Your Most Serious Danger Situation?

Not a BP story. Tripped over a python the size of a small log rammed the barrel of my M-60 in mud. Had to change it and watch for bad guys while laying in mud--Snake left. Tom

Most serious problem(s) I've seen involve powder containers and pilgrims on our shooting range. They'll light up a cigarette, walk right past the big "No Smoking" signs and lean over the loading bench to watch you load. That and the occasional new muzzleloader shooter that loads at the line and leaves his powder can on the shooting bench (uncovered no less).

most personal, serious, situation where there was some dangerous condition or actual accident within the context of this forum...

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Within the context of this forum...
Had a guy shooting next to me who was smoking while loading.
Seen folks walk downrange while the range was hot.
Cut my thumb on my flint a few times.

Outside the context...
LOTS!
The scariest ones involved;
a negligent discharge of a 12ga about a foot from my face
gas explosion in a converted coal furnace
motorcycles
an oxy-acetylene torch

Pretty much any time my wife asks me how something looks on her or if she looks fat... :nono:

My worst have all come at the hands of new hunting partners. Too numerous to detail, and best to summarize by saying I'm VERY careful about who I hunt with.

These days I put in a lotta range time and casual field time with friends before I ever consent to hunt with them. Even after someone has passed that hurdle, they get ONE screwup, and no chance for more. I'm a gun safety Nazi, and there are no second chances.

BTW- The three best hunting partners I've ever had were all gun pros, having learned their trade in law enforcement where they have to work around each other with drawn guns and high tension. Whatever safety training they get, it's good.

My boss was given the opportunity to go on a dove hunt offered by the parts store he mostly did business through. It was a 2 day guided hunt.

Our second day after lunch the guys began drinking. That afternoon we went out to hunt. There were too many guys and too much drinking for me to feel comfortable so I went off in another direction in the trees and hunted rabbits instead.

I really couldn't believe that drinking before hunting was deemed a good idea by so many people, including the guys running it!

With shotguns whirling around and such I had to boogie!

I love drinking much like many others, but that's when the day is done. Usually when the skinning part is to begin.

Not BP related, but a friend of mine and I were deer hunting several years ago when he pulled the trigger on his .270. The report sounded "different". He ejected the empty and noticed it was a .30-06 shell.

As a kid in Ga long ago I got the idea to use black powder to blow a gopher hole. Should've used a fuse. Lost half my hair, both eyebrows and burned my hand.

At the range once had to chase away a smoker who wondered up to watch me load my flintlock.

Once climbed up into a wood tree stand while deer hunting. It was on the side of a hill. The upper side was only a drop of 8-10 ft to the ground but was covered with a very old jumble of grave markers and broken slabs. The down side went a lot farther with a creek at the bottom. After and hour or so I found myself falling; the whole structure had collapsed. Fortunately I fell way down the long side to the ground. The leaf litter was several inches thick and my landing was gentle as jumping face first onto a feather mattress. I did have the presence of mind to cast my rifle away from me as I fell. Neither the rifle nor I had the slightest blemish after a fall of 15ft. If I'd fallen on the other side it probably would have been permanent.

the oxy-acetylene reminded me when i was still in school we were in the metal trade class and i walked up on a class mate with a balloon the size of a big watermelon,he ask me if i had a lighter i ask why. he said he had the balloon filled with oxygen and acetylene and wanted to see it pop! i told him it would go off like a stick of tnt. so being a dumb ass 16 year old redneck he and some other guys went out back of the shop and put it in a big brown paper bag twisted the end lit it and ran back inside the shop. when it went off the blast knocked the big roll up shop door off its rollers the 4 foot high pile of metal plates we had been welding on was scattered everywhere and a old army truck we were working on had some of the metal plates sticking in the doors. and no one in our class knew anything when the entire schoolhouse came to see what had blew up in the metal trades shop.

At my previous job I was a propane delivery driver. Got T-boned by a bread truck one day while I was 80 percent loaded with propane. I walked away with a small piece of glass in my hand from a broken window. Thanks to the man upstairs!

The Man upstairs is awesome and quite compassionate isn't He?

I've gone hiking up Enchanted Rock, which has a vertical side. Being young and dumb I had to go to the edge to see what that height looked like. The granite gravel caused by erosion caused me to slide to the edge. I can't say why I didn't go over he edge. I should have. Someone decided it wasn't my time. I'm very thankful for mercy!

What happens when you make a mistake? Do you give yourself a second chance? Ain't a man alive that hasn't screwed up and will again in the safety department, safety is habits learned that keep us alive when we aren't thinking so good. MD

Flatwater said:

...trigger on his .270. The report sounded "different". He ejected the empty and noticed it was a .30-06 shell.

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Sure it wasn't the other way around? Shouldn't be able to get a 30-06 shell in a .270 as the neck is too big, but the reverse will work easily.

Of course it's not uncommon for people to reload .270 on 30-06 brass. Enjoy, J.D.

I once fired a 25-06 in a single shot .257 Weatherby by accident that had been reamed out to the bigger case and not re-stamped to the new chamber. Talk about fire forming a case! It split the case in the shoulder but there was no other damage. MD

Once had a heart stopping moment on the club range when 2 shooters (from another club)suddenly took off towards the 50 meter targets. At this point no'cease fire' was propperly declared (flashing lights + making sure that everyone noticed and placed their guns on a rest) ... Another shooter (standing with his back towards the 2 others)and unaware of the fact that they went forward, shouldered his gun and fired. :shocked2: When he fired the 2 guys where already half way the distance... It all happened so fast actually no one of the other people could react fast enough... We added additional safety measures (a horn) on the range afterwards... This was a stiff leason in environment awareness on the range! :hmm:

Sunkmanitu Tanka said:

Once had a heart stopping moment on the club range when 2 shooters (from another club)suddenly took off towards the 50 meter targets. At this point no'cease fire' was propperly declared (flashing lights + making sure that everyone noticed and placed their guns on a rest) ... Another shooter (standing with his back towards the 2 others)and unaware of the fact that they went forward, shouldered his gun and fired. :shocked2: When he fired the 2 guys where already half way the distance... It all happened so fast actually no one of the other people could react fast enough... We added additional safety measures (a horn) on the range afterwards... This was a stiff leason in environment awareness on the range! :hmm:

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I used to belong to a local club with excellent facilities. Covered firing line, club house with heat and AC, concrete shooting benches”¦”¦ The system in place for going down range is a series of loud bells and flashing lights that can be turned on and off by any one of several switches located the length of the firing line. In addition to the bells and lights, most of us made sure that we made visual contact with other shooters to be sure they were aware the line was closed. (All shooters acted as range officers)
Most of the membership was/is blue collar. One of the exceptions was a millionaire from another town. This guy, since he could afford to, had hunted all over the world with some pretty impressive artillery. Along the way, those big rifles had made him deaf as a post. He could never hear the bells. It was always a good idea to make double sure that he was aware the range was closed. Even after he would wave acknowledgement, there was a better than even chance he would crank on off while someone was downrange changing targets. I reached the point that if I saw him on the line when I arrived I would promptly leave and if he showed up while I was shooting I would leave. Unlike some of the BOD, I didn’t care how much money he had. I considered him dangerous.
T’aint a problem for me anymore because I will probably never set foot on that particular range again.

Go to you tube and search for 2009 lobsta fire explosion.

Every Fall we have a lobster bake at the A/O vous,
I helped Gomer light a line of powder with flint and steel :nono: (I'm holding the steel :youcrazy: ).Good thing we both had glasses on!
We will never do that again We were lucky, minor burns to the hands and LOTS of singed hair.
It still is pretty funny and a great what not to do video.
Nit Wit

If we're speaking of close calls while using muzzleloaders or components i can only think of 2 instances. One was about 20 years ago when i arrived late to my deerstand on opening day of blackpowder. I climbed up and sat down, only to then realize i'd removed my nipple for cleaning and never replaced it. I hurried out of the stand, was gonna bolt back to camp and try to get back soon as possible. On the trail back, i had to sneak past a buddies stand and while i trusted him to not blindly shoot at the sound of me going by in the thick brush, i didn't count on me jumping a small buck up, between us somehow. He fired, a single shot from a TC New Englander, and i almost came out of my skin. I though he'd shot at me..which he did, in a way. The buck had stood up between us and at the shot, the deer dropped. i emerged right behind the still kicking deer, knowing i had about 30 seconds before he reloaded. You shoulda seen the look on his face when i said, about 5 seconds after he fired."Nice shot! Don't shoot again"

Another time was when a scoutmaster brought an old family Springfield musket to scout camp and the Range Officer proclaimed it good to go, then handed the old gun to me to test fire. We spent the afternoon shooting the ancient musket with increasingly heavy loads..it held up fine but i think about how dumb that was now..no ear or eye protection even..was in the mid 80's..dark ages..

I'll relate a couple and then my thoughts.
1. I owned a Winchester94 (old type) with no cross bar safety. To unload rounds from the tube you feed them in and out of the action. I did this at the end of the day, my finger was off the trigger but the cuff of my jacket caught the trigger and the gun fired. The muzzle was pointed down and the round went into the earth about 6 feet away.
2. On an earlier occasion the person I was hunting with had a bolt action shotgun (Mossberg) that took either 2 3/4" or 3" shells but only the 3" fed correctly. The lips on the magazine were such that the shorter 2 3/4" would hit the top of the chamber. At day's start, near the vehicle, this other person was swearing and trying to ram the shorter round into the chamber and he did and the gun fired at the same time. As luck had it, I had just bent over to re-tie my boots and I felt the blast go over my back.
Both of these were years ago (40 plus) when I was a kid.
CONCLUSIONS
1. The danger isn't while hunting, it is around vehicles and camp at the beginning and end of the day. Loading and unloading weapons is a big area of accidents.
2. A lot of accidents involve other people.
3. What to do????
Hunt by yourself. Leave and reenter camps or parking areas with an unloaded gun. Start out and walk five minutes and then load. Unload in the same area on the way back. A lot of accidents could be eliminated.

Canute had this one elsewhere (that I'm sure he won't mind my copying over).


"What Alden wrote about bad match cord goes double for me...

I'd say that the number one safety threat to matchlock shooters is the crowd of other shooters who pepper you with questions while you are loading. Distraction is the enemy.

I had an accidental discharge once because I got distracted by multiple questions and failed to blow away the excess priming powder after closing the pan*. The piece was pointed downrange the entire time, of course, but it was embarrassing."

*On a matchlock there is a pan cover which after closing usually gets grains of powder between it and the barrel and on top while you're closing it on a priming-powder full pan. You are supposed to blow away that excess powder before:

a) putting your slow match in the serpentine and

b)before "trying your match" which is slowly lowering your match in the serpentine onto the pan cover to make sure it is lined up and will go into the opened pan when you pull its trigger, squeeze or move its lever, or press its button.

Well, bad sputtering match cord or just hot ashes from it falling onto even a closed pan with loose powder can surprisingly light the whole loaded gun off. Beside the unintended firing of your loaded firearm, there's often the loss of the pan cover and vent gases going in a direction they were not intended!


Land Pattern had written this...

"(sorry my english)Negligence or bad luck ? a few weeks ago,I was shooting my friend's matchlock (an ECW reproduction)at the local shooting club, when the ashes at the cord end interfered and the prime charge didnt burn... so I left the trigger, the lock arm picked up, and while I was going to close the pan, a spark "jumped" from the cord right into it, firing the musket... it hit me strong on the neck, so 10 days of pain there..."