My friend had an accident this morning while hunting. He was using a Smith and Wesson model 1500 in .270 Win. He has used this rifle for many, many years with no issues. He had 4 rounds in the rifle and was shooting at 4 hogs. He killed the first 3 hogs and the rifle exploded on the 4th shot. He may loose his rt. eye. He is having surgery in Tyler in about 30 min. His son has the rifle and in an attempt to figure out what happened has tried to open the bolt with a small sledge. He hit it hard 20 or so times and it will not budge. He said the rifle had exploded in the magazine area and the wood surrounding the action. We are all very curious what happened.
1) He does not reload and shoots only factory ammo.
2) A couple of years ago he purchased a .308 and shot it for a while but sold it. Other than that, this is the only caliber he owns.
The barrel was unaffected. He plans to take it to a gunsmith and have him try to determine the cause of the malfunction. What do you think???
Does it seem plausible that the 4th round was actually a .308 and that the 30 cal bullet could not make it down the .27 cal barrel and therefore the weak spot was the action? We are all really curious, and hopefully we will eventually know for sure, but I am curious if any of you have suggestions that may help us arrive at the cause. thanks in advance.
