[gunsmith]

In CA he probably would have been prosecuted for
taking it home.

http://kutv.com/local/local_story_024125103.html

Coyote Hunter Stumbles Upon Bazooka Rocket

ST. GEORGE Police briefly evacuated a neighborhood to take possession of a military-grade rocket that was discovered by a coyote hunter.

The man saw the rocket sticking out of the ground, dug it up and took it home Sunday. He called police when he realized it might not be safe to keep.

“It comes from a shoulder-fired weapon like a bazooka,” St. George bomb-squad commander Jason Whipple said Tuesday. “It was an old piece of ordnance, from back in the ‘50s and ‘60s.”

The area where the rocket was found was a former National Guard firing range, he said.

Authorities did not know if it was a live round.

“The part that would have told us that had been rusted over,” Whipple said.

The 2 1/2-foot-long rocket was taken to a remote area of Washington County and destroyed.

[gdvan01]

OK, by show of hands....who else would have dug up something that looked like a friggin' bomb!? I guess he was trying for a Darwin Award.

:what:

[boredelmo]

*raises hand*


Just kidding. That's pretty not-so-smart of him.

[tellner]

Especially since it was set for "Roadrunner"

[SwampFox]

I would have stood off 100 yds and shot the tip.http://www.chop45.net/phpBB3/images/smilies/th_blissysmile.gif

[mete]

It obviously belonged to Wiley Coyote.

[gdvan01]

Another reliable product from "Acme."

[Cybrludite]

:what: Playing with UXO=Darwin Award

[romma]

Curiosity killed the cat!

[shermacman]

He called police when he realized it might not be safe to keep.
Rarely am I speechless.

[hagar]

I would have shot at it from 100 yards away. If it did not explode with 10 rounds, I would have dug it up, took it home and kept it!:D

[Zero_DgZ]

Ditto. If you're hunting cyotes you already have the rifle on you. Stand that silly thing up and blast it a couple of times.

[Rumble]

He couldn't shoot it: there wasn't anyone around to hold his beer and watch. So he had to take it home and wait for someone to show up.

At home, he had an inexplicable moment of adaptive behavior (it feels something like cookie dough, I'm told), and contacted EOD.

[xd45gaper]

wonder what made him think it might not be safe?

i would have shot it to, images of Joe Dirt come to mind lol!

[MD_Willington]

We found an old practice bomb on Tree Island (also called sandy island) Just off Vancouver Island BC, 49 37' 11.12"N, 124 50'57.14"W on google earth. The Island is now a park since 1966.

They used to bomb the island when they had a training base in Comox at HMCS Quadra for WW2. 49 39' 47"N, 124 54'51"W on google earth.

[xd45gaper]

i wouldnt trust anything i found in the desert, thats where they do alot of live fire training. they have a bombing range south of my house a couple hours but its all dummy bombs you can deer hunt on the weekends there!

there was a show on the history channel about the desert rats that pick up the exploded ordnace and sale it for scrap. it was kinda crazy i guess its very dangerous also alot of them get blown up and what not.

[Babarsac]

*raises hand*

Well only if I was back working in the UXO industry. Fun times those were.

[Logan5]

I wonder if the transcript of his 911 call would be anywhere near as funny as I'm imagining it to be.

[rugerman]

Any bets he's the same guy that's always on the news when the tornado hits the trailer park in the t-shirt with a beer slogan, nascar hat and saying "well me and the old lady was setting there drinking a beer when we heard a noise that sounded like a train commin down that there dirt road".

[ArfinGreebly]

We ain't never had nuthin' like that 'round here.

How was we to know?

[MatthewVanitas]

I would have stood off 100 yds and shot the tip.


Some twit dental assistant at Ft Sill tried that a few years back, while hiking in a former live-fire range.

Plinked away at an 81mm shell with his .22 pistol, ended up having some good-sized chunks of steel extracted from his face.

I haven't learned a lot in life, but I have learned not to #### around with UXO. Very, very bad juju.

Call me a nancy-boy if you like, but I'll be the nancy-boy with all 10 fingers.

-MV

[Deanimator]

Coyote Hunter Stumbles Upon Bazooka Rocket
Used to see those things and plenty more, all the time on the ranges at Ft. Benning. I was on the map course one day and found a bazooka rocket in a dry creek bed. I just ignored it and moved on. We used to find .30-06 blanks in Garand clips when we'd dig fighting positions.

One of my NCOs at the US Army Armor & Engineer Board at Ft. Knox had previously been an AGR advisor in Oklahoma. He was EOD qualified, so one day he got called out to a situation in some suburb. When he got to the location, a two story home, he found the garage completely in flames, and the house starting to burn. Walking up the driveway, he tripped over a log. Looking down he discovered that the "log" was the charred remains of the homeowner. Apparently, our little genius had snuck onto one of the artillery ranges at Ft. Sill and carted home a 105mm white phosphorus shell, which he had started sawing open in his garage...

[Deanimator]

Some twit dental assistant at Ft Sill tried that a few years back, while hiking in a former live-fire range.

Plinked away at an 81mm shell with his .22 pistol, ended up having some good-sized chunks of steel extracted from his face.

I haven't learned a lot in life, but I have learned not to #### around with UXO. Very, very bad juju.

Call me a nancy-boy if you like, but I'll be the nancy-boy with all 10 fingers.

When I was at Ft. Benning for IOBC in '80, the local Columbus, GA radio stations ran PSAs every five minutes warning people to:

1. Stay out of the impact areas on post.
2. Not handle unexploded ordnance.

It seemed as though every week or two, some ignoramus would take his family into an impact area, where he would proceed to play with unexploded 40mm grenades, killing himself, and usually his wife and kids too.

[Rich K]

Some people's kids!:banghead:

[50 Shooter]

Two funniest things about this topic...

1st was the antburner remark, 2nd was the Joe Dirt(e) ref.

[CajunBass]

Reminds me of an incident where I work a number of years ago. A nut of one type or another was calling in bomb threats. Not too unusual, but this nut was actually planting bombs. :eek: (none ever went off.)

One of the guards found one in the parking lot, so he decided the right thing to do, was pick it up and carry it to the plant managers office. :what:

Needless to say, this guard was unemployed the next day.

[ndh87]

why does Murphy miss these moments?

[John-Melb]

This guy is an obvious twit, you do not mess with Unexploded stiff like that.

However, an uncle of mine was cleaning out his shed some years ago prior to moving house, the kids had all moved out and married, he had retired and they were looking at a moving into a smaller home.

Behind a old box full of hallf-used tins of paint, he finds - the No36 Mills Bomb he acquired in 1945! "That's where it got to, check baseplate, yep, it's still a "goer" now what to do with it" His first idea was to take it out on another uncles fishing boat and pitch it over the side, other uncle sugests if he brings the bloody thing anywhere near said fishing boat extreme physical violence will result.

At the time there's one of those silly bloody gun amnesties going on.

Uncle walks into local police station and asks about amnesty, yes it includes ammunition and stuff like that, no you don't have to identify yourself of fill out any paperwork etc.

With that, said unlce says good, removes Mils bomb from pocket, places it on counter and leaves.

Senior Constable Cosgrove never did forgive Uncle Robert for that one!

[SwampFox]

Quote:
I would have stood off 100 yds and shot the tip...

Some twit dental assistant at Ft Sill tried that a few years back, while hiking in a former live-fire range.

Plinked away at an 81mm shell with his .22 pistol, ended up having some good-sized chunks of steel extracted from his face.

I haven't learned a lot in life, but I have learned not to #### around with UXO. Very, very bad juju.

Call me a nancy-boy if you like, but I'll be the nancy-boy with all 10 fingers.

-MV


My guess is he was a lot closer than 100 yards if he was using a .22 pistol.
Besides, I didn't say it was the smart thing to do.:D

[mljdeckard]

I grew up there, and this isn't the first time it has been a problem. The place has a few military/former military facilities, including the Hurricane Mesa supersonic test sled track. When I was born there in 1973, St George had about 20,000 people, now the county is abut 200,000. Everywhere I used to shoot is now covered with condos.

It's been over 20 years ago now, a handful of hunters found an unexploded mortar shell and threw it in the fire. They ran away, and heard the primer charge go off, and went back to the fire, not realizing that this was not the primary charge. BOOM. I think they all lived, but they were riddled with shrapnel. (Science triumphs over Budweiser again.) When that story hit, all kinds of people came forward with bits of UXO they had found, kept, and in some cases painted and put on their mantle for decoration. When I was a kid I found some 40mm anti-aircraft shells. I think I told my dad and he called the sherrif.

[Keith Wheeler]

I haven't learned a lot in life, but I have learned not to #### around with UXO. Very, very bad juju.

Amen.

Guns don't kill; people do.

But explosives? Man, that's a whole 'nuther ball game.

What to do if you find UXO? Follow old Eddie's advice; don't touch, tell an adult. :D

[zoom6zoom]

*raises hand*

Well, at least he still has a hand to raise!

[Sniper X]

DUH!

[vynx]

I remember meeting a friend of a fellow college student & ex-air force (this friend of a friend did not attend college).

He looked like a desert rat but hey single young guys and all what do i care?

Anyway, they told me they were going into the desert and blow things up - the friend made his own home-made bombs --- I'm thinking hmmm, I like to see things get blown up this might be fun but this friend looks kind of grubby - I'm not too sure if I want to go - heck blowing things up out in the desert might not even be legal.



So my friend says no problem - my buddy here goes blowing stuff up in the desert all the time we know what were doing.

Then I notice friends buddy's fingers - or should I say lack of fingers - he is mising like 3 or 4 fingers some off both hands! He didn't lose them all at once he went back to blow more fingers off!

NO THANKS DUDE - think I have a test to study for! I always thought I looked better with all ten fingers! And that was before computers! Now I need some of them to type!

P.S. One good thing to learn early - you may not get yourself in trouble but some moron you hang with will.

[SamTuckerMTNMAN]

+1

I haven't learned a lot in life, but I have learned not to #### around with UXO. Very, very bad juju.

dern straigth bro....but man, we are behind the Iraqi's in handling and putting them to use I suppose.

st

ps - and just reading the post above
....man, never worry about being called a wuss. I can't say much here, but it has saved many a person. Or person's parts.

[dstorm1911]

XD45GAPER, uhhh I found my wife in the desert........... ya coulda warned me sooner damit son!!

[thexrayboy]

dee dee dee

[Warren]

There was a bit of craziness a few years ago when a homeowner found a rusted grenade half buried in the driveway of his new home.

Out come UXO-men who discover many other devices in that driveway and others up and down the street.

Turns out the driveways were covered in gravel and the gravel was dug up at a spot where ordnance was disposed of years before.

So those folks got lucky. As did the guy I read about who found a pipebomb somewhere on his property and took pictures of himself playing with it. Tossing it in the air and catching it and such like.

Me, I don't even like firecrakers.

[OldBillThundercheif]

Walking up the driveway, he tripped over a log. Looking down he discovered that the "log" was the charred remains of the homeowner. Apparently, our little genius had snuck onto one of the artillery ranges at Ft. Sill and carted home a 105mm white phosphorus shell, which he had started sawing open in his garage...

An incredible combination of stupidity and bad luck...

Of all the things he could have dragged home, he chose a WP shell. Ugh.

[iiibdsiil]

Anyone care to explain why this is so dangerous to this newb?

How does one go about properly handling something like this when these things are actually being used? What makes one think that something that was just sitting in the ground for 40 years without going off is suddenly going to explode?

[Lunga Bunga]

Please....... Please....... Please ........ tell me this guy wasn't BLONDE ! If he was.. that does it ! I'm going to the Beauty supply store tomorrow and get some of Ms Clairol's Beautiful Brown hair color and turn Brunette !
:D :D :D

[kungfuhippie]

How does one go about properly handling something like this when these things are actually being used? What makes one think that something that was just sitting in the ground for 40 years without going off is suddenly going to explode?

We'll it was supposed to explode 40 years ago what's to say you don't trip it now. Also many explosives get less stable with age and disturbing them can set them off. Every hear of nitro-glyserine? Basically it's something you don't know anything about (or where you in the army in 1950?) Modern gun powder is very stable, old school explosives were old technology.

[chris in va]

"I got tha poo on me!"

http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/4003/joedirtca4.jpg

[k_dawg]

The thing to keep in mind is, modern gunpowder is not an explosive. It is a fuel. It wont ever go off by itself. That is why you need a fuse/spark/primer/heat/flame etc.

Bombs on the other had, ARE explosives. And, many of the older types of explosives degrade, and become very unstable with age.

One of the worst is old sticks of dynamite [ compressed wood pulp+nitroglycerine ]. They can be so unstable that simply moving them roughly can set them off.

[SoCalShooter]

OK, by show of hands....who else would have dug up something that looked like a friggin' bomb!? I guess he was trying for a Darwin Award.


Isnt that the truth. I wonder what it looked like sticking out of the ground..but still once you dug it out I would take a few thousands steps back from it.

[Babarsac]

UXO can be fun...once we're sure it won't go off :D

[Satch]

Wonder what color it was,because "dummy rounds" are used a lot to save money in practice firing.In 62 we were out in the field for rifle range and grenade practice when some guy spotted a rifle grenade stuck in a tree.Our Sargent took one look at it and just pulled out of the tree.It was light blue colored,a practice one.

[Trebor]

One of the worst is old sticks of dynamite [ compressed wood pulp+nitroglycerine ]. They can be so unstable that simply moving them roughly can set them off.

I dread when my 82 year old grandfather passes away and we have to clean out his farm. He's made his living farming and "wheeling and dealing" all his life. I know he's blasted stumps in the past and I hope there's no half-empty box of dynamite waiting for us in the barn or basement or outbuidng somewhere.

I did ask him if he had any dynamite or blasting caps once and he said he hadn't blown up any stumps in years and wouldn't have a reason to have any. Still, I wonder if there's some there he forgot about years ago. Makes me shudder to think about it.

[Deanimator]

We'll it was supposed to explode 40 years ago what's to say you don't trip it now. Also many explosives get less stable with age and disturbing them can set them off.
Absolutely the worst is Japanese ordnance. They were heavy users of picric acid, which they called "Shimose". Picric acid reacts chemically with the metal of the bomb or shell casing, forming movement sensitive crystals. My aunt's boyfriend was on New Guinea during WWII. He said that in the tropical weather, cases of Japanese grenades would just rot and fall apart, leaving piles of rotten wood and corroding grenades. When they would find these in huts, they'd have to throw a loop of rope to the far side of the grenades, then back off a long way and slowly pull the ends. That way if the grenades were unstable, they'd go off when you dragged them, rather than when you picked them up.

[hoji]

Reminds me of:


"What's the last thing a redneck says before he dies?



HEY FELLAS, WATCH THIS!

[xd45gaper]

"Wonder what color it was,because "dummy rounds" are used a lot to save money in practice firing.In 62 we were out in the field for rifle range and grenade practice when some guy spotted a rifle grenade stuck in a tree.Our Sargent took one look at it and just pulled out of the tree.It was light blue colored,a practice one."

all our dummy bombs are blue. (except the torpedos which isnt a bomb) but our SLAMs etc all have a blue ring painted around them so you know they are inert.

[Working Man]

Call me a nancy-boy if you like, but I'll be the nancy-boy with all 10 fingers.

Amen.

Wasn't there a teacher who had an UXO for years that blew off part of his
hand in his class when he hit it on the table?

[gpdave]

Honestly, i wonder if he knew what it was and kept it, but then his wife made him turn it in. :)

[hornadylnl]

We had to escort eod guys to uxo when I was in Bosnia. Those guys were nuts. I watched a guy hop a fence and walk over to a small unexploded rocket of some sort in a cemetery. He took off his helmet and set it on the ground and got out his bayonet and started digging. We weren't allowed to leave the roads at any time. There were an estimated 2 million mines still out there in 97 while I was there. My camp was on the zone of separation where most of the fighting took place during the war. You could still see some of the treches that they dug. Our whole camp was surrounded by mine fields. The engineers spent most of their time clearing the area around our camp. The higher ups finally got wise and made the Serbian and Bosnian military help clear them.

One day, we were escorting an eod crew to get some uxo. They had just dug up a piece when we got a call to a riot in another town. We had to have 4 vehicle convoys so we couldn't leave them by themselves. They couldn't leave the pieces that they had already dug up so they put the uxo in the cab of their humvee and went with us. You have never seen roads bumpier than the ones that we drove on after we left there. What made it even scarier was they had a highback humvee that they kept all of their c4 and stuff that they used to blow up the uxo. Luckily the stuff didn't go off.

I actually looked into going to eod school before I got out of the Army. It was an 8 month school. They told me I had a 90% chance of going straight to Korea after getting out. I checked with the local city bomb squad and they told me that eod school wouldn't give me a better chance of making their squad so I didn't do it.

[The Rifleman]

rugerman
Member



Join Date: 08-07-04
Location: Auburn, Alabama
Posts: 84

Any bets he's the same guy that's always on the news when the tornado hits the trailer park in the t-shirt with a beer slogan, nascar hat and saying "well me and the old lady was setting there drinking a beer when we heard a noise that sounded like a train commin down that there dirt road".

You forgot the part where they said, " It was sheer pandemonium"..

[Jeff F]

I'm an equipment operator. About 10 years ago I was operating a backhoe at the train yard in Roseville CA. I was trenching away digging about three and a half foot deep when I hit something buried in the ground where nothing was supposed to be. It was round and metal, kind of looked like a piece of old pipe. I smacked it with the hoe a couple times then dug along side of it and it moved a little. I clamped down on it with the bucket and yanked it out of the trench and tossed it up on the bank. We were looking at it trying to figure out what we had when it finely clicked, thats a bomb. A 250 pound iron bomb left over from a explosion of ammo laden train taking it's load to the bay area back in the late 1960's. EOD was all over it, shut the job down and ended up finding three more. EOD boy's said they were full of TNT and unstable and we were luckey. They ended up digging a big hole and blew them in place.

[Mark in California]

We had a little old lady come into a local police station, walk up to the counter and taking a lot of effort to pick it up to counter height, slam down a mortar round. She then stated, "my husband brought this back from Korea, I never wanted it. We buried him this morning." She then turned and walked out.

The police evacuated the police station, city hall and one block in each direction.

The Chief of Police advised everyone that the police will come to them, do not bring explosives into city hall.

One week later a hunter brought in a case of old dynamite .