Any ideas what happened here?

A

Asinity

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Woodstock, Ontario
I was out at the range with a friend of mine today shooting some Winchester Wildcat 22's with my 597VTR, all of a sudden a nice loud pop and a mess of powder shot back at me (yay, glasses!) Upon inspection of the action the bolt was open, trying to load another round but was being stopped by the case of the previous round that had blown up. The bullet remained in the barrel and once we were able to extract the case and push the bullet out I was checking inside the action and there was lots of powder and some chunks of brass littering the guts of my rifle.

I've had the rifle apart, cleaned out all the nastiness and am now wondering what just might have gone wrong here. I've had 2 other experiences with this box of ammo where I've been blasted with powder (again, yay glasses) but never to this extreme. Could it be this particular batch is bad? Is wildcat ammo usually problematic? Something wrong in the gun perhaps?

I'm quite inexperienced with firearms, especially when dealing with problems so if nothing else I'd like to use this as a learning experience.

Please don't mind the pictures, they were taken with my cell. If something better is desired, I'll have to dig out a real camera.

Thanks for the help!
http://i293.photobucket.com/albums/mm43/Asinity/2012-09-28_22-29-45_498.jpg
http://i293.photobucket.com/albums/mm43/Asinity/2012-09-28_22-29-33_71.jpg
http://i293.photobucket.com/albums/mm43/Asinity/2012-09-28_22-29-18_260.jpg
http://i293.photobucket.com/albums/mm43/Asinity/2012-09-28_22-30-07_159.jpg
 
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Sounds like an out of battery firing. This happens when the bolt isn't all the way closed and the gun goes off. I don't know why it happens but I have read about it before on rim fire central in the 597 section.
 
I had that happen with a Cooey model 60. Exactly the same thing, and it was with Winchester ammo. It was the 100 pack in the red plastic sleeve, I don't remember the exact name of those cartridges, but they were definitely winchester.
 
with a semi auto it may be an out of battery discharge caused by a dirty chamber or an obstruction,or by excessive headspace.in a bolt action rifle it is caused by excessive headspace.anyway it is an unsafe condition.semi auto out of battery discharge may be cured simply by cleaning at regular short intervals,if it still gets out of battery discharges then it has a more serious problem.a bolt action needs the attention of a professional,don't fire the rifle unless you like getting hot bits of brass and powder in the face.
 
Thanks for the replies, gave the VTR a good scrubbing so hopefully next time there will be no issues. I've only got 50 rounds of the wildcat left, I'm not planning on buying more of it. Something similar happened two other times with that ammo in the VTR, however neither were as severe as this situation. I'm assuming the ammo is fairly dirty and plugged up the chamber as it was recently cleaned when I installed my new extractor just before I got into this 500 round box, and I probably put 300 rounds of it through, the rest were put through my Mark II.
 
When I was a kid my dad gave me a 1022 Ruger. I did not clean thing for probably 8 years and it got a lot of use. I never had an out of battery fire in that time. Then I started cleaning it on a regular basis. One time after I cleaned it I fired about 250 rounds and then experienced and out of battery fire for the first time. So I don't think that it has to be dirty to have an out of battery fire sometimes it just happens. I was using the federal Blue box 525 round bulk ammo. I have fired thousands upon thousands more after and I've still never seen another out of battery fire and I probably shoot at least 2000 rounds a month.
 
I got puffed a few times on old ammo.
The bullets did go out the barrel.
Close inspection of the spent brass showed a small crack or split
where the body enters the case head.
A bit of pressure escaped out the crack when the powder ignited.
Not sure what happened on yours, the squirrellie cage spun longer
than my patience to watch.
 
I've had it happen twice with my 597 Custom Target, both times case ruptured, peppered me with hot gas and blew off the extractor. Rifle wasn't excessively dirty but if the ammo is slightly off spec in a match chamber, the bolt won't completely close. Bloody inconvienent!! Now I carry an extra extractor and spring for when it happens again when I'm away from base.
 
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