Most embarrassing moments at the range

[230RN]

It wasn’t me that did it, but I was probably the one most embarrassed by what happened. My wife’s folks (her mom and dad) were up here from southern California for a visit. They weren’t “gun people” by any stretch of the imagination, but they weren’t anti-gun either, and I loved them both.

Anyway, one afternoon my wife asked them if they would like to go shooting. They said, “That sounds like fun,” so we put a couple of .22s in the truck and headed on down to the gravel pit - our “range.” As an afterthought, I’d thrown in my 30-06 and a box of ammo.

With careful instruction and observation, my wife and I let her parents run through nearly a hundred rounds of .22LR ammo using an open-sighted 10-22 and a Single-Six revolver. Then I made the mistake - I fired a round in my 30-06, and asked my father-in-law if he’d like to try it. He said he would, so I told him it was “gonna kick,” but I told him to “just pull it in snug to your shoulder and it won’t hurt.”

At the same time, both my wife and I saw that her dad’s eye was right up against the scope. And we both shouted, “DAD!” as the gun went off.

It could have been worse. He didn’t need stitches, but he did bleed some, and he was embarrassed - but no more than I was. Probably less. That was ^%$$%&^ stupid on my part! I knew danged good and well my father-in-law didn’t know beans about guns, yet I went ahead and let him hurt himself with one.

I'm also a member of "The Crescent Club" with that crescent-shaped scar on one's eyebrow. Its been so long it's gone now, First time I ever fired a scoped CF rifle, which the guy at the next firing point offered to let me shoot. Well, we were all Newbies at one point, and that incident helps me remember that sometimes.

 

[DeepSouth]

It wasn’t me that did it, but I was probably the one most embarrassed by what happened. My wife’s folks (her mom and dad) were up here from southern California for a visit. They weren’t “gun people” by any stretch of the imagination, but they weren’t anti-gun either, and I loved them both.

Anyway, one afternoon my wife asked them if they would like to go shooting. They said, “That sounds like fun,” so we put a couple of .22s in the truck and headed on down to the gravel pit - our “range.” As an afterthought, I’d thrown in my 30-06 and a box of ammo.

With careful instruction and observation, my wife and I let her parents run through nearly a hundred rounds of .22LR ammo using an open-sighted 10-22 and a Single-Six revolver. Then I made the mistake - I fired a round in my 30-06, and asked my father-in-law if he’d like to try it. He said he would, so I told him it was “gonna kick,” but I told him to “just pull it in snug to your shoulder and it won’t hurt.”

At the same time, both my wife and I saw that her dad’s eye was right up against the scope. And we both shouted, “DAD!” as the gun went off.

It could have been worse. He didn’t need stitches, but he did bleed some, and he was embarrassed - but no more than I was. Probably less. That was ^%$$%&^ stupid on my part! I knew danged good and well my father-in-law didn’t know beans about guns, yet I went ahead and let him hurt himself with one.

I'm also a member of "The Crescent Club" with that crescent-shaped scar on one's eyebrow. Its been so long it's gone now, First time I ever fired a scoped CF rifle, which the guy at the next firing point offered to let me shoot. Well, we were all Newbies at one point, and that incident helps me remember that sometimes.

Many moons ago I saw my brother hand a guy his scoped 41 magnum. The guy preceded to put his eye up to it like it was a rifle scope, my brother yelled “that’s not how you do it!”
To which the guy replied “I think I know how to shoot a );$;@/“ pistol” my brother replied with “okay then”

Then the fellow proceeded to learn a valuable lesson, and bleed profusely.

I’ve just always wondered what he was looking at in the scope.

 

[MislMan]

Not me shooting, was at the indoor range and it was almost full of pistol shooters. As things are going along one fellow a couple of positions down from me lets loose with god knows what. Louder than heck and a big ball of fire. He manages to hit one of the overhead fire sprinkler system sprayers and they all come on. Water spraying everywhere and alarms going off. Fire department gets there quickly while many folks are still wiping down their pistols and range bags. Ended up with 1/2” to 1” of water all over the range floor.

 

[DustyGmt]

Many moons ago I saw my brother hand a guy his scoped 41 magnum. The guy preceded to put his eye up to it like it was a rifle scope, my brother yelled “that’s not how you do it!”
To which the guy replied “I think I know how to shoot a );$;@/“ pistol” my brother replied with “okay then”

Then the fellow proceeded to learn a valuable lesson, and bleed profusely.

I’ve just always wondered what he was looking at in the scope.

Yep, kind of the same thing with me and drunk lady. She lined the irons right up to her eye, only inches from her eye and you can imagine how you'd have to grip a SAA to bring it to your eye like she's about to do some raffle shoot'n and was seriously about to squeeze one and get brained.... the thing that was confusing was she acted as though I'd interrupted her from doing something she'd done a thousand times before.... maybe I should have just let her be, maybe it's me who would have learned something, I doubt it though.

It was quite a sight though, I didn't want my daughter to see any more so we left......

 

[FL-NC]

A couple come to mind.
When I was on active duty, my team was doing a live fire drill, and during the drill I needed to signal the machine gunners to shift fire prior to the assault. I took the star cluster slap flare (which is more like a rocket- the propellant burns in flight until the flare deploys) and slammed it into the ground for the signal, pointed straight up (exactly how it is supposed to be done). Something was defective in the flare- it exited the straight-up tube, went about 10 feet up, and somehow made a 90 degree turn and started heading downrange- then it hit the ground in about 20 feet, did a 180, and headed back at us at about waist level. My team sgt did some type of dive/dodge/roll maneuver to avoid getting hit, then the flare deployed on the ground somewhere behind us starting a small fire that the range safety officer was able to quickly put out. It was the most amazing pyrotechnic mishap we had ever seen, and I heard about it for a long time.
Once I was shooting with a lady friend at the range, and I was picking up brass (45 ACP as I recall). I had both hands full of brass, and while they were laying on the ground, a yellow jacket decided to fly into one of the cases and hang out for a while. As luck would have it, the open end of that case was directly against the middle joint of my pinky finger when the critter started shanking me. I screamed and launched the brass in every possible direction and started cussing like a drunk sailor. She thought I lost my mind. If you get stung by one of those things in a joint, the poison stays in there a LONG time. Putting copenhagen in the sting doesn't do anything for it, either- you just end up having less copenhagen. Also, we had to pick up the brass again. Carefully, this time.
A year or 2 ago I was on the hunt for a nice 8 pointer I had seen on cameras a couple of times- black powder season. I pre-loaded my front-stuffer at home, but forgot to put the primer in the thing once I got to the woods. Fortunately, the buck didn't come around that day, and I realized when I got to my jeep that I had a unprimed rifle in my hand all afternoon. Even though there were no witnesses, or a deer running away after hearing some weird click noise, its still embarrassing that it happened at all. I know it happened.

 

[MJD]

Speaking of muzzleloaders....hunted half the day with no charge in my flintlock, just the patch and ball I rammed down. I was around 15 years old and had been thinking for a few hours that the ramrod went further than normal. In a rare instance of a logical decision made by myself at that age, I decided to check....and confirmed my mistake. Fortunately, my father took the news with grace since we were far from the truck and it was 10 degrees out. One ball-puller on the ramrod later (there are a dearth of ways to express that in a less giggle inducing fashion) and I was back in action.

 

[anothernewb]

The most embarrassing moment I’ve seen at the range was my buddy and his sig 320. We were doing a timed fire exercise. And apparently he forgot something when reassembling pistol from cleaning it

the range command was called to ready the line and load the weapons. When he thumbed the slide release. His entire slide shot off the gun and went about 5 feet down the range. Literally everyone was right there watching it happen.

Another one that i remember was this old codger that had some poor reloads or bad powder or something. I watched him pull out no less than 6 different western style single action revolvers and one 1911. And preceded to squib every. Single. One. Back to back.

myself the dumbest thing I ever did was loading out for a full day at the outdoor range. One of those big shoot all day plans. Had a whole bunch of friends to go shoot with. Of course I said I’ll bring the firearms. You guys just show up.

forgot every single magazine for every single gun. An hour round trip later. And only then did I realize my stapler was also empty.

 

[hps1]

A couple come to mind.
When I was on active duty, my team was doing a live fire drill, and during the drill I needed to signal the machine gunners to shift fire prior to the assault. I took the star cluster slap flare (which is more like a rocket- the propellant burns in flight until the flare deploys) and slammed it into the ground for the signal, pointed straight up (exactly how it is supposed to be done). Something was defective in the flare- it exited the straight-up tube, went about 10 feet up, and somehow made a 90 degree turn and started heading downrange- then it hit the ground in about 20 feet, did a 180, and headed back at us at about waist level. My team sgt did some type of dive/dodge/roll maneuver to avoid getting hit, then the flare deployed on the ground somewhere behind us starting a small fire that the range safety officer was able to quickly put out. It was the most amazing pyrotechnic mishap we had ever seen, and I heard about it for a long time.
Once I was shooting with a lady friend at the range, and I was picking up brass (45 ACP as I recall). I had both hands full of brass, and while they were laying on the ground, a yellow jacket decided to fly into one of the cases and hang out for a while. As luck would have it, the open end of that case was directly against the middle joint of my pinky finger when the critter started shanking me. I screamed and launched the brass in every possible direction and started cussing like a drunk sailor. She thought I lost my mind. If you get stung by one of those things in a joint, the poison stays in there a LONG time. Putting copenhagen in the sting doesn't do anything for it, either- you just end up having less copenhagen. Also, we had to pick up the brass again. Carefully, this time.
A year or 2 ago I was on the hunt for a nice 8 pointer I had seen on cameras a couple of times- black powder season. I pre-loaded my front-stuffer at home, but forgot to put the primer in the thing once I got to the woods. Fortunately, the buck didn't come around that day, and I realized when I got to my jeep that I had a unprimed rifle in my hand all afternoon. Even though there were no witnesses, or a deer running away after hearing some weird click noise, its still embarrassing that it happened at all. I know it happened.

Funny how hard it is to outlive those embarrassing moments.

In preparation for a batallion stationary mounted M1919 MG qualification course each MG section leader was to bring their (2) MG jeeps to the range a day early to set up the range.
Eighteen MG jeeps were lined up at the low end of a long sloping grassy hill on which the targets were placed. The pedestal mounted guns had been fitted with a device to limit lateral movement and jeeps were to be stationed so as to keep all rounds within the prescribed safety fan of that particular range.

When the range officer obtained clearance, the order to "load and fire at will". With the first burst, a jackrabbit took off toward the crest of the hill (several hundred yards away). He seemed to shift gears as each of the remaining gunners joined the fray. The grass was high enough that you could barely see the tips of his ears and the dust cloud was blinding, which I'm sure is what enabled the rabbit to make it to the crest the hill, seemingly without a scratch.


Years later, on an 81mm mortar range, I had a squad leader who had transferred into my platoon from a rifle plt. Since he had never fired a mortar, I had planned to run him through each of the squad member's duties. I demonstrated the proper handling of the (HE light) ammo we were firing and told him to fire a round. We had been issued a very old batch of ammo, so old that it was rusted into the fiber-board canisters, some of which had to be cut out w/a bayonet. I told him to drop the round in the tube and duck below the muzzle to avoid the blast, then, if he would look up the side of the tube, he could pick up the round as it left the bore. He did, and spotted the first short round of the day! His first round ever landed only a couple hundred yards from the firing line. Fortunately it did not detonate. There were a number of short rounds on the range that day, one or two did detonate but all were far enough downrange to exceed bursting radius of HE light.

One of his squad members handed me a cadence written especially for his new SL the next day: Grab your pots and hit the ground; Short shot ******** fired a round.

Regards,
hps

 

[Howland937]

My most embarrassing shooting event ever was with a compound bow that I'd just gotten when I was about 16. Set up a target against a couple of straw bakes, stepped off 10 yards and knocked an arrow. Drew back and let one fly. After a couple minutes of intense pain from the string slap, I thought I'd "walk it off" and try to figure out where my arrow hit. Not in the target or the straw, but then I noticed a distinct hissing sound. Walking toward the sound, I soon found my arrow... buried to the fletching in the tire on my dad's log splitter. It was a solid 10 yards to the left of my target. Never did figure out how in the world a person can miss a target 10 yards away by 10 yards. Figuring out how to explain it to dad wasn't much easier.

I've more than one time watched other people shoot because I showed up with guns and no ammo or vice versa.

 

[1976B.L.Johns.]

Except the spring was in front of them; they should have kind of dribbled out after the follower, with no spring force on them whatsoever.

Yup! Kinda, if the base had fallen off.

 

[DustyGmt]

Well this isn't exactly a "range" mishap but it's gotta be embarrassing as ****.

I'm sure most of you still need to see this, so it doesn't happen to you...... I know how alot of you guys like to stunt for the gram, fan out stacks of hunneds, flash the strap and whatnot. Be cautioned....

 

[swg1]

Forgot to load my extra mags for a match stage. Only loaded the one for the gun.

 

[armoredman]

We were running a two gun match at the indoor range I worked at, (backstop wasn't rated for rifle, so shotgun and pistol only), and a gentleman with a Chinese import pump shotgun fired...and we all watched the magazine cap and spring sail on down the range. BUT, like the advertising guys like to say, that's not all! No, he had it repaired and brought it out for the next match we had. This time he fired the full magazine for the stage, and we all watched in amused shock as the barrel gracefully and slowly tilted forward on the magazine cap like an AR upper on the pivot pin, and fell to the floor. He had it repaired again, and as soon as it was done he sold it.

 

[45/30-06OKIE]

Didn't happen at the range itself, but on the way home. I was conceal carrying one of my range toys. "Concealed" because it was a 5 inch 1911 double stack riding in a high and tight with a baggy shirt thrown over it. I'm sure I was printing like mad, but it was supposed to only be for the trip home. We get to joking and realize we're all hungry, so I stopped at a Wendy's and we went in and chowed down. During the meal I went to stand up to use the men's room, and I felt a slight tug on my holster. I reached around and didn't feel anything, and didn't want to pull my shirt up in public. So I gave it a little wiggle and then proceeded to stand up. There was a "pop!" noise, followed by a "sproing!" and the hem of my shirt promptly shat 15 rounds of 45ACP all over the dining lobby floor, rolling and tumbling everywhere.

After a hasty cleanup and beating our feet we figured out that what had happened was, the plastic floorplate on the mag had been the perfect size to slip in between two of the wire tines that made up the chair back, and when I stood up the floorplate had slid up into a narrower end of the tines and snagged like a peg in a Keymod slot. The plastic cracked right at the edge and the magazine had shot all its rounds out the bottom with the full force of the spring behind them.

I was at the family land and had a similar thing happen to me with a mec-gar 1911 45acp 8rd mag. The baseplate just shot off while firing and flung the rounds and all the parts of the mag in all directions. And this is in June in the middle of a sticker patch so imagine how that went lol. I haven't been able to replicate it since so idk what happened...

 

[Rockrivr1]

Was at a Car shoot event for a local gun forum. I was first up on the line to start the event and I had my replica Brown Bess all ready to go. Put the powder in the pan, aimed and pulled the trigger. The pan flashed and.....NOTHING. Loaded the pan again, aimed and pulled the trigger. The pan flashes again and then NOTHING!!! I can hear the chuckles behind me as I walk off the line with my still loaded Brown Bess. Come to find out the flash hole was gunked up.

Cleaned the hole up, when back to the line to shouts of "will it work this time????" This time I go through the motion and BOOM!!!! She lit off as she should. Got a round of clapping that time. PHEW!!!!

 

[Ignition Override]

Suggestion:

Keep a sight adjustment tool, as well as hearing and eye protection, plus a target…. Stored in your car.

You then only have the “agonizing” decision of which Gun (plus ammo) to put in the car.

If you are 12 min. from your club, and retired…. this policy Really helps.

 

[.308 Norma]

Keep a sight adjustment tool, as well as hearing and eye protection, plus a target…. Stored in your car.

Good suggestions.
I also keep a spare 9V battery taped inside my chronograph. That's because one time when I got down to the gravel pit to test some new loads, I discovered I'd left my chronograph switched on from the last time I'd used it.

 

[swg1]

Suggestion:

Keep a sight adjustment tool, as well as hearing and eye protection, plus a target…. Stored in your car.

You then only have the agonizing decision of which Gun (plus ammo) to put in the car.

That day, I’d take the wife’s car just to make sure I’d outsmarted myself again.

 

[CapnMac]

Suggestion:

Keep a sight adjustment tool, as well as hearing and eye protection, plus a target…. Stored in your car.

An excellent suggestion.
I walked into a great deal on a gross (144) box of 3M 28SPF foam plugs. So, there's some in the ride, some with the camping gear (sharing tents with those who snore sub-ideal), and all the range bags.

Knowing a few dealers in military surplus, I did a deal on a bunch of the GI plastic earpro containers which have that little loop of string-ball chain so, they got hung in all the equipment, too--so the skid steer, the excavator, the backhoes, even the toolboxes.

I still find the pesky little packs in my suitcases.

Mind, I also keep Sharpie pens and grease pencils around, too.

 

[Bill Raby]

Old guy shooting a Luger at the shooting range. I made a comment about it and he said a Nazi shot him with it so he took it away from him. Not embarrassing at all, but its the best I could think of tonight.

 

[1976B.L.Johns.]

Old guy shooting a Luger at the shooting range. I made a comment about it and he said a Nazi shot him with it so he took it away from him. Not embarrassing at all, but its the best I could think of tonight.

That had to have been a while ago.......

 

[armoredman]

I would have rendered a hand salute and said, "Have a nice day, sir. "

 

[Seedy Character]

I was at a CAS. I had loaded some
357 brass really light. To insure ignition, after loading the powder, in filled the bra as with cornmeal.

We were walking from from stage 7 to stage 8. I had checked the time and said I was glad this was the last stage, I was getting hungry. And old guy behind says, yeah, me, too. That last stage, I kept smelling cornbread.

 

[230RN]

Had a slight discussion with the range folks over my packing up my staple gun. They thought I was stealing theirs, same make and model. Then they found theirs at one of the firing points, I spray-painted mine blaze orange after that.

I did that with a couple of commonly used items around the house (pliers, screwdrivers, paper punch, the like) to make them easier to spot where I left them a week ago.

Obviously, I'm not the best housekeeper in the world. I have a tendency to just park things when I'm done instead of putting them away.

Terry

 

[Carl N. Brown]

Rushed to the range early for a military match.
Discovered the ammo can with all my magazines and ammo was not in my truck.
I was early enough that I had time to drive home and back before the match started.
As I drove past the dance school near my house, I saw my coffee thermos sitting on the curb like a forelorn urchin.
I not only had driven off without my ammo can, I had left my coffee thermos sitting on top of the truck bed cover when I pulled out (the dance school was the first hard right turn after leaving my house).

As Lewis Carrol observed, "The hurrier I go, the behinder I get."

The cup top of the thermos has a dent to remind me. Take inventory before departing.