I had a moment today....

I was at a nice outdoor shooting range and was getting ready to shoot a friend's rifle. I mentioned to him that while I was shooting his, he could shoot the Mauser that I just got done shooting. I pointed to a small brown paper bag with loaded stripper clips of 8mm, and said "The ammo is in there."

I got settled in behind his rifle and stopped when I heard him struggling with the bolt. It would not close any more or open! So, I walked over and checked it out myself. The bolt just wouldn't move. Apparantly, he was loading a round and ran the bolt forward, but it would not turn down and lock. So we ended up using a large wooden block to hammer the bolt back. Want to guess what came out?

A freshly loaded .30-06 round.

Yep. I had grabbed what I thought were all handloaded 8mm Mauser rounds and loaded them on to the mauser stripper clips. After a thourough search, I found a total of two clips that had been loaded with .30-06. I'm glad the bolt did not close on that round, or there would have been much bigger problems, and health hazards!

So, I had my wakeup call today. I will be more careful in the future when it comes to seperating my handloads. Luckily we are all experienced shooters, and when there was a feeding issue, we all stepped in and investigated.

Safety is number one. Especially other people's safety.

Would the gas vent / relief holes drilled into the Mauser bolt worked in this case? If the case had failed or gas somehow managed to blow back, would the shooter have been reasonably protected?