Well, That Was A First!

[gwstang]

Last weekend, while I was off, I walked out back down to the back 40 close to my pond. It's still deer season down here, so I carried my trusty 30-06. I have one tree stand that is left from back in 2011 when the EF4 tornado hit my property. It's metal and it survived. All the wooden ladder stands did not. I was going to ease up there and see if any rutting bucks were around. I've only seen several doe this year and a pair of young doe that are hanging around the house eating acorns every day. They are almost tame. There have been a couple of bucks on my game cams but they weren't coming out in the daylight just yet. There is about an acre of pine trees left at the pond site, the rest got blown clean away. Good bedding area for a nice fat buck...lol. I was thinking instead of looking...suddenly as I was walking along day dreaming about the nice 8 point I was going to bring back to the house on my Kubota bucket, The varmint snorted at me, crap...done got busted! :ashamed: He trotted off about 40 yards away into the edge of the pines. Had a doe with him too. I eased the rifle up and peeked through the scope, yep, it was him. I eased the safety off and squeezed the trigger...Nothing! What the blankety blank? I try to ease the bolt open to get to the next shell and by then he took off through the woods. I slowly backed out and maybe he will be there when I'm off again. I work 7 days on and then 7 days off, so I still have another week to round him up. That is right where my tree stand is at, so if he is still rutting...he will be toast. :licking: I picked up the shell that did not go off and brought it back to the house. It had a perfect dimple in the center, I guess the primer was bad is all I can think of? Store bought, not a reload. I did try another round when I got back to the house and it went bang like it should. I guess there is a first time for everything after all. Bad timing for me though, this could have happened when I was sighting in the scope last fall. Nooooo, wait till a nice buck is just standing there waiting. Been singing, " Gloom, Despair and Agony on me, Deep dark depression excessive misery. If it weren't for bad luck I'd have no luck at all. Gloom despair and agony on me..." :laughing:

 

[wngsprd]

Hee Haw!!

Sorry you didn't get him. I've lost stands to storms, too. Surprised your season is still open this late. Ours closed over 2 weeks ago.

 

[mddorange]

Hee Haw!!

Sorry you didn't get him. I've lost stands to storms, too. Surprised your season is still open this late. Ours closed over 2 weeks ago.

We probably have more deer here in Alabama although I haven't seen any on my property this year. Saw a lot of footprints but when the season opened they went deep into the woods that is behind my property. Last year I only got one as they were scarce then also.

 

[Egon]

Suggest you try firing the faulty round to see if you can get it to go bang.

 

[Garandman]

In the Army we used to say "The loudest noise in the world is a click instead of a bang."

 

[k0ua]

Suggest you try firing the faulty round to see if you can get it to go bang.

Yes, It could have been a "high primer" A primer that was not seated deep enough and the firing pin pushes the primer deeper, but in so doing does not impart enough energy to get the pellet to go off against the anvil of the primer. Also when seating primers, the pellet needs to be crushed against the anvil to be fully sensitized. This is just a theory of course. On the rest of the ammo in the batch examine and run your finger over the primers to see if any more of them "stand proud" or stick up a bit like they are not fully seated in the primer pocket of the case. Likely if you loaded the defective round, and hit it again, it would go off. Of course if could have been a primer without any priming compound, but this is pretty unlikely, but a high primer is very likely.

 

[k0ua]

An primers that don't go bang on factory rounds, are pretty darn rare. I have seen a couple, but not many on centerfire rounds. Fairly common on rimfire rounds.

 

[2LaneCruzer]

An primers that don't go bang on factory rounds, are pretty darn rare. I have seen a couple, but not many on centerfire rounds. Fairly common on rimfire rounds.

That's for darn sure! I've popped a lot of caps, and the only problem I ever had was with some shotgun shells loaded with a little Lee Loader. They would go "Tink!" and the shot would fly out about 3 or 4 feet. I don't think the powder even ignited. Don't ever recall a factory load of any kind not going off. I do recall a friend saying that the got a batch of primers where about 10% were bad.

 

[JRobyn]

My daughter had two .243 Remington cartridges that failed to fire in Jan 2009. Good solid indentation in the primers. Others in the same box fired fine. I decapped the fired ones and everything looked normal in the brass and primer pocket. The FTF ones had a slightly different (shinier looking) primer than the others. None in the remaining boxes seemed high. Sent them and the rest of the boxes (3) back to Remington. They were apologetic and replaced them, but never got any satisfactory explanation why they FTF. My hunch is that they were way out-of-spec primers that somehow got in the production line.

- Jay

 

[Thomas]

"...Nothing! What the blankety blank? I try to ease the bolt open to get to the next shell and by then he took off through the woods."
Might have been good sign tho.