he didn't know the old guns well.
I saw a case where a young police officer recovered a revolver during a traffic stop. He had to call in his SGT (an older fellow) because he didn't know (or understand) how to unload the revolver! (apparently, his firearms awareness began and ended with his duty weapons).
Here's a simple rule for shooting tracers, unless the area you are shooing in is fully covered with a couple of feet of snow, ALWAYS have bare minimum fire fighting equipment with you!!! A shovel, at the very least. And, while shooting into the mud pit wasn't a bad idea, its not totally safe, either. Tracer could hit a rock in the mud, and go flying off to start a fire somewhere else.
And, as to safety in the boonies, its a sad fact that any place within an easy commute of an urban area
could be as bad as that "bad part of town" we all worry about.
Platt & Matix, the bankrobbing killers who were killed in the FBI Miami shoot out, were known to prowl the Everglades, looking for plinkers and casual shooters, whom they would chat up, shoot with, then kill, taking their guns and car. They did it more than once. One of the people the left for dead in the swamp survived, and was able to give the info to the cops.
Total strangers in the wild are still total strangers. CCW isn't just for city streets anymore...