You can laugh. I did about 10am.
Wed morn. Partner and I. Winds darn strong. Nisqually Delta. Snow on ground. Raining very hard sidways. 45min boat ride against tide, wind and river current. Tough haul. High incoming tide late morn. Gonna be good!!! LOL.
1st shot after shootin light at a GW Teal - puff. Wad stuck in barrel. My handy 1/2" copper pipe/lead filled wad unstucker worked just fine. Carefully emptied contents and reloaded. This was the first shell off my reloader with my latest steel shot load and I think it didn't get a powder charge. Should have checked that. This particular hull didn't fit the load well either so I just wanted to shoot it to use it. The rest of the loaded shells perfomed and patterned great.
Now I'm shooting factory loads.
Next duck - bang - fetch - cool.
Next duck - click @#$%^&*()_+
I'm shootin an SBEII. Wind is blowing so hard at this point that when I stand up, my stool blows over and I'm inside of my roll up blind!
I remove the sling,barrel and bolt. Disassemble bolt and firing pin. I need my cheaters(glasses)but don't have any. Hunting stool. This is not my favorite gunsmithing workbench to say the least. I start poking and cleaning with a little stick. Can't find anything wrong. Hammer falls. Trigger works. Firing pin is unbroken. Everything looks clean enough so I re-assemble.
Try shooting it but no dent in the primer. Need glasses !@#$%^, LOL.
Repeat steps above thinking I missed something. Try a shell. No dice. #$&^&%#
Tide is coming up fast. Standing in water now. Blind bag starts floating around in the blind. Strong, gusty wind and sideways rain is making this tough. My partner shooting easy shots at ducks is making it even tougher while he laughs at me. Nice guy, huh?
I head for the brush to get out of the wind and give him a better chance. Luckily I always carry my Leatherman Skelatool with me.
I removed everything again for the 3rd time now only this time I removed the trigger group while kneeling in my canoe, floating(tide was in)with my dog sitting(still)in it also.
Guess what I find, amazingly under those conditions and not having my glasses. A single number 4 steel pellet had fallen into the trigger mech and gotten under the hammer. The hammer fired but stopped a few thousands short of the firing pin. By lifting the shell loading gate and tapping, the BB falls out. Re-assemble and pull the trigger. BANG. Damn that was loud.
I'm back in business. Alright partner, you only get every other shot now. Move over. It's about 10am now and we can only hunt till noon. Prior committments.
We managed 9 ducks. I shot 5 of them. My best, most mature Pintail ever. 8 1 /4" sprig.
Wind settled down to almost flat water. I think God figured we'd had enough obstacles for one morning so we had an easy trip back to the launch.
A good ending. Had a ball with a good friend. First time out this season for the two of us together. Drank coffee and talked smart. That's what it's all about anyhow between birds.
