What is the oddest thing you have seen happen at the range?

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PATH

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I have seen a few odd things. One inparticular comes to mind. My friends and I are shooting and just off to our right some old fella walks out to the 25 yard marker and starts setting up targets. I start screaming cease fire! Cease fire! The old timer who looks like father time is there with his son. We tell the son that walking out to place targets while others are shooting is not a healthy endeavor and we are quite unnerved by it. My friends are using unnecessarilyrudelanguage at this point.

We now have pur hearing protection off because there is a cease fire! Father time, without saying a word lets go with a 30-06. We are inside a building that has garage doors that open up onto the range. Now we are like stunned fish and you know what happens with that wah-wah noise and the accompanying ringing sound.

Now my friends are demanding blood and retribution. The son, who also has no gearing protection on starts screaming at the father. The old man gets very indignant and says "what's the problem?:banghead: I start to laugh like a crazy man!

At this point we packed up and left as the situation haad reached a boiling point for us. What a rectally inverted cranium this old fella was. It is a wonder that with idiots like this more people are not hurt on ranges every year!
 
About to pull trigger on rising teal...John Deere comes puttering into view out of range. Unload, clear gun...where is driver? Seems as member mowing ran over a hornets nest, jumped off and hauled butt to the pond...yep there he is...a drowned rat avoiding getting stung. Didn't know the old fart could run that fast:D
 
Some things I have seen at the range:

Like Path, I once watched a man walk down range to hang targets while the line was definitely hot.

While the line was cold, we had one person not only load his magazines, he also inserted the magazine into his pistol and proceeded to chamber a round while other members were hanging targets. The range owner got involved with that one and that individual was never seen on the range again.

I have seen a lot of accidental discharges during IPSC matches.

I have seen a lot of unsafe gun handling during matches.

I even had to give a match DQ to one of my friends when I was a range officer. That was a tough day, but we all knew that I made the right call and he has not been DQ'ed since.
 
Potentially tragic, but in the event not so, and still funny...

I was at a shooting range where a young punk came in with his girlfriend and a bunch of hangers-on. He'd apparently just bought his first .44 Magnum (a 6" S&W Model 29), but didn't have enough money to buy decent factory ammo. However, a friend of his had reloading equipment and dies for the .44 Special, so he picked up .44 Magnum brass at the range (from the discoloration, pretty old stuff...), took it to his friends house, and - without any instruction, experience or supervision - loaded up 100 rounds of .44 Magnum ammunition, using the powder & bullets his friend used for .44 Special. I don't know if he even re-sized the cases...

Anyway, the big moment comes - first shot with his new .44! He lines up on target, cocks the hammer, wavers a bit (sucks cheeks, bites lip, squints down barrel - not using sights, as far as I can tell, as his line-of-eyesight is about 6" above the barrel! - and touches one off. There's a thunderous blast, smoke and dust (including brick chips), and everyone on the line hits the dirt! When the smoke and dust cleared, we found that he'd blown the cylinder completely off the gun in two separate halves. Each had traveled sideways at sufficient velocity to dig two holes, each about 2" deep, in the five-foot brick walls separating his shooting position from those on either side - thank Heaven the range had those walls put up! The top strap was bulged upward a bit like the St. Louis Arch, and the barrel was hanging down from the frame at about 45 degrees. His hand was bleeding from superficial cuts and scrapes, and was badly scorched from flash-burns, and bruised, but miraculously no major damage had been done.

I don't know what charge he had in that thing, but I can only suspect at least a double weight of the .44 Special powder charge that his friend's powder measure was set for. Since the powder was Bullseye, which is a very high-speed, rapid-pressure-peak powder, that would certainly be enough to do the damage. Anyway, after we got our breath back, the rest of us had a good laugh as he left the range with the remains of his pride and joy, accompanied by jeering remarks from his "friends". Before leaving, he threw in the trash the other 99 rounds he'd reloaded. I recovered them and "deep-sixed" them to prevent any other innocent shooter from thinking that he'd just found a bonanza... :D
 
i was at the local range and there were some obvious newbies playin with a sig 239 that they had rented. well the one that was on the line was tinkerin with the take-down lever, he left it in the down position. as this joker raises the pistol onto his target, i nudged my buddy to watch, he pulls the trigger and to his amazement the entire slide goes down range :what:. the look on the faces of those kids was priceless. we got outta there shortly after that, but i can only imagine how they explained what happened when they returned the frame w/o the slide.
 
Not really odd, but kinda dangerous event that happened at a miniature "arial gunnery" range at Ft Stewart Ga.

Now these guys have a great job. Somehow my recruiter failed to mention there was such a job in the U.S. Army...gee..I wonder why?:rolleyes: Anyway, these guys fly styrofoam airplanes around all day while we try to shoot them down with M16s and M60s. Talk about a great job!

Well, we are sitting there shooting at the planes, everyone lined up almost shoulder to shoulder when the plane makes a fast run from left to right. Everyone is firing fully auto (M16A1s) when a stream of hot brass goes down a soldiers BDU top and Tshirt. The soldier totally freaks and while keeping his finger on the trigger jumps back and starts hosing the dirt at the feet of the guy next to him. Luckily he only had five rounds left in his magazine.:eek: Whether or not this was because he was pissed at the brass or an uncontrolled undisciplined reaction is anyones guess, but it was enough to oull the guy off the line.

The rest of the day pretty much went off uneventful and we shot down the "zero".

Good Shooting
Red
 
I've seen some funny things but the one I recall as most, umm, odd, was as a little boy sitting on a bench watching everyone. This one fellow walked in with a wheel gun I have no idea the make or caliber of and set up. First shot he touches off and the front of the gun vanishes. No big flash, no pieces, just gone. The barrel and the front of the frame simply ripped off and went flying 20 yds or so down range.

He stood there for a minute, shook his head, looked at the remains of the gun in his hand and then walked down, picked up the other half and left. Nobody said a word, including him.
 
The funniest thing I ever saw at a gun range was the Kamakazi rabbit.
This happened one busy day at the Black Canyon gun range North of Phoenix AZ.
A rabbit hopped onto the range at about 75-80 yards. The line went silent for a couple seconds as the rabbit proceeded on to the range. After the couple of seconds of silence the entire group of shooters on the range, handguns and rifles both opened up at the rabbit. The rabbit continued to hop across the range oblivious of the ground erupting with bullet impacts all around him. He made it all the way across the 20 some lanes of shooters and off the other side unscathed.
I never got a shot off because I was laughing so hard.
 
One of the funniest things I've ever seen happened to this guy named...ah, mokiekrussler. He was shooting his new Ishapore and doing fairly well, so he had the attention of several other shooters. He's watching the target very intently, trying for a really good 10shot group, and perhaps not paying enough attention to what the gun is doing. As he pulled the trigger on the 6th round, the end metal bit with the front sight ears, bayonnet lug and such, goes flying about 20yrds down range, still attached to about 3 inches of stock. At first there was only silence, then the loudest explosion of laughter from every side. Poor Mokie had to go retrieve the escaping part of his rifle and slink back into his truck.:eek: Man, glad that didn't happen to me.
 
1. The guy who shot the ceiling while hanging his target on the carrier (2 hands) with a loaded gun and his finger on the trigger.

2. The middle-aged fella who shoots with one gun in each hand, alternating shots downrange.

3. The guy who meticulously puts 25 rds into a nice little group at 10 yds once or twice a week, then reholsters his CCW and leaves. Never varies the distance, never varies the pace, never shoots weak or strong hand only, never draws and shoots. Likes to make disparaging comments abt other people's shooting.

4. The guy with the Desert Eagle .50 AE who from 7 yds, with an Aimpoint or some such sight, was flinching so badly he was completely missing the silhouette target abt 4 out of 5 shots.
 
A woman, obviously need to firearms, out with a friend/boyfriend/whatever.

She looked terrified of the gun.

To the guy's credit, he spent a lot of time explaining things to her, etc.

I was shooting a few points down.

Well, it finally gets to the point where she's going to fire her first shot with his revolver.

She lines up the sights, pulls the trigger, it goes BANG! (but not very loudly, I think he was using reduced loads or something), but she still utters a scream, drops the gun, and jumps back about 15 feet with a wild look of terror on her face.

At that point I jammed everything into my range bag and got the hell out of dodge as quickly as I could.
 
Shooting at a rabbit? :what: I don't know what's more unkind, the fact that you fired at the poor animal or that you waited for it to get in full view before letting it rip....:uhoh:
 
A while back, I saw a model 29 (or maybe it was one of the big Rugers), that some new handloader had destroyed. He was gonna use Winchester powder to load with. He assumed that 296 was the same as 700x, and basically massively overcharged the thing. Top and sides of the cylinder were gone, top strap was bulged (or maybe broken... don't remember).
 
Recently, A middle aged guy in a hurry to pick up once fired brass off the ground from a bunch of guys firing off a case that he walked(head down) into a steel column.:D THUNK!

I still have a lump on my head:eek:

Going home with nearly a case of once fired brass took some of the sting out tho:p
 
Recently, A middle aged guy in a hurry to pick up once fired brass off the ground from a bunch of guys firing off a case that he walked(head down) into a steel column.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA That is hilarious!

:D
 
At a Colorado State Silhouette match about 20 years ago in Walsenburg, two guys from Denver were going to shoot revolver class. The first one fired his first shot while his buddy spotted. His Super Blackhawk locked up on the first shot, so he borrowed his buddy's SBH and locked it up on the first shot. He said "these loads were fine in February" (this was in September).

He got DQed for unsafe loads.
 
I saw a guy shoot himself in the hand while everyone was gathered around a table during a cease fire. He was lucky no one else was hit.
 
From an earlier post at TFL:

This is pretty common, it happened to me when I was downrange replacing a target when a person loads up and chambers a round to resume shooting. I'm not gonna describe the person or their problem that day, because it could have been anybody who just had a case of cerebral flatulence. The range officer managed to stop him before he fired off the round, and he was extremely embarrased when he realized what he had almost done. As this was unfolding, myself and one other shooter were walking back from our targets at the 200 meter berm, when he mentioned something about the range officer running to one of the end rifle positions. I looked, and sure as hell, there was our fella in shooting position ready to fire. We both immediately dove for the backside of the 150 meter berm, making ourselves as short as we could enroute!

Again, this is one I'll bet a LOT of folks have seen. The buzzer sounds for the ceasefire, the RO starts to walk the line to check the unloaded, cleared, grounded, and safe status of each weapon, and BEFORE he's done, some shooter or shooters on the far end of the line automatically start walking downrange to their targets. Usually we just yell "HEY!", and they figure out what they forgot to wait for. Meanwhile, that muzzleloader guy on the other end already had a cap on and a charge with ball loaded when the buzzer sounded, and they usually get extra time to discharge that round before the all clear is sounded.


The now-defunct Branden's in Sacramento attracted it's share of folks whose sole purpose in life was to see how many safety rules they could break. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you looked at it, the range officer, as well as retail store patrons, were protected from the range by a thick polycarbonate window. Those of us who showed up to shoot at the same time as the less safety-conscious often took our lives in our own hands. The bullet holes in the shooting stall dividers should've been our first clue. I distinctly remember one "gentleman", who had a new Bennelli M3 black shotgun, and was using slugs on a silhouette target. He was so proud of the effects, he physically walked down the firing line to his buddy, with the muzzle raking each shooter in each stall as he made his way to the stall of his pal. Then he proceeded to dump a few slugs into his buddy's target from the still-loaded shotgun. Think the range officer out there on the counter saw that? Nope, and we even asked her. Needless to say, we packed up at that very instant and left.


One Sunday, when I was range officer at our local 100 yard range, a person arrived with his new MAK-90 and several boxes of Wolf 7.62x39. After getting him safely set up with a bench and target at 50 yards, I proceeded to call the range hot. I was leery and had no desire to walk away from his position, but I had to walk up and down the entire firing line, keeping folks safe.

My first clue was on my return trip down the line towards his position, he had set up his shooting chair at the very rear of his bench, with the sandbags at the back edge, resting the barrel on them and firing. This meant that his muzzle was way behind the heads of his fellow shooters on adjacent benches. A firm but polite discussion with him corrected this problem, his muzzle was now properly forward of the muzzle line, and his fellow shooters resumed their firing. All was good, or so I thought.

Not more than about fifteen minutes later, as I was walking the line again, I heard a triple-tap, followed by a faster burst of fire. I turned and ran down the line, to see folks either running back towards their cars or making themselves real small. Our hero was firing his MAK-90 from the hip as he was walking backwards from the firing line towards the benches at the back of the covered range house, kicking up dirt clods and sending rounds over the 100 yard berm, big grin on his face. My first thought was whether I could get my Kahr K9 out of my hip-side Mexican carry fast enough to be of use against a grinning AK lead-hoser. My second thought came automatically as I screamed "CEASE FIRE, CEASE FIRE, DAMNIT!" at the top of my lungs.

God must've smiled at me then, because he actually heard me and did cease fire, nobody got ventilated that day.

He did catch the subtle clue, and shortly packed up his smoking AK and remaining ammo, enroute to his car and whatever part of Cape Canaveral, Cocoa, Cocoa Beach, Titusville, Melbourne, Satellite Beach, or Rockledge he came from.


Kicked a guy off the Lincoln, CA range one morning for shooting at a wild turkey at the 100 yard line, immediately after I called a cease fire, with his .45 Long Colt SAA clone. I told him if he had killed it, he would've had to stay there as long as it took for him to eat the entire thing, or for him to meet the fish & game officer I would've called, whichever came first.

Another cease fire happened when a white Ford Ranger pickup traversed right-to-left in front of the 300 meter berm at Lincoln. People were shooting at targets as their scope's field of view filled up with pickup truck and people. There's a gravel quarry to the left of, and behind, the berm that's in operation during business hours on weekdays. Evenings and weekends, that dirt access road it gated closed to prevent people traversing the range.

Some non-English speaking migrant farm workers got word that there was good fishing in the gravel quarry, so they broke the lock on the gate, and drove across the live range enroute to the fishin' hole. :uhoh:
 
Basic training...Fort Ord....M1 Garand

Company FU....name of "Silva" never did ANYTHING right. He outdid himself at the firing range though.

He managed to put a live round THROUGH the glass of the range observer tower. With a range officer in it.

In the previous weeks of all sorts of hell and crap, one thing that NEVER occurred was SILENCE.

Well, silence ruled the range right then. DI's were at a loss as to what to do.....for about 20 seconds. Then realization of what actually happened began to sink in. RO came screaming out of tower. All us on the line put down guns and started looking at each other and Silva. Silva was clueless as usual.

Then Silva was bodily picked up and thrown into a car and taken away. Probably to save his life. The NCO's had blood in their eyes and some 2nd Lt. decided then an there to avert about 8-10 courts martial. Took him away.

Very subdued range session after that.

How in hell Silva managed to turn around, with a locked load, and pull the trigger while it was pointed exactly at the range tower only Silva could answer.

He remained in the company and was later thrown down a canyon by our "Guerilla Warfare" class instructor. He fell asleep during the class.

Silva is probably a CEO today of some multi national corporation.
 
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