Catfish25p2000
New member
Well, at the risk of being flamed, (and I'm sure I will), I am going to tell my story of a close call on the range yesterday. Let me start by saying that I have been shooting a long time, and shoot at least 10,000 rounds a year. I am very familiar with guns, and am very comfortable shooting. By no means am I saying I am an expert, but I am not a rookie by any stretch either.
I got off work at 3pm yesterday and went to the range to sight in my TC Omega .50 that I had just put a new scope on. It gets dark at about 5pm, and I am about 20 min. from the range. I knew I didn't have much time before the sun went down, so I was in a bit of a hurry. FIRST MISTAKE! NEVER GET IN A HURRY!!! I got my target set up down range and had started shooting paper to get sighted in. I had noticed that the brass rod adapter that screws in to my push rod was not very tight on the rod, and kept coming loose. I just kept tightening it, and shooting. I had shot about 5 loads through my muzzleloader when I dropped my powder in, pushed the bullet all the way down the muzzle, got a sight picture, and dropped the hammer. I was only shooting 100 grains of Pyrodex, so I knew the recoil it was producing. When I fired the shot, it felt like someone hit me in the shoulder with a hammer! I stopped, opened the breach, and tried to get my wits back about me. I knew something had gone wrong... I instantly thought, I wasn't paying attention and I threw a double charge in the damn gun. The more I thought about it, I figured out that I could not have done that. I then took the breach plug out of the gun and checked the barrel. Everything looked good... "What the hell happened?". I went to check the target, and realized that nothing even hit the paper. I was close to done sighting in, so I knew that something had happened for sure to not even hit the target. I figured, well, I will run a bore butter patch through the barrel a couple times and see if anything doesn't look right. That is when I figured out exactly what happened. I picked up the ram rod, got ready to put a patch on the brass piece on the end, and there it was... The damn brass piece had come unscrewed somehow in the coarse of loading the bullet and stayed in the barrel. That would explain the recoil increase! This was not one of the small ones either, it was about 5" long and about 3/8" in diameter, and I chucked it 100 yards down range right in front of a bullet. This scared the crap out of me, so I figured I would share my story in the hopes that everyone who doesn't already will always check the rod twice to make sure that everything except the bullet that goes into the barrel comes back out. Please take it easy on the flaming, I have learned a very inportant lesson in muzzleloader safety!
I got off work at 3pm yesterday and went to the range to sight in my TC Omega .50 that I had just put a new scope on. It gets dark at about 5pm, and I am about 20 min. from the range. I knew I didn't have much time before the sun went down, so I was in a bit of a hurry. FIRST MISTAKE! NEVER GET IN A HURRY!!! I got my target set up down range and had started shooting paper to get sighted in. I had noticed that the brass rod adapter that screws in to my push rod was not very tight on the rod, and kept coming loose. I just kept tightening it, and shooting. I had shot about 5 loads through my muzzleloader when I dropped my powder in, pushed the bullet all the way down the muzzle, got a sight picture, and dropped the hammer. I was only shooting 100 grains of Pyrodex, so I knew the recoil it was producing. When I fired the shot, it felt like someone hit me in the shoulder with a hammer! I stopped, opened the breach, and tried to get my wits back about me. I knew something had gone wrong... I instantly thought, I wasn't paying attention and I threw a double charge in the damn gun. The more I thought about it, I figured out that I could not have done that. I then took the breach plug out of the gun and checked the barrel. Everything looked good... "What the hell happened?". I went to check the target, and realized that nothing even hit the paper. I was close to done sighting in, so I knew that something had happened for sure to not even hit the target. I figured, well, I will run a bore butter patch through the barrel a couple times and see if anything doesn't look right. That is when I figured out exactly what happened. I picked up the ram rod, got ready to put a patch on the brass piece on the end, and there it was... The damn brass piece had come unscrewed somehow in the coarse of loading the bullet and stayed in the barrel. That would explain the recoil increase! This was not one of the small ones either, it was about 5" long and about 3/8" in diameter, and I chucked it 100 yards down range right in front of a bullet. This scared the crap out of me, so I figured I would share my story in the hopes that everyone who doesn't already will always check the rod twice to make sure that everything except the bullet that goes into the barrel comes back out. Please take it easy on the flaming, I have learned a very inportant lesson in muzzleloader safety!