Funny range stories?

I'll make fun of myself. I was at a High Power match shooting an M1 Garand. We had just finished the slow fire standing stage with my last couple of shots landing far to the left, in the white. I wasn't sure where I'd gone wrong with those, but it was too late to worry as were moving to the rapid fire sitting stage. My two sitting sighters also hit left, even with a sight correction. Now I was really scratching my head, but the sighter period had ended and it was time for the rapid fire stage, which went something like this... Bang, bang (Ping/Reload) Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang... Where the hell is my front sight?! Apparently, it had come loose and walked off its base. I had a beautiful horizontal string that marched onto the next target. I have since been VERY diligent in checking the front sight screw!

A little different but,

Went to CC class, with oldest son. The instructor had no business "teaching" firearms. Very eclectic bunch of students. 3 gentlemen, in their 80s, had come together. All 3 had S&W revolvers. One a pristine .32S&W.

When we got to the range, split into 2 groups. On the firing line, we were positioned.
Our group consisted of a mid-20s young lady, who was married to young Lt, on base. He had told her closely watch the other attendees and pick the one she felt knowledgeable and ask to help her. She somehow decided that was me. She was carrying her husband's Beretta duty weapon.
I was in the next lane, with my 1911.
One of the older gentleman was next, with a .38
The .32S&W next.
The 3rd gentleman, with a .38.
A 40 yo biker with a Glock .40
My son with his 1911.

The course of fire is 50 rounds. Shot 5 rounds at a time and a pause for instruction, questions and reloads, between.

The young lady asked lots questions between firing. Grip, sights, trigger control, point of aim, slide release, ......
The gentleman with the .32 was always last to finish his 5 shots. Last to get get reloaded and ready.
The biker usually finished first. The first 5 rounds, holding the gun gangsta sideways. I was laughing, instructor was dumbfounded.

We finished our 50 rounds and retrieved our targets.
The young lady had shot very well and thankful for my help.
I had a ragged center punch hole and 8 nice little holes (.32) scattered over my target.
The 2 gentleman with .38s were looking at their targets. One says, " you blind old goat, why you shooting my target? "
The other laughs, " you shot mine, too "
Biker has holes EVERYWHERE. Less than 50, though.
Son walks up behind me, laughing, " I have 3 little holes in my target. "

That night, Wife and I go to steak house. A couple walks by our table. A young says, "Hello". Tells her hubby, " this is the nice gentleman that helped me, today. "

I asked them to join us. The Lt was most thankful, saying he had taken her out twice, to shoot. They almost ended up divorced.

He tried to pay our bill, when it arrived. I wouldn't hear of it and paid theirs, instead.

Helping with the shooting club's annual hunting rifle sight-in service we see just about everything. One year a young fellow showed up with his late father's hunting rifle that he wanted to be sure was zeroed. He had 2 boxes of new factory ammo. Out of the soft case came a beautiful prewar Winchester M70 chambered in .300 H&H Magnum with Unertal scope.
I went through the routine of prepping it for firing and chatted with the fellow. He was 30-ish and was going on his first deer hunt ever. Dad had passed a few years earlier. Son had been a late-in-life child as Dad had been in his mid-fifties when Junior was born. Interesting...
Completed checking scope mounts tight, action functioning properly, correct ammo, no barrel obstructions, etc. Rifle is in my sand bag rest setup.
Load one round and fire. Strikes target centered, 1-1\2" high. Next two rounds cloverleaf round #1. Perfect.
I load one round and coach the young man about sight picture and to use the same aiming point, breath control, etc. BOOM! SMACK IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CLOVER LEAF!!! "Let's do that again", says I, " and make it a 5 round group."
BOOM! 5 inches low an 3 inches right.
"I think you may have jerked the trigger on that one. Let's go again."
"No, no! I'm done!" Says the fellow.
☺

Got to the range to test a load in one of my F Class rifles. Unloaded my rest, range bag and chrono. Got everything set up. Uncased my rifle and went to open the bolt to insert a chamber flag…….

……yep, left the bolt sitting on my bench at home.

I always double check that I have all necessary equipment when going shooting, especially to a match.
Except the time I arrived with 9mm pistol and .45 magazines and ammo. A fellow shooter had correct magazines and extra ammo so I got to shoot.

Poper said:

Helping with the shooting club's annual hunting rifle sight-in service we see just about everything. One year a young fellow showed up with his late father's hunting rifle that he wanted to be sure was zeroed. He had 2 boxes of new factory ammo. Out of the soft case came a beautiful prewar Winchester M70 chambered in .300 H&H Magnum with Unertal scope.
I went through the routine of prepping it for firing and chatted with the fellow. He was 30-ish and was going on his first deer hunt ever. Dad had passed a few years earlier. Son had been a late-in-life child as Dad had been in his mid fifties she Junior was born. Interesting...
Completed checking scope mounts tight, action functioning properly, correct ammo, no barrel obstructions, etc. Rifle is in my sand bag rest setup.
Load one round and fire. Strikes target centered, 1-1\2" high. Next two round cloverleaf round #1. Perfect.
I load one round and coach the young man about sight picture and to use the same aiming point, breath control, etc. BOOM! SMACK IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CLOVER LEAF!!! "Let's do that again", says I, " and make it a 5 round group."
BOOM! 5 inches low an 3 inches right.
"I think you may have jerked the trigger on that one. Let's go again."
"No, no! I'm done!" Says the fellow.
☺

Click to expand...

Hope he has a new apprecistion pf his dad while he drinks his latte.

Nature Boy said:

……yep, left the bolt sitting on my bench at home.

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I think we have all done that at least once....

I went to a match once with my rifle in the hardcase.... Well, with the wrong rifle in the hardcase, anyway.

Nature Boy said:

yep, left the bolt sitting on my bench at home.

Click to expand...

........ Been there; done that; but we aren't alone. Saw a guy at the range do the same thing a few years ago.

Watched a guy walk up to the firing like with a new (to him) vintage surplus pistol. It's been such a long time, can't remember exactly what it was...maybe a Walther p38 or something... I just remember it was something old.

He went to fire the first shot, and about all 8 or 9 rounds went off with one pull of the trigger....like the sound of a car bumping into a rumble strip on the Freeway for just a half second... brrrrrrrrrrrrrt!!!!!

He looked over at me with the most priceless look on his face, ill never forget that face.
Not even one round was on paper, not even the first shot at 7-10 yds. He hung around for a few minutes in confusion, then packed up his stuff and left.

There was an RO at my range that was unnecessarily rude to me on a consistent basis no matter how congenial I was. I was shooting a 17hmr handi-rifle that had a crazy strong ejector and decided to have some fun. I was timing my shots so that when the RO walked behind me, I'd open the action and the casing would shoot out over my right shoulder and hit or narrowly miss the RO.
The RO finally lost it and started yelling me. I pointed to my ear plugs and shrugged. At the ceasefire I apologized profusely like a good little Canadian saying how sorry I was. I had a grin on my face for the rest of the day.

Funny? Maybe. . .

At a range I used to frequent, I was on the
50 yard trying to sort some kind of problem,
I don't remember what.
A younger man came up to the line and
sat down his stuff. Executive type dress.
Nice shirt, slacks, tie, good shoes.
They called a cease fire right away and we
all posted our targets and came back.
Line called hot. This fellow starts dressing
out of his duffel bag, heavily padded shooting jacket, PAST pad, etc.
Starts sticking gauze pads around his
right eye with bandaids. Takes one of
the nicest, prettiest big high grade bolt
rifles I've ever seen out of the case.
He kind of readies hisself, and starts loading what looks like big brass hotdogs into
this rifle. Looks at his target and nearly a
blur launches 4 cannon rounds as fast
as ive ever seen anybody do standing offhand.
Does the same thing 2 more times and sets
the rifle on his bench and waits for
the cease fire. When we all walk down,
his target has these big holes right on
the bull. You could have covered all the
holes with a coffee cup.
I've forgotten the name, but it was a
guy practicing for his next safari
Buffalo or something equally dangerous.
I don't remember exactly what he told me.
He was an exceptional shot, and I'm
sure he was successful

Not too funny at the time, except for the
pinheadedness of the man.
At a very crowded range on a weekend
I was shooting on the pistol side and
a spot had opened. I could tell the next
shooter walked behind me to his spot, but
instead of standing back waiting the few
minutes for a cease fire to be called, he
sets his stuff down and walks downrange
with his targets with several dozen guns
going off. Everybody stops shooting immediately and not a word was said.
This guy didn't so much as blink and
continues to place his targets and turns
and walks back up as if he did that
every day. He gets back to the line and
about the same time the rangemaster
runs up and starts in on him like Sargent
Carter on Gomer. None of the shooters
had said anything. I think we were all
still numb from watching such a piece of
stupidity and dumb luck
Needless to say Gomer was ejected from
the facility

Jim Watson said:

I've seen them rolled 90 degrees and the nimrod wondering why his elevation knob was moving his hits sideways.
I saw one installed with the crosshairs at 45 degrees, X marks the spot.

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I must be a nimrod as I mount scopes that way on purpose...
Easier access to the chamber and the turret is not hit by ejected cases.
So elevation turret is on the left side of the rifle and used for windage, windage turret on top used for elevation.
jmo,
.

Along the lines of “we’ve all done that.” I posted this on another thread, but anyway- Went to the range to test groups for my 308 AR-10. Threw my M&P 22 Compact in as an afterthought for plinking. Finished with the groups, pulled out my 22 Compact. Dammit, no magazine. That's OK, I'll just load manually and practice draws. Dammit, magazine safety. DOH! It was time to call it a day.

Tilos said:

I must be a nimrod as I mount scopes that way on purpose...
Easier access to the chamber and the turret is not hit by ejected cases.
So elevation turret is on the left side of the rifle and used for windage, windage turret on top used for elevation.
jmo,
.

Click to expand...

I do, too. My 788 .30-30 was particularly bad about bouncing empties off the windage knob and back into the action.
But you and I know what we are doing and why, the nimrod did not.

A .338 Win Mag can do that, but it's still my favorite to shoot.

MP shotgun quals, Southern California circa 1990. 12-gauge Remington 870 Police. Rookie gal next to me, fires her first shot which caused her to take a step back -- she hadn't pulled the buttstock into her shoulder -- ejects and chambers with muzzle raised, trigger on finger, doesn't get the muzzle down -- it's still raised about 60 degrees, reflexively pulls trigger, nine pellets ricochet off or go into corrugated tin roof... GYSGT rangemaster tackles the 5-foot-2 100-pound E4 to make sure she didn't try to fire another round. No one hit. She got some remedial training and turned out to be a good partner.

Escondido, California, early 90s, the old Shooter's Emporium. Woman in lane next to wife and me had a cardboard box full of photographs, kept taping them to the center of the B-27 targets she was using. She must've put up at least twenty or more before my wife got curious, during a lull in shooting, stepped over to check it out. All the photos she had of her ex-husband. We left before she ran out of pictures.

I used to go to this gunstore with a range out back,45 minutes south of D.C. My wife would visit her parents near there,I'd go to that store/range. Was shooting handguns everyday where we lived at the time,about 4 hrs south..... range in the yard.

So am there shooting my GC and a cpl revolvers when this late 40's,smartly dressed man comes up and starts talking. He's with the FBI and we're chatting. Asks me if I wanted to shoot his snubby Smith saying to notice the trigger job and whatnots. "Sure" but told him it was probably gonna be a little out of the X,knowing how mine are usually sighted in. No biggy.

At the 15yd line I ripped through a cyl full rapid fire DA and the group was around an inch and exactly where I told him it might be. Opened it and handed it back to him saying how nice it felt. You could've bought that agent for a quarter right about then...... haha.

Just PLENTY of range time,and lots of work.

Friend of mine who owned a Glock 23 and a Glock 19 couldn't figure out why the 19 was not cycling and splitting cases. You can probably guess the reason.

During the surplus boom I picked up a Broomhandle Bolo in 30 Mauser. Took it to the range. I stapled my targets about 25’ away. I set my stapler on the side of the backstop about 10’ from my target
First shot and my stapler blew up.
The bore was completely shot out as in I could drop a bullet in the chamber and it would fall out the muzzle
That bullet just bounced from one side of the bore to the other on the way out

I took my uncle to the range to test some loads in my grandfather’s old 30-30. Afterwards we went to the pistol range to shoot his old Ruger MkII. There was a guy 2 lanes over shooting a nice pistol of some sort with a RMR on top. He shoots a couple then the whole slide assembly goes down range. Barrel, slide, sight, everything.

He recovered it and he and the range master checked it out. No obvious problems, so he tried again with the same result. A few rounds it the magazine, he was left holding a grip with a trigger and nothing else.

Slow learner...

My favorite range story. The wife was shooting her 1911. A few lanes over were some of the local youth.

The youths were having a great time banging out rounds with their pistols turned sideways and making good use of the entire target at five yards.

One of them noticed the wife and called out to his buddies to check the little woman with the big gun.

They all went dead silent when they looked her target. She had shot a single hole two inches in diameter into the crotch of of the bad guy.