Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game Poll: Do you hunt with a round in the chamber?

Don't make assumptions. How many military snipers do you know that only preformed missions as a sniper from the day they left Benning till the day they retired.

As far as people behind me. They have plenty of time to flip the selector switch on the way up and I trust some a hell of a lot more than others. If you've bonked so many doors explain how over the course of a deployment (on only the good Lord knows how many missions) you always had your personal favorite door bonking buddies with you.

If you're LEO how many "SWAT" ninjas are actually good and how many are there because they drink beer with the right guys.

In both cases there can be incredible warriors or absolutely dangerous idiots behind you. When sheitte gets real noisey good men can do some wierd stuff. Self preservation kicks in and bad sheitte does happen.

For the Army guys... what we need is a Seal to settle the mine's bigger issue.
Bill

Sorry, but that's the dumbest statement I've read in a long, long time! Do you go to the mall, movies, restaurants, gas stations, grocery stores, school, church, hiking/walking trails, work, or anywhere else for that matter, because they're all "places like that"!

Never left Benning served in the Marine Corps nothing against the Army. Been in the sandbox with 1st Battalion 8th Marines and 3rd battalion 8th Marines. Never saw a sniper attached to a platoon and never had a warrior I didnt know behind me when kicking in a door. When that door opens I want a proffesional with the safety off covering the left right and overhead ready to fire.If the man behind you is an idiot that safety being on aint gonna help you. Its a high intensity environment thats why we trade off and take turns kicking in the door. I will take a trained Marine with a hot weopon and safety off over a trained marine safety on anyday your YMMV. What conflicts before Iraq did you kick in alot of doors before becoming a sniper.

Bye the way Roque I respect your service. Wish you the best.

Very different hunting situation than the one most are discussing here.

Apples/oranges.

Dude, we're in to different worlds. Enjoy yourself.

I don�t think most of the cold carry types care what others do � with the perfectly proper exception that they SHOULD care how others around them handle their weapons.

When I see unsafe behavior I see that it is corrected or I make myself scarce. When my hunting buddies and I go afield we have rules we all agree to � things like anyone can call for a safety check at any time and everyone actually LOOKS at their safety while PHYSICALLY CHECKING it before announcing a firearm is on safe. Before a rifle goes in my vehicle the chamber gets checked the same way, visually and with a finger into the chamber. No one has to abide by those rules but I don�t have to haul them around or hunt with them either � and I won�t.

Whether my hunting partners carry hot or cold is generally left up to them. I have asked people I�ve hunted with to empty their chamber for various safety related reasons (usually due to poor muzzle control) and they have always complied. Their choice, but if they had failed to do so they would have been very much on their own afterwards. In any event, they didn�t get an invite the next year.



And of course no one has EVER been accidently shot, right? And the excuses afterwards � and there are always excuses - can�t recall the bullets.

One thing is true, however � no one has ever been shot when the chamber was empy, no exceptions.

About 15 years ago, IIRC, I had an unwanted discharge that made me rethink hunting hot. Before that I was a "safe" hunter, practiced all the "safe" gun handling rules religously, and in all my hunting since 1979 I never had an unwanted discharge. I was one of those guys that figured stuff like that would never happen to me.

I was careful.....

The occurance I'm talking about was with a centerfire deer rifle, 3 in the belly and one in the chamber. I was walking up a sorta steep ridge, thought I had the safety "on", and boom...the ground exploded right in front of me. I SWEAR the safety was on but when I collected myself and looked things over the safety was "off". A little twig had snagged the trigger, and I can't explain how the safety got moved. Maybe I thought I set in on safe, but didn't.

No longer could I say it wouldn't happen to me.....

I was hunting alone and the muzzle was pointed in a "safe" direction, the ground in front of me.....but what if I'd have bounced that bullet back into my own guts, or chest. No one would have found me in time.......

Just last winter my kid and I were walking across some ice back to the house. We'd just been out all day in the cold/ice/snow, were tired and hungry, and REALLY wanting that hot woodstove. I mentioned to the kid that this ice is pretty damn slippery so be careful. No sooner had I got that out of my mouth and his feet went flying out from under him. He slammed hard down on his left hip and his rifle went flying up in the air, probably six feet high. How that happened I don't know because he had it slung on his shoulder via the sling. It all happened in a millisecond and I'll never forget the sound that rifle made when it came down on the ice. You could have made the same sound throwing it down on some concrete from up on a ladder. It bounced from muzzle to butt back to muzzle a few times before coming to rest about 10 feet from him. I feared him a broken hip, and I feared the rifle a busted stock, and a busted scope at a minimum. He was okay other than wounded pride, and the rifle was, to my surprise, unharmed beyond a nasty ding in the wood.

I'm DAMN glad I've taught him to hunt/carry with a cold chamber. If there ever was a fall that could cause an unwanted discharge that was it. Despite the circumstances of being done for the day, within sight of the house, and most anyone's rifles would have been unloaded anyway, that fall could have happened anywhere, and at any time, and to anyone.

The point of his story is that he never thought he was going to take a spill on that ice, neither did I. He never thought he could lose THAT much control of his rifle, neither did I.

Were it not for my own mistake 15 years earlier that taught me to carry cold, his little accident on the ice COULD have killed him, or me, or one of our family members in the house if that rifle had a round in the chamber.

There's just too many risks to carrying a hot chamber, and trust me, NEVER think it can't happen to you......

6 days of hunting farm animals. Even one charge in that lot.

OK, I'm convinced. Trigger locks in the field!!

So you Ralphie's won't shoot your eye out!

Pick-up truck, corn feeder, and tripod stand?

Just wondering......

I'm sellin' the "fact" that deer charge in Alaska to my wife . One more reason to make the trip.

George

In some cases where control cannot be maintained that may not be enough.

It's never been about "cold guys" not being able to control and thereby safeing themselves by going cold. It's about absolute safety when one does not have absolute control.

Slips, trips, and falls happen in lots of huntin' woods. Some hunting grounds are as safe in that regard as cleaning a rifle in one's garage, so it's of little issue.

The risk of a ND is small; the consequences are great. That is the point, not clumsy Bubbas afield.

Amazing how few actually get that, isn't it.....

For an example of how folks tend to handle firearms when they "know" the chamber is empty, spend an hour in any gun shop. I agree-a good gun handler, with an empty chamber, is darn safe. But, offsetting that IMHO is the idea of all the bad gun handlers put there... Thinking they have an empty chamber, when they don't. In a season's hunting, in a 100% mandated "cold carry" scenario, rifles would get chambered a LOT. They'd get un-chambered again some smaller number of times... There's risk there, too.

As to risks, manage them as you see fit. Driving 55 on the highway is probably your statistically best place to start- for you and the people around you. Do it for the children.

So... Safe to say the cold carry guys will be the ones putzing along in the slow lane...?

My only real interest here is when guys say that hot-carry hunters don't belong in the woods... Dunno if that's happened lately as I'm not monitoring this. It did happen earlier in the thread. Other than that, who cares... Do as you see fit.

You don't get it.....

That's the understatement of the century!...

Obviously, you favor some type of law, or control by someone other than the adults that hunt? I appreciate your concern for my safety and the safety of my family.....anything else you may want to suggest to help me through the rest of my life?

You make the "cold" case very well. Thanks.

The guys in the gun shop are not mishandling the rifles because they know them to be safe - that's standard practice for those guys.

Nobody is talking about cold chamber mandates - you sound like an Obama democrat...........oh, wait.

It's not to say that someone with a hot chamber cannot handle safely, they certainly can, and mostly do. It's the part that cannot be controlled that is the point.

Also, lotsa really bad analogies made from pistols to shotguns to golf to driving. Here's one for you:

Odds are one of your precious children could run across I-5* in the dark and not get hurt. Would you let them anyway?



*Pick your closest interstate - if ya have one.