This happened 2 days ago, not necessarily dangerously dumb, but definitely a face/palm moment.
I took my girlfriend out to the 500yd range at my club. She is a deadeye with my Marlin 39A .22LR, and she wanted to try out something longer. I set her up with my custom built Rem700 in 30-06 and some light handloads, which will hold groups under 1 inch out to 300 yards on a good day.
The range has hanging 1.5'x3' steel targets every 100 yards from 200y to 500y, and also berms to put your own targets. A father/son pair were a few benches over, sighting in a few rifles at 200 yards. After firing 4 shots at the steel to confirm zero and holdover, I turned it over to the gf, with the instructions to shoot the 200 yard steel, a white rectangle on the far right (the steel was painted white). I settled in behind my spotting scope while she loaded and got set up on the bench.
First shot at 200 yards missed the steel, couldn't see any impacts around the target either, which was odd because the ground was so wet, misses usually threw up a spray of mud and water. 2nd shot, another wide miss. I couldn't figure it out, the gun is sighted in and dead on at 200 yards, and she's a good shot. I was wearing my peltor's with the volume turned up, and while this was going on I could hear the father getting frustrated with the odd groupings out of his son's rifle. GF takes a 3rd shot, another wide miss. Then I go stand behind her and notice the barrel is swiveled a bit further left than it should be. At the same time the father/son are both scratching their heads at the weird groups they were getting.
The lightbulb came on and I checked their 200yd paper target in the spotting scope and noticed 2 distinct groups - 3 shots in about 2" dead center, and 4 shots strung vertically higher on the target. She had been alternating shots with the father/son, and to them they would see 1 shot dead center, then the next 1' high, then another dead center. Their frustration was evident. I went and told them of our error, and we all had a good laugh. I should've asked them to save the group on their target for my gf, it was a pretty good looking 3-shot group.
A good day of shooting, once she got on the right targets she hit nearly every one all the way out to 500yds. Then she did an outstanding job as a spotter helping me get my CMP Garand zeroed in from 200-500. I was pretty impressed that the 60 year old service grade Garand could get consistent hits at 500 yards.
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