Has a rifle issue ever cost you a hunt?

I used to lube up my rifle with some kind of gun grease , till I was shooting a nice whitetail buck, all I got was click , the grease had got solidified and wouldn’t let the firing pin go ahead with enough force to ingnite the primer , it was probably -30 , so after that no lube , gun is clean and dry
Never happened again to me lesson learned for me . This was probably 30 some years ago . I believe the gun was my blr in 308 , shot a lot of moose and deer and coyotes with that gun still have it , the wife uses it now ,
 
I had a Browning A-Bolt Titanium Model in 270 WSM. We were hunting elk when a nice black bear appeared in a small cut block. I jumped out of the truck loaded the magazine onto the floor-plate and quickly tried to cycle a round into the chamber.

Well that cartridge tipped c@ck-eyed and would not chamber. After various attempts to remove the jammed round and even after removing the attached magazine, it took 2-3 minutes to free up that jammed round. Obviously the bear wasn't sticking around to see if I could fix the rifle and took off. LOL

For an expensive Titanium model, that rifle never cycled smoothly in the 270 WSM caliber. I finally got fed up with it and sold it to a friend of mine who had been bugging me forever to sell it to him. I did, and he loves it! He stated he never had an issue......:) Go figure!

This was over ten years ago now, maybe I had bear fever? LOL Who knows. Yet any other Browning A-bolts I had were smooth as silk to cycle. Just not that Titanium model.

In 47 years of hunting, this was the only time a rifle cost me an animal. Not a big deal though, and maybe user error?......:)
 
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Thunderhog said:
I had a Browning A-Bolt Titanium Model in 270 WSM. We were hunting elk when a nice black bear appeared in a small cut block. I jumped out of the truck loaded the magazine onto the floor-plate and quickly tried to cycle a round into the chamber.

Well that cartridge tipped c@ck-eyed and would not chamber. After various attempts to remove the jammed round and even after removing the attached magazine, it took 2-3 minutes to free up that jammed round. Obviously the bear wasn't sticking around to see if I could fix the rifle and took off. LOL

For a expensive Titanium model, that rifle never cycled smoothly in the 270 WSM caliber. I finally got fed up with it and sold it to a friend of mine who had been bugging me forever to sell it to him. I did, and he loves it! He stated he never had an issue......:) Go figure!

This was over ten years ago now, maybe I had bear fever? LOL Who knows. Yet any other Browning A-bolts I had were smooth as silk to cycle. Just not that Titanium model.

In 47 years of hunting, this was the only time a rifle cost me an animal. Not a big deal though, and maybe user error?......:)
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You certainly wouldn't be the first person who had issues with feeding from a WSM cartridge.
 
maifire said:
Had my C7 freeze up on me on an advance to contact drill. It sucked. Evreryone bounded ahead and i am screwing with the rifle. Four others kept going with the same problem. Had a sgt tell me to piss on it. I did. They did. We continued. Careful in the cold with your lube!
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Hey Anthony, I hope the C7 finally freed up....:) LOL

And I always keep my lube at 98.6 degrees or 37 degrees Celsius........:) Hahahahahahaha!
 
I had a Rem 700 firing pin freeze up on a cold Alberta Nov. morning that prevented me from shooting a Whitetail buck locally known as FencePost.
I never did have another chance at that buck.
 
If I'm hunting away from home and am staying in the bush for days on end, I bring more than 1 rifle, just in case #### happens.

If I'm hunting from home, I don't feel the need to bring more than one out with me.

That being said, on one of the day hunts from home this year, I had the retaining pin for my magazine latch work it's way out of where it was supposed to stay, resulting in my magazine being stuck in the rifle. I didn't have the tools in the truck with me to disassemble the rifle in the field. I drove home, took it apart and found the problem.

It didn't cost me a chance at an animal. But it definitely reminded me that all mechanical objects will fail at some point and it's good to be prepared for it in advance.
 
Not a rifle issue, but optic failure cost me a moose. About 2 decades ago when I first started hunting and didn’t know better. Think it was a cheap Simmons scope.

This year I had a mechanical failure on outboard prevent me from getting to a water access only spot, cost me a 8point. Had my 6yr old son with me.
 
70m4h4wk said:
I'd never needed to adjust my scope in 7 years, so on year 8 I didn't sight it in before I went hunting.

Fired 6 shots at a deer about 50 yards away and didn't hit a damn thing.

Then one of my buddies that I was hunting with dropped his rifle getting out of the truck so we spent the rest of the day getting our rifles sighted back in.
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I don’t get why some people will not shoot before hunting like shooting was a hassle or something.
 
Had a marlin 3030 jam from not operating the action with authority. I missed the midday walk but had the rifle apart, removed the live round, and back together by the night sit.
I was new enough to guns that I didn't even own my own hunting rifle, and I didn't have a smart phone.
So it could of been a lot worse.
 
I believe this was my first ever rifle hunt. (I had gone bow hunting for two years prior.) A buddy was taking me to one of his spots and we had the rifles setup so of the opportunity rose you could stop, step out of the vehicle load the rifle and shoot. Bouncing around on the backroads as things do we ended up with a flat tire. A stick had snapped the valve stem off one of his rear tires and we had to stop and change it. While waiting for him to finishing changing the tire I was looking at my rifle and I picked it up to look down the sights as one does and something falls off the rifle onto the ground. So i reach down and grab what fell it was a screw. Well after looking turns out it was an action screw and we didn’t have any tools with us to put the damned thing back in. (At least not in the vehicle.) so that evening hunt was cut short and I never left home without a multi tool again.

B
 
Had a firing pin break on a Rem 7600 Whelen, which cost me a deer. Just bad luck on a year old rifle. Filled the tag the next day with my back up rifle anyway.
Missed out on a easy shot on a buck that I’d spent a month and wanted bad on due to a fogged scope. Still choked about that one after over 30 years.

Lost some coyotes over s opes that lost their zero.
Lost a few days over plugged muzzles and at least 2 de-bulleted loads.
Had a CZ 550 so plugged with sand from riding in a safari chair that the striker wouldn’t drop when we found a live poacher snared buffalo in Zim. Didn’t matter too much as the PH popped it with a 416 Weatherby anyways. Stripped the bolt down and washed it out with running water til it was just a little grindy and shot a couple elephants later on. Had irons sights that I wasn’t using anyway fall off. Proably some others that I’ve forgotten. Seen a pile of gun failures with people I was hunting with, like a single grain of sand tie up a couple 700 Rems.Grizzly guide who bragged about not owning a soft case with a frozen up Ruger that wouldn’t stay cocked. Interesting at 68 yards but didn’t matter anyway.

Some were lessons learned on junk, some unavoidable, and some flat out my own fault. Some bad luck luck. That’s huntin’.
 
I hit the range weekly for a couple months before hunting season. And I always bring a backup rifle. You never know what could happen no matter how prepared you are.
 
TheMinusHuman said:
The second time was my Springfield Waypoint 2020. It wouldn't group to save my life and I had to postpone my hunts because I ended up going through 3 of my scopes thinking the whole time that it MUST be my optic. Later to find it had headspacing issues and even later wouldn't strike primers. So I missed a huge part of my season because that piece of junk.
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My friend bought a Waypoint 2020 .308 that had serious headspace issues as well…
 
53moose320Elk said:
I used to lube up my rifle with some kind of gun grease , till I was shooting a nice whitetail buck, all I got was click , the grease had got solidified and wouldn’t let the firing pin go ahead with enough force to ingnite the primer , it was probably -30 , so after that no lube , gun is clean and dry
Never happened again to me lesson learned for me . This was probably 30 some years ago . I believe the gun was my blr in 308 , shot a lot of moose and deer and coyotes with that gun still have it , the wife uses it now ,
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This happens with new Tikkas too. They come with the innards of the bolt (firing pin spring etc) greased up. Gotta remove it if its gonna be in cold weather just like you said.
 
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