chambered in 243 Win. It has a nice 2X7 scope on it. I worked up a good load for it and practiced all summer long on ground squirrels until I was confident of my shooting ability out to 200 yards. I have a permit for antlerless whitetail deer and thought it would be fun to take the deer with the handgun. When the season opened I took all my gear and setup in a haystack to watch a gain field until dark. There were a lot of deer in the field and finally several worked their way with in easy range (125 yards). I took my coat and balled it up to use as a rest, set the handgun on it and prepared for the shot. I picked out a nice fat dry doe, waited until she was perfectly broadside and gently squeezed off a shot. At the shot the deer looked at me for a few seconds and took off for parts unknown apparently unhurt. I went and looked for signs that I had hit the deer until it got dark and could not find any. I went and got the rest of my gear from the haystack, walked to the truck and headed for home still trying to figure out why I had missed the deer. On the way home I happened to look at my coat and was shocked to see a 6 inch hole in my NEW hunting coat. I then realized that when I balled up my NEW hunting coat to use as a rest, the side of the coat was just high enough to be in the way of the bullet but not high enough for me to see it through the scope! It�s no wonder I missed the deer, but I sure killed my coat deader than a doornail! My wife had just bought the coat for me for my birthday and has I was driving home I was trying to figure out how I was going to tell her I had killed it on only the second time I wore it. When I got home I told her what had happened and boy was she mad! To add insult to injury she was NOT mad about the coat, she was mad that I did not get the deer! Go figure!!

[This message has been edited by mtelkhunter (edited 11-08-2001).]

I thought I had it ruff!

------------------
http://www.rifleshooter.com/

You are not alone. Saw the same thing happen at a public rifle range awhile back. Guy was attempting to sight in a rifle and didn't have any sandbags or anything. He talked his wife into letting him improvise a rest with her (apparently new), lavender "ski jacket". At the shot he blew about an 8" hole in the shell of the jacket. It blasted the Dacron insulation 10 feet in the air. She put on such a mad that all of us guys pretended we didn't see a thing.

------------------
"shoot 'em if you got 'em!"

I have heard of but not seen this incident.
A couple of guys were culling some roos (yes they are not all cute and cuddly especially if you're a farmer), One guy sees a big roo about 250-300 metres out and reckons he can hit it. The two guys have a bet and so he uses the side tray of his ute (pickup) for a bench. He is shooting slightly down hill and yep you guessed it. Big hole through opposite side of pickup tray.

We are very carefull not to emulate this new form of automotive body styling as we shoot using this rest when culling ourselves.

HunterDown: I've seen that done with the shooter on the roof of the pickup. Nice crease! LOL! Dutch.

A cousin of mine and myself had taken this guy out to help him get a mule deer. The guy we took out was a hopeless shot. We were driving along and spotted a mule deer feeding out in a field. My cousin told the guy to get out and lean on the hood of our truck and shoot. The guy shot several times and missed. We saw the bullets go into a hill side about 30 yards from the deer. We thought this guy was really hopeless. It was when this fellow jumped back in the truck and we started off when my cousin noticed the streaks across the hood of his truck from the bullets that were just fired. My cousin was sure pissed off!

Daryl

Ok this is really stupid.

Fell out of a tree during archery season, two years back, reaching for a water bottle I had hanging. No safety strap!

Why is that soooooo stupid?

Because, I did it back in the middle 90s too. First time was a rude awakening...the "second time" I hurt my knee, knock the wind out of myself, and severally bruised my pride.

That safety strap really isn't all that uncomfortable.

Heard of a guy culling impala in Zimbabwe with a Ruger Mini-14.

He rest the barrel on his toes, and blew one off.

The man with him said the shooter started doing tap dancing, with a loaded rifle's muzzle swinging in every direction!

------------------
saeed@ emirates.net.ae

www.accuratereloading.com

I shot a muntjac in the half light of dawn 2 years ago. It was at about 50 yards and as I pulled the trigger it took a step forward. From the animal's reaction I thought I might have gut shot it. I followed it as it ran 20 yards into a small thicket. It didn't come out the other side so I got on my hands and knees and glassed the area. I saw it's flank underneath in the shadow of a large holly bush and taking careful aim shot a trophy beech log! The deer then got up from it's couch and I shot it.

Had a colleague with an BRNO ZH Combo.

He tried to shoot a hare, resting his gun on the roof rail of his VW Passat Wagon.

As you can imagine, he blew a load of pellets in his roof - and the pan remained empty... ;-)

Greets

Kwagga

Was showing a friend the "Creedmoor" position of pistol silhouette shooting, where you lie on your back, knees up and rest the barrel of the pistol against the side of your leg. Guess I must have thought that keeping the muzzle AHEAD of your leg was obvious.

No, he didn't shoot himself, but he did put a nice hole in his trouser leg.

I can't remember which magazine this was from, but I recall an author discussing this same subject.

He said the dumbest thing he ever saw was a guy at the range who had purchased a new flintlock and was trying to sight it in. I guess that this guy could not get the thing to go off, so he peered down the barrel and held a lighter to the nipple for some LIGHT!

Oh and he would have seen it too had our brave author not been there to stop him.

OK here's a really stupid one-

Last night I'm putting a new scope on my Mossberg 695 and it is late and my 3 year old has absconded all of my screwdrivers to somewhere else. Anyway so the only one I can find after about a minute searching is just a tiny bit too small. I mean just a tiny bit...

Well y'all know the rest of the story! Fortunately it didn't cam out or anything but it did raise the shoulders of the screw and you have to look closely to see it, but it was still a stupid thing to do!

I know a very fine young man from RSA who was shot in the TOP OF THE HEAD. By a fool shooting over the roof of his pickup. He luckily survived but a life changing accident all the same.
We see many trucks out here in the west with a hole from the same situation in pickup boxes.

I did a great one last Thursday. VERY windy....looking at antelope from out side my Tahoe. Resting the spotting scope on my arm........door on Tahoe open.........RIGHT THUMB TOO near door opening.......wind closes door......You got it! Worst part is...... the door LOCKED on my thumb! VERY luckily my passenger hit the auto unlock quickly. I saw GOD!!! Nearly passed out from the pain.

Next day went to the ER to have it drained, had to go again yesterday. My right thumb is a real sight! Looks like a red pickle! About the size of a 10Ga shot shell too.

FN

At an indoor pistol range in South Houston that I used to frequent, a local school would bring their security guard students to train. One student continually ignored the warnings of his teacher not to use his index finger to prop up the barrel of his pistol. He no longer has this problem now that he sent the end of his index finger downrange.

While in Longview, Texas, I worked in a gun store. One morning a couple of guys bought a mini 14. That afternoon, they returned with their rifle whose stock was now broken.
They said: "It made a loud noise, and jumped out of my hand and won't open."
We had to use a hammer to open the bolt. The action was full of mangled brass. We used a dowl rod to knock out the now two inch long projectile. - Don't shoot 30 carbines in a mini 14 223!

------------------
RC

How about shooting a revoler using a tree as a rest to steady the gun against the side of the tree. Be carefull of flying bark. I could not belive I had done such a stupid thing only thing hurt was my pride.

When I was fifteen and into bow hunting. I took the insert out of the arrow shaft which happens to have a hole in the bottom of it. Then preceded to pour 700x shotgun powder into the shaft until it was full, then put the insert back in and put a federal 215 primer into the insert a screwed a target point into it. I shot it into a tree. What a hell of a bang luckily no shrapnel hit me. Stupid things you do on a farm when your a kid.

Of course we never did anything dumb. Well, almost never!

There was this time on a hot California weekend, while in our early twenties, a friend and I took our families camping by a creek.

Part of the day's entertainment was taking our combined arsenal out for target practice. My M1 carbine was first. Then my friend brought out his 03A3 Springfield.

As he fired 3 shots I thought to myself "How odd! I can actually see the bullets flying through the air". Then it was my turn to fire three. Again I saw one or 2 bullets flying towards a tree surrounded by brush. Suddenly I saw smoke. Then the brush pile burst into flames. As our daughters were jumping up and down yelling "fire, fire!" we grabbed some blankets, dunked them in the creek and raced up the hill to the burning brush. We beat the flames which were almost up to the tree branches savagely but without success. Luckily for us, a couple of local boys saw our plight and came running up the hill with pails of water from the creek. The fire was quickly extinguished, but what a close call! We had almost started a forest fire.

I asked my friend to show me the rest of his surplus ammo. Sure enough, there were tracer rounds mixed in. Naturally, he felt a little foolish. So did I for not recognizing it earlier.

Soon thereafter a Forest Service truck with the blinking cherry on top and siren wailing pulled into our campsite. He asked us what happened and what we were shooting. Then he asked if we shot tracers. With straight faces we both said, "Absolutely NOT". He checked the empty brass on the ground and shook his head. With a stern voice he told us that we came close to paying for a forest fire and perhaps even for the county airport that was uphill from us on a plateau.

Needless to say, our families were unimpressed with our fine display of marksmanship.

The other time was when another occasional poster on this board, was visiting us here in California. He and I were test firing new 44 magnum loads. My houseguest volunteered his prized patch-decorated jacket for a pad to rest the 10" barreled Ruger on. After about 2 or 3 shots the jacket was aflame resulting in a big hole on its back. I doubt he wore it on the plane ride back to Germany the next day.

Talk about a hot load!

Here is another one that I bet I'm not the only one here who did-

As a kid using a tree as a support for a 22 autoloader, once I fired it and the gun jumped forward! Then I doscovered that if you shoot around the right side of a tree everything is cool, but if you press forward and shoot on the left side of the tree the bolt comes back and smacks the tree. Fortunately I had a loose grip so the gun moved forward rather than breaking off the bolt knob. Oh, and it left this line of scratches that the gun still has.