Your funniest range story

Lots of good ones. Unfortunately, many involve safety violations that were only funny long afterward.

One good one: I helped as a Safety Officer at my club when we were hosting one of the Glock Shooting Sports Federation's big matches. One stage I worked you were supposed to start at "Low Ready." To make sure EVERONE understood what that meant, they had an orange spot painted on the ground about 12' in front of the firing line for the shooters to aim at while waiting for the beep. One lady had the course of fire explained to her, indicated that she understood, got the beep, and then emptied her Glock into the orange dot on the ground! There was an astonished silence as the SOs and onlookers all strained their eyeballs to verify that, that did NOT JUST HAPPEN! She was completely mortified when she realized how badly she'd misunderstood the instructions (wonder what she thought we had targets downrange for, anyway?).

Later in the same match I had an elderly gentleman come through who didn't have quite enough hand strength to rack the slide. After much fumbling and changing of his grip every which away trying to pull it back, he got into the strangest position ever. I've never before or since had to give the command, "SHOOTER, REMOVE YOUR THUMB FROM THE TRIGGER GUARD!"

Funny, mostly because we all lived through the weekend.

-Sam

I took my son and a couple of his friends, and one of their grandfathers, to the range for his birthday sleepover weekend. He turned 10 at the end of Sept. We took a few 22lr rifles, my 22 target pistol, and a few large caliber centerfire rifles.
We had been shooting for about a half hour, switching weapons amongst the boys. Giving each a turn with the different 22's. One of my son's friends was up to shoot the only bolt action 22. His grandfather was showing him how to load and work it. It was the kids first time shooting. There were other people at the range by the way. His friend lined up to take his first shot. As he took his shot, BOOOOOMMMM!!!! The grandfather and I were like "what the hell". We looked at the 22, at his son, at each other, and then realised what happened. We were so wraped up in teaching the kids, that we forgot about the other shooters. At the same time that his grandson took his shot, some one on another range took their shot. A 308 or something. We started laughing our asses off as we realised what happened.

Just a week ago I took my Garand out for the first time to the NRA range. After finishing up my first clip it ejects and nails me right in the middle of the forehead (I'm a lefty). I sorta lurched back somewhat surprised and realized that everyone around me was laughing. I just smiled a loaded in a fresh clip.

Kinda cheesy, but I was at a handgun range with around 8 other people. Cadence of fire was fairly steady, no rapid fire. Pop ... pop ......... pop . pop .....

Until the plastic wal-mart bag with the big smiley face blew accross the range right in front of us a few feet off the ground. Little yellow-faced !@#$ was mocking us!

Suddenly it sounded like I was at a machine gun shoot . Poppoppopoppopopopopopppopopoppop!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

People doing speed reloads to finish off the smiling zombie before it was too late, dirt clods kicking up all around, the smiley faced zombie dancin' about from the unrelenting fire .

In the end, we finished it off and had a good laugh. There wasn't much of a smiley face left after that.

The "know it all" brother of my friend's wife went shooting with us for the first time. You know the type. He knows everything and can't be told anything.

He brought his Marlin .22 Model 39 lever action rifle with iron sights to the 100 yard line with us.

As we all got set up to shoot at our respective numbered firing lanes, I asked my friend, "How is he going to see if he hits the target 100 yards away with a .22 when he doesn't have a spotting scope?"

My buddy grinned and replied, "I dunno. This ought to be fun to watch though."

The range ended its cease fire and people began to shoot. We let him fire his first round and then we watched him closely.

He fired his round and then his head rose up like he was going to look to see where he hit. But there was no way he could see that little hole 100 yards away. He sort of pursed his lips and then knodded like he saw where he hit.

I started laughing hysterically. I barely got out, "So where'd you hit? Boy you must have some great eyesight!"

Mr. know it all had to admit he needed to borrow a spotting scope.

I was at a public range in PA, there were several others there also. As we were firing off our rifles, from the woods to the right of us come 4 or 5 turkeys about 10 or 15 yards in front of us. They wee completely oblivious to the noise. They were just intent on finding lunch. We all stopped shooting, and just kind of looked at each other, not exactly knowing what to do. It wasn't turkey season, so shooting them was out of the question. A cease fire was called for, I picked up a handful of rocks and spent brass and threw it all at the birds. They got the hint and ran back into the woods. But son of a gun if they didn't do the same thing ten minutes later!

4 years ago the club Sam1911 ^^^^ and I frequent hosted the Northeast Regional SWAT Competition. The event organizer came to us needing many of us NTI Team members and IDPA R/O's to serve as R/O's for their event. It lasted for a week.

All week long teams from across the mid-Atlantic states spent the week here. The venue sponsor organized the stage designs, we evaluated them for safety, and then ran the teams through.


All week long there were 3 or 4 distinct departments who seemed to have an "air" about them. They looked down on us for not being "among the elite" as SWAT cops, prided themselves as being Johnny-bad@sses, and generally acted like self-important jerks.


Many of the NTI Team Members smoke cigars, and I smoke a pipe. And we were going to be damned if we couldn't smoke our tobacco, outside, on our ranges. All week long we saw the sideways glances and heard the comments about how we were fouling the air. So we'd go congregate in our groups, and they'd stay in theirs.


Finally on Friday one of those, "my body is a temple" SWAT guys approached our group and smugly said, "Ya'll sure do smoke alot around here, don't you."

Without missing a beat, in the same smug tone I replied, "Yup, that's what men do."





I must admit I took far too much pleasure as the snickers became guffaws while he stomped off back to join his buddies.

Well, unfortunatly none of mine are quite as good as the above, I'll give it a go though!

My father, a friend of mine, and myself, obviously, were out at a range, just shooting for fun, trying out some new rifles that we had gotten, and get to one little mil-surp we finally picked up ammo for, an M95 Stutzen or something like that? Took 6 round clips, well either way, we only had 12 rounds for it, each decide to take 4 shots. I start, then my friend, so there were two rounds left in the gun.

Guess he didn't expect as much of a kick from the thing for whatever reason, despite how small it was. He shoulders it, works the action to eject my last shell and put in his first life round. Aims, squeezes the trigger. Bounces back on his feet a step. Turns his head and stares at me, nods once, and just puts it back down on the bench. For some reason, it seemed hilarious at the time, and still gives me a bit of a giggle even now.

If you were ever in Graf, you'll smile at this memory....our troop was running a M60A3 qual at Range 42 I think it was, had a platoon of big boys on line firing their M85's and 240 coaxes, when about 5-6 wild boar just wandered across the firing line, around 200-300 yards downrange. Since the range was hot, didn't take the gunners and TC's long to open up. Funny thing was, none were accustomed to the moving targets at that range...hawgs just boogied along, unhurt. We were in the range tower laughing so hard we didn't bother to issue a cease fire order. This happened more than 25 years ago and I do believe they were Eaglehorse tanks, if that gives you an ID.

If you haven't been there, the wild boar at Graf are legend for rooting through trash cans outside the tent areas at Camp Aachen and other scenic spots. They were also known quite well for chasing troopers after a night of enjoying Naabecher's and our tasty Pils!

Let's see...

After three shots, each of which made the pistol-grip 12 ga. fly out of his hand and over his head, I stopped a guy from ever using it there again.

Asked a guy if he read the instructions for the new gas-operated shotgun he had just taken out of the box and when he lied and said "yes," I field stripped it and walked away when he asked me to re-assemble it...

After student "Rambo" fired a full-sized WWI Lee Enfield .303 and pounded his chest I gave him a little No. 5 Jungle Carbine with its 50-year-old hardened-rubber recoil pad and laughed with the class as tears welled-up in his eyes from the recoil.

After same student "Rambo" fired a Browning Hi-Power for me for the class and orgasmed I showed them, behind his back, that I was loading a dummy-round into the next mag and we all laughed at him when the gun "recoiled" as he pulled the trigger and it didn't go off.

I thoroughly enjoyed cracking a guy in the head w/a clipboard when he kept pointing a rifle into his son's belly.

Watched a guy cry as he fired out the rest of his .454 Casull after I only took one shot. He couldn't deal with the recoil -- it literally made his hands bleed!

Some officer had a mathematical postulate: the safety of any individual shooter was inversely proportional to the thickness of his accent -- accordingly, they would get special help "sighting in" if they asked that essentially guaranteed there wasn't enough ammo in the world to get them back on target and ever hit a blessed thing.

An armed guard questioned why his new gun was key-holing. The pathologic liar "retired" rubber-gun-squad-cop turned "gunsmith" couldn't figure out why the cases were also blown out at the mouth on one side. I pointed out to them he was firing 9mm in a .40 S&W!

To add insult to injury this "gunsmith" was made Director of the busiest sport-shooting facility in the NorthEast and I was offered his job (from which he was eventually fired, wife divorced him and took his pension, kids stopped talking to him, his dog bit him, his new truck was repossesed, he moved into someone's basement, and disappeared from society...).

Warned two brothers testing previously water-submerged ammo that was failing who said they were gonna sell it anyway. I reported them to the attorneys of the big three ammo manufacturers and the Shanty Irishmen Gunshop was soon out of business.

Al

After student "Rambo" fired a full-sized WWI Lee Enfield .303 and pounded his chest I gave him a little No. 5 Jungle Carbine with its 50-year-old hardened-rubber recoil pad and laughed with the class as tears welled-up in his eyes from the recoil.

Click to expand...

My 1st .303 Enfield:

It was QUITE painful! ...and yes, it folded.

Friend and I had a standing bet to finish off every range session. 10 shots each, standing, one handed, with a Ruger Mark 2 10" bull barrel in (22 rimfire) with the course of fire being the 20" hanging steel at 100 yards. We have done this ritual for over two years. The bet could be as little as a coke or as much as the best cheeseburger in town.

We had already finished our high power shooting for the day and were enjoying an hour or so of plinking away with our 22 rimfire on the other side of the range.

Three gents were "sighting in" their high power and muzzleloader deer rifles. We watched for a bit, wondering why they were not really hitting much of anything. Thought maybe they were just sighting in new scopes or something.

They were taking a break and we asked to use the 100 yard gong while they were on break. Two of the three kind of answered and the third said sure, go ahead.

My buddy shot first....with an 8 out of 10 hit ratio. I shot next and banged out a perfect 10 out of 10 in a rapid fire mode. (remember...this has a 10" bull barrel...not much muzzle flip...let alone it is a 22 rimfire).

As we concluded, made the pistol safe, and placed it back on the bench, we both heard an erie sound. Something like a slow rotating helicopter blade coasting to a stop....whoosh...whoosh....whoosh....thud.

We looked down range to see one of the scoped rifles not quite coming to a rest about 35 yards away!

The gent got in his truck and left!!! His friends just kept packing stuff up. Not sure if anybody picked up the rifle...but we left.

Was watching a couple of guys (try to) sight in their big Lazzeroni - I don't know which one, .321 Mastodon Masher, I guess. At any rate, they were so far off the target they ended up hanging a split open refridgerator box behind their target, about 5x6 feet... and were barely able to keep this incredible piece of recoil on that paper. Not dissing the rifle or the caliber, but we were only sighting our guns in for Whitetail deer season...

This incident happened several years ago while I was shooting my black powder revolvers. There were several groups of shooters at our range all shooting modern firearms. It was a snowy and sloppy day not conducive for picking up expended brass. I had arrived before the other shooters and sequestered myself at the far end of the firing line. Blackpowder tends to smoke alot and I was just being courteous not reclusive. About ten minutes after I began shooting my WALKER .44 cal. revolver one group of shooters, a dad, his friend and his son walked over to see what was making the loud booms and clouds of dense smoke. I introduced myself and we started talking about the WALKER. Soon my new friends were shooting my revolver and gushing over its ability to bark with authority. they all enjoyed the WALKER and asked where they could find such a weapon. The father was particularly interested in buying one and asked his son, who was 9 if he would like to have a WALKER. The boy immediately responded "heck yeah Dad," with these guns I don't have to pick up all your stinkin' brass!"

I guess you had to be there...
but C-clamping a ram to the target stand was always good for a hoot.

Also...
We had a "chicken shoot" after each match. IHMSA chickens at 100 yards with a .22 rifle. $1 entry and $1 buy back. There was this friend who (I swear) could break wind on command. One day it got down to me and a guy from Tupelo, and the pot was about 20 bucks. I made my shot, and when the other guy was about to shoot, you could have heard a pin drop. I whispered to Mike, "Fart."
He did, with great gusto! The other guy never recovered enough to stay on target. I split the pot with Mike. He probably bought baked beans with his part.

I have seen several people talking on their cell phones at the firing line.I have seen people carry their target back to the range master, and tell them to resale it because they could not hit it.

dumbest thing, funniest thing, strangest thing, how to grab brass, unsafe people . . we should merge them all into a "List everything you have ever seen or done at the range" thread.

The first time I emptied a 75 round drum.

I got my hands on a Chinese drum mag for my Kalashniclone and decided to waste some money just unloading on a bunch of targets... No real value other than a rare "Hollywood moment" like in Predator...
Me and two of my friends go to the range with my AK, an SKS, and a Ruger Mini-30. and all three have extended magazines but are semi-auto only.
Our local range doesn't have an on duty RO unless there's an event going on, but one of the members happens to live about a 1/4 of a mile from the range. He's also a retired police officer. And a real stickler for rules. And me and my buddies just LOVE to give him a friendly ribbing whenever the chance presents itself... Which is more often than not...
Picture 9:30 A.M. on a lazy summer saturday and we start a full on mad minute of double taps and trigger tickles...
We're doing our best war whoops and are just ripping up the targets that we set from 20-50 feet away...
Sure enough, Gary comes tearing into the parking lot of the club and hops out of his truck, runs up to the back of the firing line and begins screaming:
"There's no automatic weapons allowed on this range!"
I continued firing while yelling back:
"There's no automatic weapons on this range."
We cleared our weapons, set them down and proceeded down range. The whole time Gary was loudly complaining about the amount of damage to the backstops, and how we should be responsible for replacing the cross-boards and uprights. As it turned out, we all weren't that bad at rapid fire as we did a pretty good job keeping the rounds in fairly decent groups with less strays than any of us expected...

Gary rigorously inspected the stops and then waited patiently as we policed our brass and cleaned up our mess.

About a year later, we sponsored a shooting event where automatic weapons were available for use...
Gary got hold of a Tommy-gun and ended up shredding not one, but three backstops while trying to re-enact the St. Valentine's day Massacre...
Guess who got to replace the backstops???

We were shooting on one of my friends clients property (I have no idea where the apostrophes are supposed to go on that one). We get out there and there are like 8 cows and a donkey on the property. They see the truck pull up and are thinking "Food!" Of course they walk right up. Now, I'm from the city. I'm scared of horses and you have a cow walking right up to me? Ha! I keep my cool though. My friend shoots his 9 into the berm and the cows don't even flinch. Great.

So, my friend's wife is born and raised in this smaller town. She gets all "I'm not scared, I'll just shoo them away." She starts walking up and the cow decides to start walking closer to her. After she was all confident in not being scared of the thing, she turns around a RUNS to the truck and jumps in the cab. I'm dying laughing because of her "I'm not scared" attitude. Guess you had to be there.

Same trip, the donkey starts walking up the berm while we are shooting. Not funny when it's not yours in the event of an accidental hit. We waited that one out as he wasn't scared of the gun fire either.

Then, we start shooting clays or whatever they are called. I'm from the city, I have not a clue what it's called. The orange round things that you fling in the air with some plastic thing in your hand. I have a birth defect in my arms and I can't get the clay out of the flinger. I blame it on my "retard arms" (I can say that since it's about me) and give up. My buddy's wife comes out again and gives it a try. Of course her not being able to do it is a lot funnier to me because I can actually watch. All I see is him standing there with the shotgun waiting for the clay to start flying and here it is, still in the flinger. She was trying so hard it was funny. Again, probably had to be there. FWIW, I finally got it figured out. I just wasn't doing it right.

Then, we put some #4 birdshot in my Serbu Super Shorty. Pull the trigger, hold the thing by the fore end and shake the crap out of your other hand because it hurts bad. Look at each other, laugh, and shoot the last two. Then you wait for their turns because they are doing the SAME thing. Once again, you probably had to be there.

Most of the stories I have are horror stories but I will skip those.

There were a few guys on the range and we were cold and all just BSing for awhile. Well about 15-20 min later we decide to go hot. Just as I am letting my slide release go a young buck wanders onto the rifle range. We all look at each other like ***. One guy yelled to no effect it only ran off as one of us got up.

A guy with his girlfriend shooting next to me and he was being a pretty big jerk. She was shooting a scoped .22 rifle and each had their own target. Her scope was no where near zeroed by the looks of her groups in the backstop. He was saying you suck you couldn't hit the broad side of a barn blah blah(he was as bad as her). She was noticeably upset. So after a few min of this I turn to my girlfriend and tell her to watch. I grab my 10/22 and aim at her target as she shoots and make the bullseye disappear and ask for a cold range. You should have seen the stupid look on his face as they checked there targets. He had maybe 1 or 2 shots(out of probably 30 shots) scattered on his target and was quiet for the rest of the time we were there.

Military ranges are very controlled...

A typical hiccup at basic training:

Tower: "Attention on the range, at this time the range is hot. Standby for live fire. Ready on the right? "

Range Safety: (thumbs up)

Tower: "Right side ready. Ready on the left?"

Range Safety: (thumbs up)

Tower: "Left side ready. Shooters, lock and load your 30-round magazine... "

Soldier on the line: *BANG* goes his rifle.

(a few seconds, while everyone's thinking "that did NOT just happen."

Tower: "CEASE FIRE, CEASE FIRE, CEASE FIRE!!!"

...and the ass chewing commenced.

We also had a guy pull the pin on a grenade and then NOT THROW IT, but nimbly drop it RIGHT on the other side of the blast wall.

We also had a guy in Airborne School just barely get nabbed and pulled aside by the jump master before he jumped out of the plane with his static line strung under the arm he absolutely would have lost if he'd jumped. *close call*

Oh, and there was the time that the Commander's gunner was asleep on an OP and an industrial truck came carousing up to our concertina wire. After flagging at it to halt, shining lights, and a couple warning shots, we opened fire with small arms. As they plowed through the wire, our gunners opened up.... and the CDR's gunner woke up in a panicked haze, not knowing what was going on. By the time he swung his gun on target, there was a team moving to clear the cab of the truck... and he opened fire on the truck. Not knowing *** was going on themselves, they spun and returned fire on whoever it was who had just started slinging rounds over, around and between them. The gunner took an in-and-out round of 5.56mm right under his left armpit. He collapsed in total shock that he'd been shot and cried like a little girl. The wound was so shallow it didn't even bleed. He was treated and released in short order, awarded a purple heart, and a little cold-shouldered by those who wouldn't so much trust him anymore.

Then there was the time we were guarding ammo... that we had hidden way out in the training area because we couldn't use it... because the inconsiderate unit we'd piggy-backed the range with closed it before we could use it. Now we either had to turn the ammo back in and wait for our range slot to open or "disappear" the ammo until we could pull another range together. The less-paperwork decision was made. After a few days of 12-hour rotating shifts, those of us on the lonely night shift got bored and invited some of our off-duty buddies to bring some beer and women to the bonfire we had lit. That was a fun night. Apart from building great memories, farting around, and truly making the best of it, there were probably numerous felony-grade court martials that hung all around our unit that night... but we were Scouts... and Scouts work in the shadows. We were never officially there in the first place.

Hooah.

Saw my dad fire an O/U 12 guage that malfunctioned and fired both barrels. It about knocked his shoulder off and it flew out of his hands. He has very fast reflexes; he flund his hand out and caught it in the air. He was a little stunned to say the least.

at a police range, several officers left unsupervised while the sgt went to lunch, found a case of 45 acp and a thompson in the trunk of the sgts car. 30 round sticks, the gun was never put down. 500 rounds later the target supports were reduced to splinters. even though we knew trouble was coming, everyone of us felt it was worth it. i have never found a gun more fun to shoot, especially when the sgt was buying the ammo.

35 or so years ago when model 29 8" smiths were going for $500.00 when actual retail was $175.00 I was shooting at an indoor range just outside Chicago. As I was getting ready to shoot there was a huge ball of flame and very loud muzzle blast from one of the other shooting booths. I went down to investigate and here's this guy with a 29 8". I ask him what he's shooting and he describes a load that is way out of the norm. I decide to tell the range owner and as I'm telling him what's going on we hear a loud explosion so we go back to see whats happened. Here's this guy standing looking kinda stupid with his brand new smith with the top strap blown off and the cylinder exploded thru the top 3 chambers. Guy wasn't hurt except in his pocket but the laughter probably disuaded him from ever loading another round of ammo. FRJ