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......

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