Have you ever had a rifle or scope fail on a big game hunt ?

[ofbandg]

Many years ago had a bunch of Weaver scopes because I was young and poor. Almost every one of them fogged eventually, especially if you were going from low elevation to high elevation. They were still on target, just foggy. I had a "high quality" rifle rust on me over night on a backpack trip. Part of that was my fault because I should have had an oily rag along to wipe it down. It was pitted by the time I got home. A Rem 600 stock swelled up so much on another backpack hunt that I needed an impact wrench to take it apart when I got home. Those beechwood stocks are like sponges. My A-bolt stainless stalker trigger froze on me one time. I was going through lots of snow covered trees in the middle of the day and the snow started melting and getting everything wet. After the sun went down and everything froze again I jumped a big buck and when I tried to shoot the trigger wouldn't move. Happily the buck just stood there about 200 yards away looking at me so I had time to cycle the action and that loosened up the trigger. It was a good thing because that was one of my better bucks. I jumped off a horse one time that was going down and landed on my back. Unfortunately, I had my rifle slung across my back and I destroyed my Redfield scope. It didn't do my back any good either.

 

[Hugnot]

Biggest disappointment was the Kimber M84 - light firing pin strikes, failure to fire. I had packed it for use as a 2nd backup rifle for shooting deers many years ago and upon arriving near the site I decided to check the zero - click _____, nothing. I removed the firing pin from spring and placed 2 ground down to fit small washers around pin at end of spring to increase spring tension. The Kimber M84 design was sort of stupid, increasing spring tension would decrease firing pin protrusion. I cheerfully gifted the entire works to somebody who liked the tiny lightweight Kimber more than I did.

Fortunately, no scope failures during hunts. I still have a 24 YO 6-20X40 Weaver Grand Slam that I use on a Ruger M77/22 because it focuses down to 10 yards. The Weaver has been on all sorts or rifles including a 357 yard, .280 Rem, kill on a real big whitetail, 23 years ago.

 

[Taj]

Unfortunately I have. Took two rifles on an African hunt a couple of years back. They were in a well padded aluminum safari case. One of the scopes was a newer Leupold and the other was a 30 year old Redfield, Wide field 3-9x Illuminator. Both rifles were shot extensively before the trip in the process of working up handloads and were perfectly zero'd. When I got to the Safari camp I went to verify zero and the Leupold was in the next zip code and could not be zero'd. The old Redfield had to do all the work on that trip. It's a long way to go to have a scope take a dump on you, but I've come to realize that anything mechanical can break. Just life.

 

[Ol' Red]

Not yet.

 

[sambo3006]

I had two rounds fail to fire due to a light primer strike on my first elk hunt in 1996 with a push feel model 70. The group of cows ran off as I was attempting to cycle in a third round. I dogged them for a couple of hours and thankfully it went off when I got another shot opportunity and I had my first elk, a big cow. I blame a dirty firing pin and spring, which I didn't know I needed to address. Lesson learned.
A couple of years ago I had just gotten out of my truck for an afternoon doe hunt, and attempted to lever a round from the magazine of My Marlin 1894 .41 mag. It somehow became jammed in the action. Luckily I had phone service and googled disassembly of a Marlin 1894. I used my multitool to remove the bolt, got the stuck round out, and was back in action. I shot a doe later that afternoon.

 

[Varmintnv]

I've never had a piece of equip. actually fail while hunting. I bought a used m700VLS that during load work up had a single FTF. Then while in Wyo. shooting pd's it happened 4 or five times over 5 days. After close inspection I found the end of the firing pin had cracked and a piece was missing. New firing pin fixed it and it still works to this day.
I put a Vortex Diamondback on a .223AI I had just built. The eyebox was pretty small, but it worked in all my test positions at the house. The 2nd time out I called 3 coyotes to within 100yds. When I turned to take the slighly uphill shot I couldn't ge my eye close enuff to the scope to see anything. All 3 coyotes ran off without me firing a shot. Not an equipment failure, but a limitation. I sold the scope and replaced it with a different brand with a much better eyebox.

 

[Varmint Hunter]

I was with my buddy on two guided hunts where his rifles failed. One time he had a Sako 300WSM on a Canadian moose hunt. We confirmed POI in the field early in the morning but when the rifle was stood up in the rack (butt down) the bolt fell apart and dumped everything on the ground. No one in camp was able to reassemble the bolt without using force.

So he takes the guide's 264 Win mag and goes hunting. As luck would have it, they encountered the LARGEST rutting bull that the outfitter ever saw. My buddy got off two shots at 200yds and clean missed the bull. Tag soup for a very hard to get tag.

On an elk hunt, he used a different rifle and took a shot at a nice bull. The bull didn't go down and he tried to rack in another round. I was running a video and all I could hear was the bolt being jammed/racked back and forth but it would not load another round. Once again, he grabs the guides gun, a 338 Win mag with Barnes bullets, this time he drops the bull on the spot.

My buddy and rifles just don't get along. LOL

 

[Taj]

I was with my buddy on two guided hunts where his rifles failed. One time he had a Sako 300WSM on a Canadian moose hunt. We confirmed POI in the field early in the morning but when the rifle was stood up in the rack (butt down) the bolt fell apart and dumped everything on the ground. No one in camp was able to reassemble the bolt without using force.

So he takes the guide's 264 Win mag and goes hunting. As luck would have it, they encountered the LARGEST rutting bull that the outfitter ever saw. My buddy got off two shots at 200yds and clean missed the bull. Tag soup for a very hard to get tag.

On an elk hunt, he used a different rifle and took a shot at a nice bull. The bull didn't go down and he tried to rack in another round. I was running a video and all I could hear was the bolt being jammed/racked back and forth but it would not load another round. Once again, he grabs the guides gun, a 338 Win mag with Barnes bullets, this time he drops the bull on the spot.

My buddy and rifles just don't get along. LOL

Sounds like he doesn't need to bother buying a lotto ticket. He's kinda snake bit. I have friends like that. One of my buddies could break an anvil in a padded room.

 

[J-L]

Last year elk hunting in co , light strike with my remington 700 300 rum on a bull , it was intermittent freezing rain for 3 days prior , that combined with oil/junk slowed the firing pin down for a light strike. Cycled a round but the herd was in thick aspen and wasnt able to get another shot off. ****ed off but my own fault, have had this gun for 20 years and never had a problem with it. Oh well. I shouldve taken bolt assembly apart prior to hunting to clean it out.

 

[Playtimefun]

3 so far...

Simmons scope went way out of alignment just riding in the truck in a soft padded case. 3 feet high at 90 yards when literally the day before at the range it shot nice grouos at 100 yards. Will never touch another Simmons scope... EVER!!!

Remington 673 in 6.5 Rem Mag wouldn't grab/eject the shell from the chamber. On the good side... the first shell ejected and with the second I got the whitetail. About a 165-170 class whitetail. But I carry 2-3 guns in the truck just in case. So I switched to a semi-auto 284 Win and went looking for the buck and he was dead in the brush.

Clip on that semi auto 284. Not really a fault of the gun, but making sure that a person realizes that while all clips might supposedly work for a particular model... it's not a guarantee. Gun WOULD NOT cycle no matter what. Marked right. Took 3 x 284 Win clips to get one to work properly.

Have seen others but generally operator error. Biggest was guy took a semi-auto (Browning BAR) out but didn't tell his friend who reloads he was taking a semi out. He took shells that were not full length resized and after the the first shot... the gun was jammed solid. He was furious and now I own it lol.

 

[Playtimefun]

Add one more... friends scope... got out of the truck as elk/deer or moose (cant remember what we were hunting) were in the field to take a look and friends scope fogged up internally horrible (we didnt own binoculars back then lol). Rest of the day no matter what we tried, that scope would no clear up. He took it off the gun and it took like 2 months for it to semi clear. He ended up buying s new scope.

 

[WapitiBob]

Yep, Leupold VX3. Move 1-1/2 feet at 400 yards from an atv ride while in a padded case. Sold it and thought I'd never own another one, then NF decided to sponsor a habitual law breaker so I sold the NF and bought a new Mark 4HD.

 

[Buffalobwana]

I had this happen a few times and suprise suprise both rifles were control feed rifles

Every rifle failure I have had, has been CRF guns not CRFing. Both were borrowed rifles in Africa. They were rode hard and put up wet though.

Both guns didn't like being chambered even slightly slow. Do it fast or don't do it at all.

I have yet to have a PF rifle failure. No matter how hard I ride them.

 

[Chadp82]

Not on a hunt but right before. Luckily it was the backup. Doing a final range check on the primary and backup, the backup stopped extracting cases. The extractor broke. So I went with 1 rifle only.

My hunt was on a military base so I had to register firearms with the base so registered 2 just in case. I am glad I did. The hunt went well and the primary did its job. Since it was a bighorn hunt and they said it could take up to 6 weeks to get the firearm registration paperwork processed I sent 2 in just in case one was lost in the mail.

The only failures I have seen on the hunting trip were human error. Both times (different people) dropped a rifle. One bumped a zero off on the scope, the other was a scary fall on some rocks, luckily no one hurt, but it split the wood on the stock he fell so hard.