I wrote this post on another thread on the main 'Fire board. Thought I might share it here.
True story: I got out of the truck one morning about 10 minutes before sunrise in the pheasant country northwest of Brooks, Alberta. I opened the rear door, slid my SXS 12-gauge out of its case and broke it open, reached into the pocket of my vest and pulled out a couple of shells, dropped them in. Gun still broken, I opened the kennel and let my dog out. As usual, he'd been going ape-sch!tt in his box since the tires left pavement, so needless to say his Tasmanian Devil dance upon exit was truly impressive. Distracted me for several minutes; I was confident there were plenty of birds in this swampy little hollow, and I needed to get Brit to settle down a tad in a hurry.
Within about half a minute the dawg's nose hit the ground and he started to snuffle pheasant pheet. I glanced down at my shotgun as I closed it, which is my usual habit. Something didn't look right. Broke the gun open, and sonofabitch if the I/C chamber was empty!
Weird. So I pulled another shell out of the loops of my vest and dropped it in, closed the shotgun. Took about 3 steps before my Spidey-Sense started shrieking. I'd loaded that shotgun 20,000 times before, and I'd NEVER dropped only one shell into the gun. I broke the shotgun and pulled out both shiny hi-brass #5 shells, and looked down the breech.
Sonofab!tch, there was a 20-gauge shell nestled in the leade of the I/C barrel. As I stood there goggling at that death's-head-snake in my trusted shotgun, ol' Brit dove into a clump of weeds just inside the barb wire fence, and a cock pheasant exploded out of it. I damn near passed out as I realized I had been 3 seconds from blowing my face off.
Damn if I know where that 20-gauge shell came from. At the time, I didn't own anything but 12-gauge guns, and didn't own a single 20-ga shotgun shell. But I had been hunting with a guy a couple weeks before who was shooting a Beretta 20-ga autoloader, and you know how easily different guys' gear gets mixed up when you're chasing birds and running a couple of dogs.
Live and learn, gentlemen.
