Your worst day at the range?

[Smoke]

I don't see how anyone tops this experience. I also don't see how you kept from dying from exposure.

I'm not sure what you're asking. It's not like I didn't know I was going to be outside in the winter for a significant amount of time. What I wasn't prepared for was to stay "in the field" for a week.

Had I known that was going to happen I would have some extra socks and underwear. I would have brought my sleeping bag and likely my poncho liner.

Thinking back I must have had my wet weather top because we were in Field Uniform which included LBE with wet weather top attached

The first night we all stayed in a maintenance shed on the range. The next day when the rest of the battalion showed up, my room mate brought my sleeping bag and I started sleeping outside. An Extreme Cold Weather sleeping bag is warm, I woke up covered in snow a couple of mornings.

 

[BLACKHAWKNJ]

No really bad days, when I was in the National Guard and the Reserves all the horror stories were ones I heard about, never saw.
1. One time firing an M1911 an indoor range, a case bounced off the wall, wedged between the frame of my shooting glasses and my cheek-OUCH !
2. Bought a vintage Winchester M77, magazine model, first target, at 50 feet-BLANK ! Then it realized the front sight was an after marked addition that looked like a ski jump.
3. Bought a used barrel for my Browning HP, first group at 50 feet-a pattern, not a group. Looked at a fired case-I was shooting 9MMs out of a 40 S&W barrel.

 

[Skeptic 9c]

The day I retired from competition, I was 62, it was a hot day in Florida (and man that's REALLY HOT) on the third stage my front sight and knee both went almost simultaneously. Geoff Who is occasionally tempted by steel plate competition...but I'm over 70 now...sigh.

 

[Camster]

A long ride to the range, taking only my brand new PC 27-7, my first centerfire handgun.
The tenth round that I fired was a squib-the first and last that I've ever encountered. At least I had the sense not to pull the trigger again, but just barely.
I didn't have a dowel to knock it out, so soon I was taking the long ride back home. Thereafter, I was prepared for such things.

 

[bondjamesbond]

Ar15 blew up

 

[TX-Dennis]

The drive from my house to the range is about 25 miles. Worst range trip ever was the one when I got to the range and realized I'd forgotten to bring targets. My range is a private club, and it doesn't have a shop to sell targets or ammo. So I drove about five miles to the nearest convenience store and bought a pack of cheap paper plates to shoot at. Better than nothing. Drove back to the range and stapled plates up scribbling roundish dots in the center for bullseyes. Unpacked pistols and ammo and realized I'd forgotten half the magazines I had loaded for the trip. After finishing up on the pistol bay we decided to visit one of the "full auto" bays and shoot a few shotgun rounds into a cat litter bucket. Yup, I'd forgotten the bucket - and the shotgun shells.

Either that or the time my son decided he wanted to drive us to the range, so we loaded all the guns, ammo, and targets into his vehicle instead of mine. Drove 25 miles to the range and realized I'd left the key card for the gate in my vehicle and had to turn around and go back home.

 

[TX-Dennis]

Ar15 blew up

Ouch! That had to hurt a little.

 

[bondjamesbond]

Nine stiches

 

[Kinman]

I've always had great long distance vision. While shooting black powder muzzle loaders I started getting in the bad habit of shooting over my shooting glasses. I could see the sight picture clearly as well as the target at distance, my glasses messed me up somewhere between the rifle and the target. Peep over the glasses and everything is crystal clear. One of my rifles had a particular hooded front sight that made it even more difficult with glasses on. I shoot mostly American made or custom built rifles but do have a Lyman Great Plains rifle which is made in Italy and therefore metric threaded. I have spare nipples for all my rifles and decided to change nipples on the one that currently was giving my sight problems. I went through my kit and found a nipple, gave it a touch of anti-sieze and lightly threaded it into the drum, it went just fine...I gave it a fairly firm tug with the nipple wrench and got back into shooting. I fired probably a dozen more shots, got down behind the peep sight, peeped over my glasses and touched off the shot. Immediately I was hit in the eye with a hot blast, I jerked upright, my buddy came running over, I could see out of the eye but it was tearing up like crazy and seemed irritated. We looked at the rifle and could not find the nipple, we never did...(I laugh about it still being behind my eyeball). What had happened is I had put a metric nipple which is just off a couple though, ever time I fired it backed itself out of the threads until finally it blew. Fortunately my eye was behind the sight disk which is nearly an inch across, still the hot gas blasted through the aperature of the disk enough to scar my lens. Eyesight is very precious, I've always been careful by wearing shooting glasses but this bad habit could have been catastrophic. When I went in for a yearly eye exam the doc said I had a slight scar in the place where I was positioned, I have to work with it today, moving my eye around a bit to get a clear picture.
I've had trying days dealing with members and non members, they are usually responsible for a great day at the range turning into a job I don't get paid to do.

 

[bummer]

It was in 1988, I was stationed at Peden Barracks Germany. I was selected for an M16 qualification with night fire in Vilsek or maybe Wildflicken.

We left post at approximately 4AM and arrived at the range at 8AM or so. Four hours in the back of A Duece and a half in a German winter.

By the time we got to the range we were in a blizzard. The targets past 50 yards were invisible. Since everything in the Army takes longer than expected they decided to keep us there overnight. We had no tents and no sleeping bags.

The next morning, the battalion commander decided that instead if bringing us back he was going to send the rest of the battalion down and do all small arms qualifications at once.

We ended up staying there for 5 days. My roommate brought my sleeping bag but I had no change of socks, no wet weather gear, no shaving kit (and believe me they expected us to shave daily) none of the comforts of home.

I never left post again without an overnight bag at a minimum.

Probably Wild-Chicken, we went up once D 1/48 inf (84) to have a qualification day and night and all it did was snow. We would take turns going up to the range tower and huddle around a burning candle

 

[LVSteve]

I'l refer y'all to an earlier post on the subject. http://smith-wessonforum.com/138710642-post8.html

 

[desi2358]

I have forgotten to bring ammo for a gun, brought the wrong ammo and forgotten targets (or the stand for them) a couple times over the years. Had a bad reload shove a bullet into the forcing cone locking up a revolver once. Not sure what caused that, there was powder in the case but it didn't ignite, possibly got contaminated somehow.

I have also had a sight fall off, the lug for the loading lever on a cap & ball revolver vanish and a ramrod on a muzzle loading rifle break. On the plus side while policing up brass in front of the firing line I have found a couple muzzle brakes. The worst experience was a CETME rifle self destructing with surplus Indian 308 ammo. I would describe it as the gun had a convulsion, mag blew out, smoke came out of every crevice and the bolt was left jammed halfway back..... the extractor disappeared, probably went into low earth orbit. Both gun and ammo had just been purchased from Century Arms and after some discussion back and forth they had me return the gun to them (didn't ask for the ammo but I sent the ones that were left jammed in the mag). They did replace the rifle and gave me a credit for the ammo.

 

[The Norseman]

Basic

Worst day Shooting, March 1982, Basic Training Qualification. Long
march to the Range, Rain, Sleet, Snow, everyone/everything
wet, cold.

Targets would not work correctly, not falling when hit. I couldn't tell if
I Qualified or not.

I think they gave me the Qualification because they knew I could
operate and make the M16 work, they knew I could shoot and they
knew I was from South Dakota.

 

[mmb617]

I pulled the trigger on my Security 9 and the magazine blew out the bottom of the gun. It turned out that my balance beam scale had slowly lost it's zero and I hadn't noticed. Since I wasn't sure exactly how far back the problem started I pulled all 900 rounds I had loaded at the time.

All that got broke on the gun was the magazine baseplate, and I didn't get injured so a reasonably easy but important lesson was learned.

 

[Texas Star]

M-49 S&W snub wouldn't group at 25 yards. Other guns shot normally that day, so it wasn't me.

I returned the gun for a M-36 that shot fine. Yes, I could shoot snub .38's pretty well at that range.

In the USAF, I was handed a vintage Colt Official Police that didn't shoot to the sights and wouldn't have qualified, but changed to a S&W Victory Model and coped.

Colt barrels often need turning a bit. Askins told me he had to turn most bought for the USBP when he was firearms chief there.

We got some Colts and many Victory Models from the Navy until enough Combat Masterpieces were available.

 

[5-Shot]

Last Thursday. A group of us very old guys go to the range and shoot a while, retire to the comfy seating area and lie to each other and then head out for a fast food lunch. We've been doing this every Thursday for years. But last Thursday we discovered when we arrived that the range at Buds gunshop in Sevierville was closed! and will likely remain locked up for the remainder of the month. You'll be pleased and proud to know we maintained a stiff upper lip and headed to the lounge area.

Ed

 

[SW Gun Guy]

Grabbed the wrong bag of magazines & my wife's Mosquito had zero mags. I also had not brought the gun that went with the mags I did bring.

All my semiautos now live with a mag in the well.

Roger that. I like to load as many mags as I can the night before. I carry the extras in my shooting tackle box. But I still always leave an empty bag in each gun in the safe in case I leave those loaded mags laying on the floor in the office.

 

[Gamecock]

Another thing I do is to always carry at least 2 guns to the range. Any random event that stops me from shooting what I want to, I've got another ready to go.

 

[AzShooter]

Today. While testing my Ruger Black Mamba I started getting failures to fire again. The LLV 4 Barrel just came back from Volquartsen after being tested and no problems found except for the Guide Rod being bent.

Today I started getting FTFs using Mini Mags, Blazers and Aguilas.

On my last shot I noticed there was a gap between upper and lower.

I called Volquartsen and was told "I've never seen that before" but they will look into it.

 

[rubiranch]

Never had a bad day at the range. However this was my best day at the range, with my four daughters.



They are, Kenny's Angels".

 

[BRL40]

A nice spring day and I'm getting ready to plink with my Ruger Blackhawk .41 Magnum on a hillside.

Reclined in such a way that when I supported my wrists with my legs, the barrel/cylinder gap was between my knees.

Felt like I got smacked with a couple of 2"X4"s at the same time!

Hobbled back to the car and I was done shooting for that day.

 

[Protocall_Design]

File that one under "Things you only do once". Experience is what you get right after you need it. Sounds painful.

 

[pawngal]

Kenny, I bet your daughters distracted any other shooters! Hopefully none of them got a piece of hot brass "down their front" That hurts.

 

[rubiranch]

Kenny, I bet your daughters distracted any other shooters! Hopefully none of them got a piece of hot brass "down their front" That hurts.

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWPfQdzTgqM[/ame]

Here's my daughter shooting my 640-1 loaded with .357 Magnums.

 

[PALADIN85020]

Honestly, I only had one bad day at the range - the rest were, as usual, enjoyable.

I had brought a newly-acquired Winchester Model 9422 chambered for .22 Magnum Rimfire to the range, which was about 20 miles from my home. Opening my range bag, I discovered that I had brought .22LR ammo by mistake.

So I returned home to get the proper ammo, resulting in miles traveled to and from the range that day as about 80. When I finally got the rifle sighted in, though, the results were very satisfactory. It was one of those days you resolve not to repeat for sure, though.

John

 

[Neversink n Klapperthal]

in 1974 I was shooting a pre 64 243 with a stainless target barrel,and tight chamber. A fired case was being stubborn,so i gave the bolt handle a very light and gently bump. Off came the bolt handle,as if it was made of pot metal

 

[dscampbell]

Non LE related 1974 I got a used Mauser 8 mm and some surplus Israeli rounds. Fired three rounds and realized they were tracer rounds as my target was on fire.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[pantannojack]

My worst day at the range happened quite recently this year. At a govt agency controlled range where you sign in, pay the five bucks, then hopefully obey the safety rules, I went out with the gang to hang targets then walking back to the line where a nut case with three teen aged sons was uncasing a few rifles. Major violation and a lesson for the boys that safety rules just don't matter. Once my Adrenalin stabilized I retired to the pistol range hoping for better luck. There I saw a first timer to my right load and immediately carelessly pointed his auto pistol right at my midsection so he could read what is stamped on the slide. I retreated to the office where the yellow vested RSO's hang out to complain. One official remarked: "On a public range you have to accept that." I want to go higher up but I know that will do no good other than to get full range closure.

 

[swsig]

I've never had a really bad day at the range. My range is very well run, as it is owned and staffed by former LEOs. I always take two pistols and shoot at least 100 rounds each. That way, even on a not-so-good day, I'll have at least one good target to admire.

 

[Papa32129]

Two weeks ago!
I was at the club Range and the RSO.
Called me out for pointing a firearm at the 10' high side Berm.
Slide was back on the pistol.
Gave me warning for not keeping the firearm pointed down range.
No shooters to my left.

I packed up and left early.


Papa