After over a decade of reloading, meticulously checking myself, I screwed up bad. Nobody got hurt, but this type of mistake is inexcusable. I really didn't want to share. I just wanted to keep this one to myself.....But, it did happen. I see a lot of new guys here lately, and decided that my mistake may help somebody else from getting hurt, so here's what happened.
I was doing load development on one rifle ( friends 7 rem mag) and getting my rifle set up with a new scope ( kahles 624i is just bought from a member here) My rifle is a 7x300 win mag loading 175 eld-x...his a 7rem mag with 162 eld-x.
Everything went well, still need some tweaking on his, but mine still shoots like I expect it to.
While I was letting his cool after a couple shots, I grabbed my rifle to shoot a couple to get it zeroed. 3 shots, and I'm getting really close to shooting for a zero group. I grab his, again to shoot the next load. It shoots pretty decent. All is good. My spotter wants to verify his rifle, so we take a break from these two and let them cool, while he shoots his rifle. I shoot mine again, and get a really solid group for a zero on my scope.
I go back to shooting my friends rilfle's next load. I made a mistake right here, I left both ammo boxes on the shooting pad (same color ammo box, bullets and cases look very similar) I can't believe what I did next. I wanted to verify at 1000, so shifted everything a bit to the north to get to our 1000 ( 1005) yard target. My buddy helped move everything. During this time, the 7 rem mag somehow (my fault no matter how it happened) got switched with the 7x300.
I settled on my target at 1005 and let one go, my spotter called 2 moa low. I was really not happy about that, so I grabbed another one. I'm thinking no way I'm off 2 moa, I shoot another one ( stupid, stupid, stupid). 2 moa low again. So now I'm thinking, what the heck is going on? I'll check my zero again.....That's when I saw the two casings I just shot. I just shot two 7 rem mag rounds out of my 7x300. ( I can't believe how close those shot at 1000 yards to what mine were supposed to shoot)
I had to sit down for minute. I can't believe I did that, not once, but twice.
I know how it happened, I actually even thought about it before that. ( I didn't like that both ammo boxes were identical) But I knew what I was doing, and was aware that I needed to make sure. It was just a simple mistake (that could have been really bad). The wind was picking up, and I got in a hurry, I didn't move his box off the shooting pad, the spotter helped me move a few things, and his ammo ended up where mine was supposed to be, and they looked the same.
I broke some rules, got over confident, and made a mistake that I wouldn't expect from a rookie.
There isn't really any excuse for this, lucky for me, my rifle actually shot them pretty good, and no harm was done.
Mistakes like this are how people get hurt. Over 10 years of doing this, and getting better all the time, and then this. I've called people out on this site for doing stupid things, and I'll still do it when I see it.
I felt obligated to share this. I'm sure somebody is going to call me out for being a dumb ***, and they'd be right.
Nobody had to know about this, and that's how'd I would really like it to be......But If the stupid mistake I made keeps someone from getting hurt, and I take a beating online for it.....so be it. The truth is the truth. The stupid truth......I really, really don't want to post this