Have you ever been shot?

[2LaneCruzer]

We used to live near a trap range, and there were times, when the wind was right, that our house, us included, were peppered by expended pellets. I have also been hit by BB's a few time, shot by my brother, and once I shot myself on the big toe. Now that hurt like blazes, but it didn't penetrate my shoe. I did have a fat toe with a blue spot on top of it for awhile.

My biggest scare came when I was in about the sixth grade. We lived in S.W. Missouri, in a very rural area, but within about 100 yards of our little one room school house. There was no bus service, so kids either walked, rode bikes or had parents take them to school. One morning before school, I was finishing up my breakfast, and I noticed a cottontail in the back yard, nibbling at something. Now Cottontail rabbits were a substantial part of our diet at the time, so I retrieved my little Remington .22 Target master single shot, and from the back porch, I took a shot at the little bun rab.

Almost simultaneous with the shot, I heard a blood curdling scream coming from the road, which was only a few yards in the direction of my shot, but with a little patch of woods in between. I panicked! I ran back in the house and stashed my rifle and ran out front. In a few seconds, I saw this boy on his bike, pedaling up to the school house; left arm hanging down and blood dripping from the tips of his fingers. I was horrified. I didn't know what to do. I ran up to him, as he was getting off his bike...a horrible grimace on his face...and there was even more of the blood than I had imagined.

I said: "What happened?"
He said: "Oh, I pinched the crap out of hand somehow in my bicycle seat."
I don't think I have ever been so relieved in my life; that has been more than 60 years ago.

I was responsible for shooting my friend in the butt with that same rifle several years later. It was a ricochet, but still due to carelessness on my part. We had been shooting in his pasture where his folks had dumped a bunch of stuff like an old Dodge car, washing machines, and other such junk. We shot all the windows out of the old Dodge, and put a few into the doors, etc. When we got through with that, we set up an old washing machine agitator and were shooting at the fins...bullets made a nice little hole in the old aluminum or pot metal fins or what ever it was made of.

He made the mistake of getting up and setting up something else to shoot at; and as he was walking back, I took a shot at the old agitator, but this time I shot it square dab in the middle. I was probably not 25 feet from the target; he was probably no more that 10 feet away...and the ricochet hit him squarely in the butt just below the cheek on his right side. Yep, it bled profusely. I was able to dig most of it out, because it didn't penetrate very deep, but he had a sore butt for quite some time. I don't know when I have ever felt so foolish.

 

[rustyshakelford]

We like to shoot a metal target I had built a few years ago at the Home range. It’s heavy plate that can swing when hit. It’s mild steel and perfect for .45 and below. Well apparently some friends had come shooting and were using an AR. Those rounds would leave pretty good indentions and round pot marks in the plate. I loaded up the 4wheeler and went over to the range to shoot a couple hundred rounds not seeing the damage to the plates. Well I was about 20 rounds in and feel this pain in my stomach and see blood. It seems that instead of the round fragmenting when it hit the plate like normal, it hit one of the perfectly round dents in the plate and sent the fragments back to me. It took a few months for the metal to work its way out of my stomach. I’ll toss on my vest now if shooting steel especially is by myself. I was bruised up for a while and real tender. Didn’t really care for that much

Brett

 

[Old Guy in Tenn]

About 50 years ago (wow, has it been that long?) my 2 brothers, my father and I got to the woods well before daybreak on opening day of the rifle deer season. We stood in a small circle, dad holding the flashlight, to load our rifles. Suddenly the world exploded, the ground shook along with a flash of light and a thunderclap.

I was still stunned, and wondering what happened, when Dad spoke up. "2 things", he said. "1 (to my brother) - when letting the hammer down on that Winchester, take off your mitts first so the hammer can't slip out and surprise you. 2 - Never, ever, ever, let your mother find out about this."

The slug went into the ground in front of our feet. God let us off easy that morning.

Dad passed away about 30 years ago, Mom just 2 years back. We had fun telling Mom about many of the crazy things we had done as kids, surprised at how many she knew of already, but never told her about that close call.

 

[bigtiller]

I almost caught a piece of fragmented 45 Colt round shooting at steel. It hit the baggy part of my pant leg.

 

[Jim Shooz]

About 6 or 8 years ago my neighbour took a shot at a rabbit in his yard with his 22. I was walking across my yard and I heard a whzzzzzzzzz just past my ear and a whack as it hit the side of my house. Now when I'm introduced to any of his mates they always say "oh your the guy Graham almost shot". He has never used that rifle since.

 

[6thgpSF]

been hit by shrapnel....russ

 

[ultrarunner]

About 6 or 8 years ago my neighbour took a shot at a rabbit in his yard with his 22. I was walking across my yard and I heard a whzzzzzzzzz just past my ear and a whack as it hit the side of my house. Now when I'm introduced to any of his mates they always say "oh your the guy Graham almost shot". He has never used that rifle since.

I guess if you count a high power air rifle I had a similar experience.

I was getting a home ready to rent... upstairs painting and I here "Tink" followed by more "Tinks"

Go to investigate and about 50 feet away on the other side of the fence are two boys with a target on the backside of my fence... thin redwood boards about 20 years old... the pellets were going though the fence and the ones going through the gaps were breaking my windows...

I go out and here one whiz right past me.

 

[dragoneggs]

I guess if you count a high power air rifle I had a similar experience.

I was getting a home ready to rent... upstairs painting and I here "Tink" followed by more "Tinks"

Go to investigate and about 50 feet away on the other side of the fence are two boys with a target on the backside of my fence... thin redwood boards about 20 years old... the pellets were going though the fence and the ones going through the gaps were breaking my windows...

I go out and here one whiz right past me.

With a salute to Paul Harvey. And now, for the rest of the story... ?

 

[ultrarunner]

^^^ I yelled and the kids took off... ran into their house?

Went around the block and knocked on the door... could see the drapes moving but no one came to the door.

Didn't have cell or phone to use...

Came back later in the day, the father of one of the boys was home... we had a hard time communicating... I don't speak Spanish...

Turns out his son is never to touch the rifle unless his father is around... son had a friend over... also not suppose to do that if I believe what was said.

I went and bought the glass, hacked out the broken glass, put in the new with glaze and gave the bill to the Dad who sent his son over with the money... mostly $1 bills and quarters...

The panes were small and he took out 5 of them... older home, single pane in a window of 16... it sure would have cost a lot more had they been double pane made to order.

Today... I would have just called OPD and said shots fired... probably would have had a SWAT response... not a patient as I once was.

 

[MossRoad]

Some friends and I were out in the street throwing my boomerang at night! We were kind of playing Austrailian roulette... we'd chuck it to the right, watch it go off into the dark, see it about half a block down crossing the street from right to left under a streetlight, vanish back into the dark, then wait till we heard whoosh, whoosh, whooosh coming from the dark to our left and hold your head and duck! Great fun!

Well, one of us chucked it kind of hard and off a bit, it was taking a different path under the streetlight only a foot off the ground and rising, then, instead of hearing whoosh, whoosh, whoosh from our left in the dark.... we heard CRASH!!!! And we ran! RAN! I tell you.

We ran into my friend's house through the garage, turned on a soccer game and sat on the couch. A couple minutes later, their phone rings, his mom answers, sounds confused, then comes into the room and asks us if we know anything about a boomerang through the front door window of the mean old lady that lives across the street? We all look around and shrug our shoulders and say "What? A boomerang? That's crazy!" His mom hands me the phone and says Mrs. X wants to talk to you! How did she know I was there? So I grab the phone, deny everything, and hand the phone back to my friend's mom. Shrug my shoulders again, and go back to watching soccer.

See, we were all deathly afraid of that old lady. She was mean. We all went to grade school with her daughter. We'd had interactions with her for 8 years. She was mean. We knew it was her house where the crash came from, so we got the heck out of there as soon as we heard it.

Anyhow, after we all denied it, and my friend's mom left the room, I quietly got up, swallowed a big gulp of air, eyballed my friends like it was the last time we'd ever see each other, walked across the street and knocked on the old lady's broken door window.

To my surprise, her scary old husband answered. Sheepishly, I introduced myself. "Hello Mr. X. I'm Y." He says, "Yes, I know." with the gist of his words and his facial expression meaning, your reputation proceeds you... "I threw my boomerang and it hit your house. It wasn't on purpose. I told Mrs. X we didn't do it because I'm scared of her. I'm sorry, and I'll pay for the damages." He looked at me for a moment. His face turned to empathetic, he nodded his head in agreement, and in that instant, I knew that he knew that his wife scared little kids (we were teenagers, but, hey, we'd been there all our lives).

He went back in the house, came out with my boomerang, asked me how it worked, we talked for a while, and he said he'd fix the window and tell me how much it would be. We shook hands on the deal, and when he went in the house, I could hear her yelling about me, because I'd denied it to her on the phone just a minute ago to her, but told him the truth..... it faded as I walked back to my friend's house, and apologized to his mom. She nodded in approval.

That was the first time in my life that I can remember making a deal with another man, as a man, and shaking hands on it.

The next evening at home, the phone rang, my mom answered, then came and got me and said "Mr. X is calling for you?" kinda odd look on her face. I said thanks, took the phone from her, he told me it was about $15. I said thanks, we talked a bit, and I hung up. Mom asked what that was all about. I told her I threw my boomerang through his window by accident and he was letting me know how much it cost to fix it. I'm taking the money over now. She just looked at me with that mom look, and I left, and went over and paid him.

From that time on, any time I saw Mr. X, I'd wave, or stop and talk. We got along well. He was an engineer, and, unbeknownst to me, was friends with my dad. When he passed away, many years later, I went to his funeral. I spoke with his wife and daughter. They thanked me for coming and Mrs. X said Mr. X always spoke highly of me, and she smiled. From that time on, I'd always wave to her, or stop and say hi.