Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters The worst you ever tore up a rifle?

Moosemike: Out of the hundreds of Rifles, pistols and shotguns I have owned and do own (knock on wood!) I have never "tore one up"!
I have been lucky I guess.
But your question brings to mind a HORRIFIC "tear up of guns" I witnessed many years ago.
I was a field training officer with the Seattle Police Department when my student officer and I got a call of an angry wife destroying property.
The call was in the Magnolia Bluff sector (bucks up folks live here!) and upon arrival I nearly vomited at what I saw!
The wife had brought all the husbands Rifles (including several Weatherby's!) and shotguns (including several Browning over and unders) out to the street curb lined them up leaning on the curb and then drove over them with her Mercedes!
Destroying ALL of them!
The husband who had come home to find this carnage was nearly in tears and wanted his "wife" arrested for property damage!
Sadly Washington state is a community property state and what was his was hers and vice versa.
She could destroy "her" stuff if she wanted.
I bet she did $25,000.00 worth of harm to the husbands guns and scopes!
Every once in a while I have a nightmare that the VarmintWife does something similar to MY guns - and I wake up in a cold sweat.
By the way I have never mentioned this call/incident to the VarmintWife!
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

That's awful! Now I'm gonna have friggin' nightmares.

Anyone remember this story ? Author ?

After the last day of deer season many moons ago I slipped on the ice when I was bringing my Marlin 336 30-30 into the house. I fell on it and cracked the stock under the pistol grip. My Dad restored antique furniture for a hobby and he offered to fix it for me. I still can't locate the crack in that stock. Thanks Dad!

I slipped on the ice in the driveway with my Win 94 Trapper .44 mag in my hands. The receiver got some gouges.

I had a custom stocked 25-06 with XXX Fancy California Claro Walnut. When I took the rifle out of the soft case it was in two pieces. I blame it on my wife.

My Dad was having some problems with squirrels at his house. I saw one out in front and was going to pop him with a Sears 22 semi auto. When I released the bolt to chamber a round the rifle fired. I was brought up to always point a firearm in a safe direction and nothing was hit by the bullet. The rifle was used when I bought it and would jam on a regular basis. I figured my Dad's pond was a good place for that sorry piece of crap and tossed it as far as I could. It has been on the bottom of that pond for close to 40 years now so I guess that would qualify as tearing up a rifle.

About 50 years ago while hunting on his own my Dad was trying to sidehill across a talus-type slope when the loose rocks under his feet gave away and he started sliding downhill toward a 50-foot cliff.

As he slide past the only small bush in his path he let go of his rifle and grabbed the bush with both hands. The bush held his weight and the rifle disappeared over the edge.

My Dad very carefully crab-crawled off the side of that slope and then worked his way to the base of the cliff to retrieve his rifle. The stock was shattered and the front sight was broken off. He carried the pieces back to camp.

He was so thankful that he didn't hurt or kill himself that he wasn't really worried about the rifle. Under the circumstances he felt losing the rifle was a small price to pay to save himself from certain disaster. He was much more cautious on steep, loose hillsides after that.

Lent a loaner 30-06 ruger m77 to a friend who went to western Washington and hunted in 3 days of downpour. I didn't see him for 3 months and when he brought it back the bolt was rusted shut from sitting in the case. I told him he might as well keep it as a keepsake, Christmas that year he had a brand new one Nader the tree for me.

Thats why my loaner is a ruger. Hate the gun. Hate its in 270. If it came back broke I'd likely be happier. LOL. But it was free to me from a raffle ticket that CArolyn bought me....

Went on my one and only horseback hunt in Idaho. Guy in front of me had his horse spook at some gremlin and took a tumble. The hunter baled off the horse but the horse rolled down the mountain for about 50 feet. Snapped his stock in two pieces and crushed the scope. Horse wasn't hurt too bad, just bruised up. Hunter was nearly in tears.
To the guide's credit. One of them rode back to the trailhead with the guy's keys and got his back up rifle.

I was coming out of the mountains one evening on horseback when I decided to cut across a clearing to get to the cabin where my brother was waiting. My rifle was slung over both shoulders. Someone had left about 100 feet of barbed wire strewn across the pasture; when my horse got tangled in it she started kicking and bucking. Not being much of a horseman, I got thrown in pretty short order, only to land feet first (fortunately not head first!) in a double turn of the barbed wire. Shot of me, the horse took off with me and my rifle in tow, skipping across the pasture like a stone on a pond. My rifle had scratches in the barrel and on the stock; the scope, a Vari-X III, also had a scratch or two and a sizable gouge in the knurled magnification ring. There was grass, mud and horse hockey crammed into every nook and cranny.

Next day I took the rifle out of the stock and took everything in the shower and hosed it all off (it's a stainless, tupperware stocked Model 70), reassembled it and took it to the range. Didn't even shift zero. That is one of the reasons it is still my favorite rifle.

The horse recovered but I don't think I've been on one since.

If I had a dollar for every rifle horses have ruined.........
I've owned four horses but I never left my rifles get near them. . One of them about busted me up a week before hunting season about 10 years ago and ruined my hunting season. I don't know that I ever want another. I like other peoples but as I get older I'm not sure I want to saddle up.

Never use another firearm of mine. Matter of fact never came back. Father stopped attempted homicide.

Yeah, I've given up on horses. Seems every time I get near one I have another near death experience.

I'm keeping that rifle, though. Last gun I'll get rid of.

Never tore one up bad but once, on a drive, I was trying my best to stick to that sidehill. Didn't work. The Snow and the angle of the ground got me. Landed right on the rifle and bent the objective bell on the scope down a bit.

An impromptu range session and judicial use of a tire iron by my Dad got her back on. This was about 25 years ago. I still carry the same rifle and scope a few days during the year. It is still ON.

Dad again.... He bought a new Interarms Mkx in 7mm Mag back in the 60's. Never used a bolt action before that.

First day....8-point....He gets a swing and a miss. Then, in the heat of the moment, he proceeds to short-shuck the bolt....Locked her up tight.

He took that rifle and threw it down into the stripping pit that he was standing on the rim of....Unlimbered the Model 19 and put his sights on that bucks chest....Never seen the intervening branch.

So...One with the rifle...Miss. Yank the handgun...Shoot a tree. Dad was not happy. He fired the other 5 out of that revolver at the rifle laying in the bottom of the stripping pit.

Years later, Dad and I fixed the gouges and the bullet hole in the stock, and replaced the scope.

AAAAAHHHHH the memories.

Once dropped my late father's (now mine) Savage model 99 carbine down a rocky slope. It slid for about 200 feet before it took a dip in a 6 foot deep pool of the creek that ran below... Creeks up here in New England are very chilly come deer season...

Got a few nice scratches and gouges from that goof.

Oh, yes. I have a few stories.
First my elk hunting buddy:

About ten years ago, he heard and felt a rumble in the middle of the night. He jumped out of the bedroom window with his boots in one hand and pants in the other.

He managed to get clear and heard, more than saw in the darkness his 14x70 mobile home and V-10 4x4 get fully engulfed by an earth slide. With the loss of his home went all of the rifles, shotguns, and handguns he had aquired throuh his life as well as the hunting rifles he had purchased for his kids in recent years.

After a couple weeks of being buried in wet earth, he did recover a Belgian Browning auto in 7 mm Rem his deceased father had given him for a graduation present.

Four years ago the same friend bought for his son another Belgian auto, this one in '06. As he was having functional problems with the old 7mm, the Dad borrowed his son's newly aquired 30-06 for a self guided horseback Id mountain elk hunt.

He and I got caught in a freezing deluge driven by thirty to forty mph winds. We had to abandon that day's attempt to reach a location for spike camp. We returned to base camp before dark, and dried our gear.

Late the next day, we reached our target campsite and set up our tent, high line, and tended our horses. The morning of the third day, elk season opener, my buddy pulled his son's Browning from the leather saddle scabbard to find it a brown, rusty mess.

My SS and laminate Ruger #1 in STW survived unscathed, but I had pulled it from the leather when I was not mounted.

As to my own rifles:
1978, I borrowed a Win 670 in '06 from a friend for a deer hunt. I took a couple boxes of factory 150 gr ammo out to check zero and functionality. At the fourth shot, the fore stock split from the trigger guard to the tip of the stock.

My friend happily accepted a brand new Rem 870 12 GA magnum in trade for his damaged rifle. I replaced the stock, bedded it with acraglass, tweaked the trigger pull, added a Weaver V-7 and it became my most dependable freezer filler.

1979, my brother called me at work one evening to ask where to find additional 22-250 ammo. I about crapped my pants, as the only 22-250 in the family was my brand new Weatherby Mk V Varmintmaster. And I had just that afternoon taken it apart for cleaning and had not retightened the stock bolts properly. Sure enough, the recoil lug in the stock was cracked. It cost me a considerable sum to have the crack properly repaired.

1982, I strapped the aforementioned Win 670 in a scabbard to the forks on my Honda XL 350. Later that day I tipped the bike over in some extremely rocky terrain. The butt came down on a large boulder with the weight of the bike on top. The butt snapped off at the tang. I had to purchase another stock and repeat the bedding process.

1996, My 12 year old son drew a tag for a cow elk. I slung my new model 70 Classic in 264 vertically beside the saddle horn on his bullet proof 4-H pony, and we went elk hunting.

As the day progressed into late afternoon with no sight of game, my son fell asleep in his saddle. His horse walked under a windblown sapling lying across the trail. The tree caught up on the butt stock of the model 70, snapping it off at the wrist. This time the replacement was a Fajen laminate from Midway.

1998, I was reloading for a Savage 112 in 22-250 using a new Pact digital scale to weigh each load of H380. Somehow I got a couple of hot loads. Which broke the extractor and set the bolt lugs back far enough to create excessive headspace.

I necked all my brass up to 24 cal and necked it back down for a crush fit in the chamber. That worked for a few years until I had Sharp Shooter Supply chamber the barrel to 22-243AI.

I later sold that Win 670 with a brand new 3-9x40 Bushnell Scopechief to my cousin. A year or so later, he left it in the rack in the back window of his pickup while he stepped into a local tavern for the evening.

Yes, when he and his buddy came out at closing time, the side window of the pickup was broken, the Winchester and his friend's 12 ga were missing.

We had a bad rollover in a john boat while floating a river in Ohio. My Winchester 1300 XTR was gone, as was my buddy's Charles Dailey over/under.

My deer guns get dings and dents on them from getting in and out of tree stands, but I've never dropped one of them. Dad always told me all those battle scars were "earned". I guess that explains why I have soft spot for old, worn deer guns. Give me a beat up 30-30 or an old sporterized Krag and I'm a happy man.

Although I didn't do it, the gun range I used to go to kept pieces of a Colt-Sauer rifle on the wall over the register with a sign that said the shooter fired a .308 Win cartridge into a .25-06 chamber. It was a mess, action barrel and stock.