Hi all,

Background:
Spot and crawl Wyoming Antelope. I say crawl since I was hunting second rifle season, a Type-2 tag, and the area was highly pressured and the Antelope were very skittish so I had to do a good amount of crawling to get shot opportunities.

My rifle: For this hunt, I decided to bring along a LH New Haven produced Model 70 Classic Stainless rifle, chambered in 300 win mag. I had put about 200 rounds through this rifle, mostly at the range, and had found a factory load that was shooting less than 1" at 200 yards and closer to MOA beyond that.

For safety sake, I would always carry the rifle with the chamber empty and the safety on. I would then only chamber a cartridge and put the safety back on when I was crawling the last few yards to potentially shoot an Antelope. If no shot presented itself or if I passed on the Antelope, I would eject the cartridge, put the round back in the magazine, slide the bolt back over the cartridge and put the safety back on. This was repeated a few times.

Incidents:
When it came time to shoot a nice buck, I pressed on the trigger only to have it feel stuck, as though the safety was still engaged. The rifle would not fire. I flipped the safety back and forth and the only way it fired was when I ejected the cartridge that was chambered and chambered a new one. The buck went from being alert to running scared and I f'ed up and fortunately had a clean miss at 230+ yards when the rifle finally went boom. At that point, I should have tried to figure out how that could happen, but I chalked it up to dust or sand in the action and did a quick wipe and kept hunting.

The second time, I think that I only had to partially eject the cartridge (lifted the bolt handle, pulled back some amount and re-chambered) after turning the safety on and off a few times. This last time was even more of a 'sheetshow' since I was getting anxious and the buck was curiously looking at me from about 150 yards out and about ready to run with his buddies. I finally got the rifle to fire and shot the buck through the left shoulder and as he quartered to me wondering what was stirring up so much dust in the sage.

I've since learn that the issue can be repeated by cocking the rifle and engaging the safety fully to the rear then lifting the bolt straight up until it stops. Then, if you try to disengage the safety and fire, the trigger won't pull. None of my other Model 70 rifles have this problem, but some production runs did. I learnt some obvious lessons and I should have pressure tested this particular rifle in mock hunting scenarios beforehand.

I now have a really awesome custom riflemaker who will build me a new rifle where this won't be an issue. I was fortunate in having the rifle fixed by that same riflemaker on my drive back so that I could finish out my season hunting blacktails and black bear.

Anyone else experience this issue?

You gotta use enough gun to do the job, man. You risk a pea shooter like that on dangerous game?

I would play around with some empty cases to see what circumstances will cause it to jamb like that. My 1st thought is what you thought - some crud had got in the action.

How far does the bolt go up until it stops? Safety fully to the rear should lock the bolt.

You may have a crud issue, or a safety out of time, something may have broke, but you don’t have one with a design flaw..

You say the Smith fixed the issue. The issue was....


Highly doubtful your custom is going to consistently shoot less than an inch at 200 with factory.

One of my buddies used to have terrible luck with all of his rifles and shotguns when he came across the game he was hunting. One time when we were turkey hunting, he ejected the shell out first, then tried shooting when the shotgun was on safety. Of course, it was the shotguns fault... Another time, he shot and fired everything in the magazine and missed every shot. Of course, the scope must have been "bumped".... Some guys just have a lot of "issues" when it comes time to take the shot. It's always the "rifles fault" though..

Brake cleaner applied with straw held firmly inside firing pin hole while holding bolt in a sweat-stained undershirt. Betcha you got loads of gunk built up inside and it’s causing this issue.

I had a failure to ignite on my 06 but a different model. That was culprit.

There is no "design flaw" IMO. Something was interfering with the firing pin or sear. From the description I can think of a couple things........ something interfering with the sear, the overtravel on the trigger set a hair too close or foreign matter in it............ more probable the bolt had something in it. Do you pull the bolt apart and clean it? Pretty easy to pull it apart and check everything over. I had one pre-64 that the bolt/main spring was so full of grease and gunk that it would hold the firing pin back after the safety was released.

I guess this is all mute now you've had a 'smith take care of it.

My first thought is the over travel screw is stopping the trigger movement too early. Skip to 8:00 to see how to set the trigger over travel.

One thing for sure, it isn’t a flaw in that particular trigger design.

Which may have been the carrot on the stick.

Trigger adjusted too light and or too little sear engagement trying to remove "creep".

LOL. Pronghorn don't need that much power. I just wanted to use this rifle on this hunt. I had used a 270 win. for a lot of my previous hunting. Prior to that, I had also used a 300WSM and a 308 Win. They all got the job done with a bullet in the right place.

1. From what I remember (not in front of it right now), less than 1/2" upwards. When taking the safety off, the bolt naturally would go down a touch, maybe a 1/4".
2. I will ask the specifics to learn what it was. I don't know offhand. He was able to fix the issue in about 1 hour or less.
3. Good point. I won't be using factory ammo in my new rifle. I expect that I will still find a precision handload load that will be sub-moa or better.

I got lucky with this factory rifle using Barnes ammo in 190 gr LRX. Early lot numbers (from late 2017) shot 0.5 moa or so (I kept 6 cartridges from this lot for this hunting season) while the most recent lot numbers shoot around 1 moa. Barnes couldn't explain why this is the case given the load data they were able to look up for me. That said, my factory barrel only shoots that well cold or slightly warm. If I try to fire two rounds without waiting at least 3-5 min in between shot, my groups spread out quickly. Also, interesting to me, this rifle won't shoot factory 150 gr or 165 gr bullets well at all. Worst groups were with Hornady Superformance GMX ammo which were consistently shooting 3-4" groups at 200 yards and up a bit to the left.

Thank you all for your input so far. Again, I was more curious if others have had this happen to them or not. I appreciate your responses as to root cause. I will learn what the issue was, but my understanding is that this happens with some factory rifles.

Interestingly, the trigger did creep (almost two-stage like) when I bought this rifle, used, a number of years ago. I did have the trigger adjusted last year to a crisp, no creep and about 2.5 pound pull or so. I was able to shoot tighter groups after that trigger adjustment

Anyone want to try to replicate the issue procedure to see if it's a problem with your rifle? Again, the issue in my rifle was repeated by cocking the rifle and engaging the safety fully to the rear then lifting the bolt straight up until it stops (in my rifle this was less than 1/2" or so). Then, if you try to disengage the safety and fire, the trigger won't pull.

Happy hunting and look forward to reading your stories and feedback.

I had an antelope tag here in Idaho a couple years ago. I keep reading about what a 223 will do on them. I don't have one but I do have a 22-250 so I tried it. Then I got a 75 yd shot broadside. Yes, it floored him, oh yes indeed.

Isn't this the same exact problem that the lady hunter in Africa had a couple years back, and her PH got killed by a buffalo charge or something?

If so, then yes, it is a "design flaw" of sorts.

Once another changes the factory set, as was the case here, the argument of a design flaw becomes questionable. In that perhaps they made adjustments that caused issues.

I remember that incident. It was discussed on these pages. IIRC, the deal was, the lady hunter had the rifle loaded with the safety on. When she needed to push the safety off, it wouldn't disengage. Apparently, in this case, with the rifle on safe, and with the bolt handle lifted up a bit, the safety won't push off. I remember checking all my M70's to see if any of mine would exhibit this problem, and none did. That's the way I remember it.

Yes, that was it. Some do, and some don't, exhibit the inability to fire after fiddling with the bolt handle/safety.

Ask Nicky Ateschon about this. She damned near got killed by a cape buffalo a couple of years ago and the consensus opinion is that this is what caused her rifle not to fire.

This.
If it's not the model 70 bolt is dead easy to break down.

Something is seriously wrong if you can lift the bolt up a half inch with the safety in the rear position.

Blacktailer, next time that I chat with Keith (likely in Jan at the shows), I'll politely ask about the rifle that Nicole used. I'm fairly certain that he's on the road until late November now anyways...

. When I get back, I'll check the travel on all of my Model 70 bolts for lift distance. The 1/2" that I mentioned is the distance between the bottom of the wood groove (vertex in the parabola, if you are into math) and the bolt shaft when fully lifted up with the safety on.

BWalker, what's this distance on your rifles averaging? What do you consider normal?

I would clean the bolt, firing pin assembly, trigger assembly, and chamber.

Crawling around in often sandy pronghorn country is when my rifles get the dirtiest. Odds are you have picked up some gunk somewhere in the rifle.

My bolts dont rotate at all in the rear most postion. There is some slop inherent in the bolt assembly, but not even close to a half inch. Maybe a 1/16". This applys to the three model 70's I have on hand.

Never heard of such a problem.

Surprised you stumbled on the only gun Smith who has any experience with this flaw.

Did you watch what he did?

As someone said, the model 70 has one of the easiest bolts to disassemble. Very easy to maintain.

In the incident involving Nicky Atcheson the story I heard is that since they were following a buff that she had wounded she had the safety in the middle position and somewhere during the follow up the bolt was slightly lifted causing the FTF. It was not in the rear most bolt lock position.

Sorry about your mishap. You have been given some excellent ideas to address the failure. Hope you get it sorted out

The irony is many people criticize the new Winchester m70 MicroTrigger ( and it works fine), and tout the older m70 trigger as "superior" and "bullet proof". Mechanical devices can and do fail, as the OP has found out.

Good luck for a simple, quick resolution to the glitch. Life happens.

The old trigger is a sound design, but the execution sucked.

All, thank you for your feedback and insight. Good lessons and info learnt and I had some good offline conversation with fellow members.

In sum: the issue has been resolved regardless of the root cause which I understand was likely a combination of Winchester factory and other items mentioned here. I trust the rifle maker who graciously fixed the issue and who also properly cleaned the rifle before giving it back to me. I have since resighted-in the rifle and the rifle now functions as intended and I cannot repeat the issue.

Fantastic.


Jerry