Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters John - Speaking Of The 7em-em

I’ve posted this story before. My FIL and I happened on three kids shooting out by the river. One was screaming for Jesus with eyes and snoot full of powder/gasses after firing a 7mm Express cartridge in a 7mm Weatherby. Blew the bottom metal off and a chunk out of the stock on a nice Weatherby Mark V. Action held but probably made for an ass whooping from ruining Pop’s rifle. Bet they check headstamps in the future….

Not a rifle story, but I once fired a round of .40 S&W in a Glock 30 .45 ACP. Something felt wrong when it fired but there was no damage to the gun or me. I had just been shooting a Glock 23 and apparently got a .40 round mixed in with the .45's. That was a shock and I haven't done anything like that since.

You can load a 7mm-08 cartridge into a .30/30 Winchester, and work it through the action, but you cant shoot it. It also takes three hours to get it out by candle light.

Good to know.

I’m glad none of these people were hurt badly. I try to be very careful.

This kind of thread is why I no longer have a .308 in the house. At one time I had both a .308 and a 7mm-08 and I liked the same SST bullet for each of them. One day I took both of them to the range and those two cartridges looked too much alike. A .308 wouldn't chamber in a 7mm-08 thank goodness, but it scared me.

My favorite sounds alike gun story came from a gun shop up north where a girlfriend wanted to surprise her boyfriend with a new .50 caliber and had them order one. Turns out that what he wanted was a .50 caliber muzzleloader, but what she ordered was a Barrett .50 caliber BMG. Big difference. I knew a guy who wanted a BMG, so I helped put the two together.

One must be smarter than what they are working with.

Stay safe out there.

A few accounts along this line

My Dad's neighbor gave him some 35 Whelan ammo and Dad decided to use it for sighting in his rifle. It was shooting all over the place and he finally walked out to his target to close the range and fired. The bullet keyholed sideways through the paper. They were actually .338-06 cartridges so he threw the rest away. The rifle shot much better with 35 Whelan ammo.

My buddy got confused at the range one day and fired a round of 308 Win ammo through a .270 Remington. The bullet hit the target at 100 yards and again, funny looking piece of brass. No damage to either the rifle or shooter.

At the range one day with a friend who was complaining that his Taurus 1911 would spit brass or powder in his face and he didn't like the gun. I picked up a spent casing off of the ground and noticed that it was very short. Shorter than a 45 ACP should be. I looked at his box of ammo and found that it was 45 GAP ammo. Turns out the gun shoots fine when you use the right ammo.

A friend inherited a 760 in .270 Win along with some ammunition. We decided to go out and shoot it. After firing several rounds successfully a shot sounded different and smoke curled out of the action. We found that some of the cartridges looked different though they all came from a .270 Win box. We found that some of the cartridges were .270s, some had been reformed to .257 Roberts and some had been sized in a .257 Roberts die and then loaded without trimming. All had the same .270 head stamp.

Nice to see they know something about cartridges...time they learn a little about punctuation. Literacy is a good thing.

A 6.5 x 54 MS will chamber and fire in a 6.5 x 55 Swede....and brass ejects in two pieces. Ask me how I know.....

That's a .223 Rem on the left and a .222 Rem on the right. You can probably figure out what the one in the middle is pretty easily. It was fired in a 700 Classic, and there was nothing damaged beyond the extractor. I make it a practice to NEVER have those two cartridges on the shooting bench at the same time...much less get too involved in yacking with some character while shooting. I've always thought it was pretty interesting that the .222 case came out looking as it did. I have to think that the firing pin drove the cartridge forward until the bullet engaged the lands, then all hell broke loose. I don't recall finding anything more than fragments of the primer.