Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Play by play with idiots at the range

What I wouldn't give to have that privilege.

15 minutes and 30 minutes from my house.....each place is lonely

Dave_in_WV,

I had a friend who wanted to chronograph his loads. I set up a target, put the chronograph below the target a few feet out in front of him. Then I told him, "Ignore the chronograph and aim at the target. You won't have a problem." I turned back to my pickup for something while he fired. He said, "Whoops." I turned around to see the skyscreen wire on the second hanging with no skyscreen.

How does that happen? He had to hit about two feet low on the target to get the "eye".

I thought only a 270 could do that...

Yes. That's a Godsend.

Had some folks walk into our covered bench area. All were holding rifles, no cases. As they were fooling around getting set up, one of them sent a round through the ceiling. Had the damn thing hot when they walked in. They left, or I was going to. mtmuley

There was a guy beside me one day trying to sight in his rifle at 100 meters, he was inexperienced and hanging on every word of the two experienced guys looking over his shoulder. He fired shot after shot, cranking the scope in between shots because the two guys kept telling him he was way over the target. I started paying attention once they ran out of scope adjustment and started talking about the scope must be messed up. They tried a couple more shots and I could see the bullet hitting the ground part way down and hitting high on the berm behind. I stopped them and told them what was happening and offered to let them use my bench because there was a 20m target they could get boresighted on. They looked at me like I was a complete moron and kept shooting. I think they ran out of ammo then left. Had to be 40-50 rnds into it.

Another time the situation was similar only the inexperienced shooter was shooting factory and reloaded ammo but was getting a lot of misfires with the reloaded ammo. The experienced guy helping him looked the cases over and told him he had "a bad batch of primers, it happens sometimes". I politely got involved and found out it was new unfired brass and the pin strike was almost non existent. I told him it was more likely that his new cases were a little short for his chamber and a couple things he could do about it. Again I was looked at like I was a moron and the experienced guy turned back to the shooter and said "no, you got bad primers".

I know I'm not the most knowledgable guy around, but I am smart enough to know there are a lot of things to learn and keep learning. Some people don't seem to want help or mabye they don't trust others.

It's always fun to take my brother in law to the range. One time he hands me an almost straight walled case and asks "why does my brass look like this?" I check the head stamp and it reads 35 REM then I look at his H&R Handi rifle and it reads 35 Whelen! I tell him the problem and his response is "They aren't the same thing?"

Later that year we go to the range again. I figure everyone makes mistakes and he learned his lesson. He now owns a Ruger #1 in in 270 Weatherby. After 2 misfires his rifle finally goes bang but doesn't sound right. It won't extract the case and he asks for a little help over here. I have a little flat blade screw driver handy and dig the case out. It's a .270 Winchester! How it fired in the rifle I'll never know. The primer was gone before I started digging it out. After telling him what he's done AGAIN he stated he thought a .270 was a .270 and this brand was a lot more affordable than that Weatherby stuff!

He asks me recently about getting into reloading. I told him maybe we should hold off for awhile

I watched a fat tubolard kind of guy roll into the parking lot in a cloud of dust, pop the trunk of the Caddy, wrestle out a big piece of cardboard like off of a refrigerator box- and a Winchester 94, uncased. He scribbled a 2" bullseye onto the cardboard, set it up at 25 yards, and levered three quick shots at it (the gun was obviously in a loaded state when he fished it out of the trunk). Those bullet holes were all over the cardboard with the closest one being about a foot away from the "bullseye". "That's good enough for me" he announced. He tossed the gun directly into the trunk, left the "target" behind, and peeled that Caddy out of the parking lot in another cloud of dust. Total elapsed time: not much more than it took you to read this. I was gobsmacked. I wish he had hung around long enough for me to find out exactly where he planned on hunting...

These examples are exactly why I built this one....a long time ago...all the way back to 1500 yards! 500 yards from my bedroom!

Bench1 by Rick Mulhern, on Flickr

One of my all time favorite stories. Fellow Marine and I are at a public range doing some basic load testing and this guy sits down at the bench next to me. Being a gun guy I check out what he is shooting. Some kind of bullpup rifle but on top is one of those Simmons Aetec scopes and the crazy thing is the turrets are turned at 45 degrees (like a V). Before I could stop myself I asked him why he has his scope turned that way.

Well ya see the human eye when it sees that up and down line just tells the trigger finger to yank the trigger without paying attention to the sideways one. I knew then that I should have given my friend the same speech that God gave to Lot at Sodom - run away as fast as you can and don't look back! He continues, "but with the crosshairs turned like an X it forces your eye to really focus on where the middle of the sight is.

I say gotcha, roll my eyes and get ready. He begins sight in by doing double taps at the 100 yard target. His wife is watching through binos: "yer still low." Bang bang, pause, bang bang. "Nope still too low." He starts twisting the turrets and then I see him take the magazine out to reload. 9 mms. He was shooting a friggin 9 mm bullpup with a 2.5-10x44 scope turned 45 degrees from vertical doing double taps to sight in and killing the dirt at 60 yards or so!!!!! Needless to say I tested new loads elsewhere after that!!

He may have been clueless, but he didn't sound unsafe .... comedy is it's own stress reliever

I've offered to buy guns from some of these very knowledgeable gun guys. Best to wait until their buddy is giving jabs. Pride can be an interesting motivator.

Sharpsman -dam' that's nice. Do you use sheep or goats to keep the grass down? Jus kidding...Homesteader

OK WOW

This is how I feel. The day I quit learning and exploring is the day they put me in the ground. I know a little about archery and that is my only claim to fame. But even after shooting long guns and pistol for years (45) I cannot hold a candle to these guys. I think I have proven that with some of my posts.

So I say it again, thanks for all of the help and patience.

Heard that one in a Sportsman's Whorehouse seminar on reloading from the INSTRUCTOR. Couldn't help it I had to speak up and was supported by 3-4 others. Not sure we convinced him though.

Now, now ingwe, I'm sure there were a few microcephalic morons in there.

I used to shoot at public ranges quite a bit. One my favorites was a guy getting ready for deer season with a Model 70 375 H&H using factory DG ammo. Poor guy, his flinch was so bad he was just barely able to keep all the shots on the pie plate at 25 yrds! To top it off, he was scrubbing the pi$$ out of the bore with a brush after every shot "cause that's what the benchrest shooters do"

THAT is superb!