What is your best "That guy" story from the range?

[MrMillspecer]

Nothing better than watching mall ninjas get excited about 4'' groups at 25 yards w their tacticool AR setups. Then you grab your targets from 1 and 200 yards and see the look on their face. the prairie dog was at 200. Shot w a homebuilt AR.

 

[Medic!]

Thanks fellas!
But to quote another western :
Jack Elam : "I don't get it."
James Gardner : " Get what?"
Elam : "How a guy who can shoot like you do , and not have a reputation".
Gardner : "What would I want with a reputation?"
( Support your Local sheriff )

Andy

''Beware the humble man. Lest you find humility''

 

[Andy54Hawken]

Or humidity if its hot outside ...
Andy

 

[RicInOR]

Some years ago - c 2000
I was out with the wife and some friends at the gravel pit near Browns Camp.
Besides the typical D-Bags shooting our targets -
There was one dude had an SKS variant, kept eyeing us
he was looking at us and shooting from the hip
- the bullets are going 90 degrees from where his eyes were focused


Different trip, same place, saw what appeared to be a dad and his boy (could have been uncle, family friend etc)
the boy is shooting a shotgun, the guy is tossing the clays' by hand.
- not like chucking them out there
- no thrower
- just tossing them up (like you might do if you are a trick shot and tossing and shooting your own)
The kid was getting the clays, but they were just feet from the guys hand.

Maybe 5 years back,
I was at an indoor range, Beavercreek, and as you know with these places, the shooting lanes are in a room with a door for sound proofing between the lobby and the lanes. As is common, there is a back bench for empty cases and a shooting bench. I open the door and see an AR pointed at me. The D-Bag had put the PCC on the back bench, muzzle towards the door.




Last 2 years or so
The wife and I paid to do a machine gun shoot - on a guys farm just north of the Helvetia Tavern if you must know - the gun owner was a nice enough guy, had his teen age kid with him. Though I could see they were unloaded, I didn't like having guns pointed at me by the kid - he was unpacking them.




I pay to belong to a club now.



hmmmm, now that I think about this, our friend, who we are sharing his birthday dinner with tonight, was with us in all 4 situations. I might have to re-think shooting with him.

 

[Medic!]

Or humidity if its hot outside ...
Andy

Not to mention the moisture in your Pants!

Or possibly down your pant leg.

 

[NWGlockgal]

I was at our local range when two guys came in. They could have been walking bill boards for the NRA. Baseball caps with patches on the front that said NRA Instructor. Patches all over their vests advising us of the same thing, including a large one on the back. Arrogant attitudes, strutting around like they were something special. Neither one of them could shoot worth a darn.

 

[Caveman Jim]

We shoot at the Evergreen sportsman's club about twice a year because the pits & other shooting places we used over the years have become off limits unless I am forced to pay $$$ every year. F. T.!!!
OUR 2 AR's are sighted in at 100 yds and we regularly notice people looking down the firing line looking for the shooters who are ringing the 5" metal target with great regularity (every round). During ceasefire they can be seen wondering down the line to ask who it was & they never suspect it's an older couple with gray hair, flannel shirts & an Uncle Si (Duck Commander) lookalike who are the bell ringers......
We are those guys......

 

[Rocklock]

Shooting my .54 flintlock at the TCGC BP range. This particular rifle has a very nice tiger stripe maple stock. Guy walks up, looks at the rifle and says "That's fake you know." referring to the stock grain. He had obviously been reading the DGW catalog as he launched into a lengthy explanation as how the grain pattern was created by wrapping a rope around the stock and burning it. Annoyed me enough that I pulled the lock off the rifle and showed him the matching grain pattern inside the lock mortise. He's response was "It's still a fake, just a really good fake."

 

[Andy54Hawken]

We get that a lot when folks look at our collection of antique muzzle loaders.
The 8th rifle from the right is a original Leman trade rifle with artificial grain.
Sometimes its best just to sigh and move out smartly.
Andy

 

[BlackRyder]

I have a good one- this just happened a couple weeks ago.
Went to the local indoor range with my dad to play around with the ak (he's from Lebanon, where military service is compulsory for all young men (at least it used to be) and was excited to shoot a Kalash again). We walk into the room with the rifle bays and notice blood on the ground and on the baffles in one of the bays. There were also plastic remnants of a shredded Pmag everywhere, and the lower half of said magazine was lying on the ground about 20 feet down the lane.
One of the rso's comes in and is like, what the hell happened? A few minutes before we arrived one of the range patrons (a regular, too) had left in a big, big, hurry, without saying anything to the employees of the range other than, "I gotta run I'm late for an appointment"
He has screwed up his reloads, obviously, and the end result was a serious injury. The messed up thing was that he didn't tell ANYONE about it and just left- they figured out what went down only after they went to video (cc cameras all over the place in there).
What's even more messed up is that apparently that was the SECOND time that exact same dudes reloads resulted in a catastrophic failure! You'd think he would have learned from his first mistake.
I guess he was too embarrassed to tell anyone about it and just left to go to the hospital.
Needless to say, that guy is banned from the range now.
Double check your powder charges, fellas!!!!!

 

[tac]

OK, I know when I'm beaten. Remember that here there are no public ranges, but if you are a live-game shooter, and need for some reason to zero your rifle, you can get some time on a club range to do it, by prior arrangement, and by getting a one-day club insurance deal. You effectively join the club for a day, IOW.

Mr X arrove on the range with his lovely old pre-WW2 factory Mauser sporting rifle in 7x57, a very popular calibre here in yUK for hill-stalking [I have two, just, sayin'.]

This lovely old piece looked worn, but carefully, and had a nice older Zeiss scope on it from the 60's. Mr X explone that he had just finally run out of his dad's stock of ammunition, bought in the late 1950's and had had to buy some modern-fangled stuff, and by golly, wasn't it expensive? One of the three RCOs on duty took charge of him to make sure he understood range ettiquette [he didn't] and asked if he'd ever shot on a range before [he hadn't, only on his own 16,000 acres and land belonging to his 'chums' up in Scotland].

He was settled into a relatively quiet end of the otherwise busy range, loaned some range bags to rest his gun on [he had none], and a pair of ear-defenders [he didn't have them either], fixed up with an 8" shoot-n-see. As I was one of the RCOs that day, I asked him if he knew how to zero a rifle equipped with a scope - he replied that yes, he did, and I then left him alone to get on with the job of zeroing his old rifle, while I watched him - VERY carefully - from behind, with my spare spotting scope.

Remember that he said he know how to zero his rifle, okay?

The target - 8" in diameter, remember, was stuck onto a piece of plain white paper almost two feet wide and three feet high, standard fare for getting to see where the initial shots were going if you insisted on using the multi-shot method of spraying the target until somehow the pesky bullets began to go where you wanted them to go. Me, I've used just two rounds to zero any scoped bolt-action since Noah learned to work a paddle, but I do like to see other people at work, so I watched - after all, he said he knew what he was doing.

Norma, I think you'd all agree, are renowned for making exceptional quality ammunition in all calibres, and the old stager, 7x57 Mauser, is no exception. I watched while he sprayed [no other word comes near] the target with no less than thirty rounds of this stuff, at a tad over $4 a shot, with only three of the holes in the black thing he was actually shooting at.

The whistle blew, the guns were emptied, flagged or bolts removed, the shooters stepped back from the guns and the RCOs [me included] checked the guns. Having cleared them, we all ambled downrange to check the results. Three black and twenty-seven white pasters later, I walked back to the firing point alongside Mr X, who was looking quite perplexed.

How often did he shoot, I asked?

Oh, couple of times a year, was the answer, using up the pater's stockpile until it finally ran out. Not been having much luck recently, though, he admitted, and put his lack of success down to old ammunition.

Having examined the widespread collection holes in the target, I noted, without prejudice, that I had to admit that I'd seen better shooting. He then asked me to look at his rifle, to see that there wasn't something he might have overlooked in his keenth to get it up and running with his new ammunition. Of course, I agreed, and when the range was hot again, I got to handle his rifle.

a. The scope and mounts were good and tight.

b. The action was firmly attached to the wooden bit.

c. The action operated a slick as a rattlesnake in a barrel of butter.

And THEN, I took out the bolt, and peered down the bore.

It was black, as black as the very blackest black thing you can imagine - from one end to the other. So black that I could not actually make out any rifling. When did you last clean this rifle, I asked, having looked away from this blackness into the morning light of day. What did I mean, he asked, puzzled, by 'clean'? Now listen folks, I know that I have a somewhat strange accent for some Brits to encounter on a late Sunday morning, especially if I've been home in the boonies of Ontario for a while, but I thought I was pretty plain in what I'd asked. Well, he said, I don't do much apart from oiling up the bolt and making sure the screws are all tight. Admirable, says I, but what about that hole down the barrel? Oh, you mean the BARREL, he chuckled, I've NEVER cleaned that....all I ever used until this morning, when I picked up that new stuff from JBs' [a local gunstore], was my dad's ammunition, and using THAT stuff means that you NEVER have to clean the barrel out - y'see - he looked at me pityingly - the ammunition does it for you - says so right there on the box - Remington Kleanbore ammunition...

Friends, to cut a long story short, it took an entire can of bore-cleaning foam, over 400 patches and a LOT of elbow grease to even FIND the rifling in that poor old rifle, that had never been cleaned since the late 1950s when his old pater had bought the 5000 rounds that had just run out.

However, by the day's end, it was shooting into a three-inch five shot group at 100m - good enough for Mr X to actually have a good chance of connecting with a red deer with any hope of success.

There's more, for another time, on a range of other subjects......

tac

 

[Andy54Hawken]

I liked your post tac 'cause of the storytelling .... But what a sad story.
Andy

 

[BlackRyder]

At least his fathers stockpile wasn't corrosive ammo!

 

[Goosebrown]

I was with a friend at the Clark County Nevada range. Which, is beautiful.

Down a few benches was a woman who had just been sold a shotgun for defense. No one had showed her how to use it no one was helping her no one knew she needed help. Apparently it had interchangeable barrels, so she change the barrel and never bothered to screw it in.

She takes her first shot, the barrel fly is down range a good 20 or 30 feet.

She puts the rest of the shotgun on the bench and trucks down range as everybody else is firing to go pick up her barrel. Needless to say the range goes crazy everybody call cease-fire she gets the stuff you're talking to and then 10 minutes later she does exactly the same thing and runs down range to get her barrel again.

That was the end of her shooting at the range there.

 

[tac]

I was with a friend at the Clark County Nevada range. Which, is beautiful.

Down a few benches was a woman who had just been sold a shotgun for defense. No one had showed her how to use it no one was helping her no one knew she needed help. Apparently it had interchangeable barrels, so she change the barrel and never bothered to screw it in.

She takes her first shot, the barrel fly is down range a good 20 or 30 feet.

She puts the rest of the shotgun on the bench and trucks down range as everybody else is firing to go pick up her barrel. Needless to say the range goes crazy everybody call cease-fire she gets the stuff you're talking to and then 10 minutes later she does exactly the same thing and runs down range to get her barrel again.

That was the end of her shooting at the range there.

Poor, poor woman.

And nobody thought to offer her a helping paw?

Shamish.

That's all I have to say.

tac

 

[Certaindeaf]

I have a good one- this just happened a couple weeks ago.
Went to the local indoor range with my dad to play around with the ak (he's from Lebanon, where military service is compulsory for all young men (at least it used to be) and was excited to shoot a Kalash again). We walk into the room with the rifle bays and notice blood on the ground and on the baffles in one of the bays. There were also plastic remnants of a shredded Pmag everywhere, and the lower half of said magazine was lying on the ground about 20 feet down the lane.
One of the rso's comes in and is like, what the hell happened? A few minutes before we arrived one of the range patrons (a regular, too) had left in a big, big, hurry, without saying anything to the employees of the range other than, "I gotta run I'm late for an appointment"
He has screwed up his reloads, obviously, and the end result was a serious injury. The messed up thing was that he didn't tell ANYONE about it and just left- they figured out what went down only after they went to video (cc cameras all over the place in there).
What's even more messed up is that apparently that was the SECOND time that exact same dudes reloads resulted in a catastrophic failure! You'd think he would have learned from his first mistake.
I guess he was too embarrassed to tell anyone about it and just left to go to the hospital.
Needless to say, that guy is banned from the range now.
Double check your powder charges, fellas!!!!!

Yeabut 500 rounds an hour! c'mon man! lol

 

[Certaindeaf]

Poor, poor woman.

And nobody thought to offer her a helping paw?

Shamish.

That's all I have to say.

tac

It appears folk like to watch over hea too..

 

[transittech]

This wasn't a range, but, about 15 years ago I worked in a shop and the boss was also an avid hunter and had an FFL so he could sell to his hunting buddies, so naturally we always had a few unsold guns laying around. One day I was in the office doing paperwork on the computer and in the office struts a salesman, Mr. ADHD. He whips opens the cabinet and yanks out a random 9mm semi-auto, points it right at me and says "bang, you're dead." Then he does a Bond move racking the slide and blowing on the barrel. Out pops a live round. He almost crapped his pants.
That place was actually a great place to work, its definitely a lot of great memories. The boss also sold me my first few guns.

A few years ago, I wanted to take my wife to shoot "her" new LC9 that I had just bought for her. (Its mine now) She had never shot a handgun before. We went to the Clackamas Public Safety center and I removed the guns from my range bag on the back bench, turning towards the wall we were right next to as I carried them to the shooting rests. The room very quickly cleared out. You are supposed to unload on the line there. Which was part of the "training" video we had just watched. OOPS.

My wife takes the first shot and all but bursts into tears. She wasn't ready for that, and was mostly done for the day. Prolly should have rented a .22LR instead of being a cheapskate, but it was during the last ammo shortage. But anyway: OOPS.

 

[rubberband]

Eons ago my Dad and I were at a municipal range sighting in our deer rifles before the season started. The range had 100 yard wood & press-board backstops in front of berms w/ benches and a 15 yard pistol backstop w/ a table. A concrete walkway between the gravel parking lot from the benches. There was one other guy there doing the same as us.

Quiet day until this Datsun pickup comes rolling in w/ 2 guys in the front & two sitting on the bed rails. They pull up to the pistol table & unload a duffel bag of mini 14s & ARs with these trigger cranks things on them. Proceed to just light up the pistol backstop....no targets on it or anything....mag dump after mag dump. Dad doesn't like the situation one bit & tells me to start packing.

While were loading the truck, one of the guys gets in the truck and whips it around and backs right up to one of the 100 yard benches near the pistol table, jumps in the back and pulls a tarp off a M2 sitting in the bed. The guy starts firing tracer rounds at the backstop, again no target, just throwing shots downrange at the backstops. First time I ever saw anything like that in person and it stopped me in my tracks, mouth hit the floor. Before too long, the backstop is smoldering. Dad decided it was definitely time to split.

 

[Boboclown]

One of my friends is "THAT GUY" on and off the range. So recently he finished his AR, with me standing over him instructing him how to do it, and now continually goes "I'm gonna out shoot you." Meanwhile most of his range time is at a 25 yard indoor range, while most of mine varies from 100-600 yards. I even shoot my Mauser out to 400 with iron sights (I refuse to put a scope on it) and surplus ammo. And if I try to be nice to at least teach him how to use a mil reticle for holdovers, he interrupts and its the same "I'll outshoot you" crap again. If there was a facepalm emoticon on this site, you'd see an entire line of it at the end of this paragraph.