As the title states what is the most funny or scary reloading story you have?
I'll start with mine.
A couple of years ago I went shooting with a buddy of mine who wanted my help in adjusting his Remington XCR II in 300RUM.
I have gone to quite a few long distance shooting clinics and I thought I could help him by building a better cheek rest and setting up his scope so that it fit him better when coming up on the gun.
We get to the range and I pull out some foam and duct tape and I build him a temporary cheek rest and finally get him ready to shoot,
Now I've never shot with him before because he is primarily a hunter who uses his rifle once a year to hunt moose while I target shoot and don't hunt.
He brought along a 50 round MTM box of 200gr Accubonds that his friend helped him reload.
He lights off the first one and as expected the rifle kicks like a mule.
I spot the bullet through the spotting scope and note its location on a 6 ring page I took from my shooters log book.
From the corner of my eye I caught that he needed to wrestle with the bolt a bit to get the round extracted.
We talk scope fit a bit and I add a bit more foam to the rifle.
Since I don't know the guy who helped him with his reloading and I didn't really want to distract him from the goal of adjusting his scope I say nothing and I take a couple of steps back before he takes his next shot.
After firing his next shot he wrestles with the bolt again but this time he can't get it to rotate fully so he pulls out a piece of 2x4 that he had in his range bag and whacks the bolt a coupe of times to get it open.
At this point I'm just standing there with my mouth open not sure wether to laugh or scream in horror.
I stop him before he can chamber the next round and ask him first of all why he has a 2x4 in his range bag and if it is normal for him to need to beat on his rifle to get the fired case out of the rifle.
He tells me that he has had this problem for the last 50 rounds since his buddy helped him start reloading.
I then asked if he has had the same problem with factory ammo and his answer was no.
At this point I advised him not to keep shooting the ammo but being a few weeks out from Moose season he fired off another 8 rounds while we make some more scope adjustments and get the rifle scope zeroed.
The 200M groups looked more like a shotgun pattern than rifle groups but were more than minute of moose acceptable.
Before we lefr the range I convinced him to hand over to me 5 loaded rounds and the 10 pieces of brass that were fired through the rifle that day.
Once home I disassembled the rounds and found that they were loaded between 98-98.7gr of Retumbo which is several grains over Hodgdon's max load.
I then try to decap the primers from the fired brass and they fall out with no resistance at all. I was able to seat new primers into the cases with my finger.
I then try to deprime the cases I disassembled which were once fired Nosler brass and they too had primer pockets that were loose but not to the point of the twice fired brass.
I ended up convincing him to surrender the remaining 35 pieces of ammo so that I could disassemble them.
I then helped him develop a new load through OCW testing resulting in a load that only needed 91.5gr of Retumbo to produce 1.5" groups at 200M.
Miraculously he no longer needed a 2x4 to lift his bolt and he has bagged a moose the 2 following years including this one.
I'll start with mine.
A couple of years ago I went shooting with a buddy of mine who wanted my help in adjusting his Remington XCR II in 300RUM.
I have gone to quite a few long distance shooting clinics and I thought I could help him by building a better cheek rest and setting up his scope so that it fit him better when coming up on the gun.
We get to the range and I pull out some foam and duct tape and I build him a temporary cheek rest and finally get him ready to shoot,
Now I've never shot with him before because he is primarily a hunter who uses his rifle once a year to hunt moose while I target shoot and don't hunt.
He brought along a 50 round MTM box of 200gr Accubonds that his friend helped him reload.
He lights off the first one and as expected the rifle kicks like a mule.
I spot the bullet through the spotting scope and note its location on a 6 ring page I took from my shooters log book.
From the corner of my eye I caught that he needed to wrestle with the bolt a bit to get the round extracted.
We talk scope fit a bit and I add a bit more foam to the rifle.
Since I don't know the guy who helped him with his reloading and I didn't really want to distract him from the goal of adjusting his scope I say nothing and I take a couple of steps back before he takes his next shot.
After firing his next shot he wrestles with the bolt again but this time he can't get it to rotate fully so he pulls out a piece of 2x4 that he had in his range bag and whacks the bolt a coupe of times to get it open.
At this point I'm just standing there with my mouth open not sure wether to laugh or scream in horror.
I stop him before he can chamber the next round and ask him first of all why he has a 2x4 in his range bag and if it is normal for him to need to beat on his rifle to get the fired case out of the rifle.
He tells me that he has had this problem for the last 50 rounds since his buddy helped him start reloading.
I then asked if he has had the same problem with factory ammo and his answer was no.
At this point I advised him not to keep shooting the ammo but being a few weeks out from Moose season he fired off another 8 rounds while we make some more scope adjustments and get the rifle scope zeroed.
The 200M groups looked more like a shotgun pattern than rifle groups but were more than minute of moose acceptable.
Before we lefr the range I convinced him to hand over to me 5 loaded rounds and the 10 pieces of brass that were fired through the rifle that day.
Once home I disassembled the rounds and found that they were loaded between 98-98.7gr of Retumbo which is several grains over Hodgdon's max load.
I then try to decap the primers from the fired brass and they fall out with no resistance at all. I was able to seat new primers into the cases with my finger.
I then try to deprime the cases I disassembled which were once fired Nosler brass and they too had primer pockets that were loose but not to the point of the twice fired brass.
I ended up convincing him to surrender the remaining 35 pieces of ammo so that I could disassemble them.
I then helped him develop a new load through OCW testing resulting in a load that only needed 91.5gr of Retumbo to produce 1.5" groups at 200M.
Miraculously he no longer needed a 2x4 to lift his bolt and he has bagged a moose the 2 following years including this one.
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