Story and pictures of gun mishap while hunting this last season

[bigelk1030]

I want to share this with you guys, the gun this happened to is a Winchester Model 70 Featherweight in .270.

I was hunting in Alberta in early December and shot a nice mule deer my third morning of hunting.  That evening, in about a foot of snow and -9 degree F weather, I was hunting for whitetail and we spotted a 170 class buck at the bottom of a wooded draw.  We walked up one side of the draw, when we got to the top of the draw the buck was standing broadside at about 150 yards.

I rested my rifle on a wood fence post and found the buck in my scope.  I squeezed the trigger, the gun fired, but the deer didn’t react.  I chambered another round, the buck was walking slowly but stopped.  I once again found the buck in my scope and squeezed the trigger.

The next thing I knew, my left hand was numb and I had part of the laminated wood stock in my left hand.  The guy I was hunting with said (in a panicked voice) what the hell happened to your gun?  I didn’t realize at that second what had happened, the gun fired and was in pieces in my hand (In retrospect, I was probably in a bit of shock.)

As you can see from the pictures, the barrel split from one end down to the where the casing is.  The bolt wouldn’t open and the shell casing was stuck in the action, until I took it to a gunsmith here.  It appears the only part that survived is the Leupold scope.

I called Winchester and they didn’t seem to care much at all with what happened.  The guy I spoke with said the only time he had ever heard of something like this was when someone put a .308 cartridge into a .270 (which is not the case).

Luckily nobody was hurt bad.  The numbness in my left hand went away after a couple of days, although my hearing in my left ear is noticeably worse (going to an ear doctor on Friday).  Thank goodness the guy I was hunting with was behind me!

The rifle is a .270 Winchester model 70 that I purchased new in about 1993.  I was shooting Federal Premium (factory loads) with a 130 grain Nosler Ballistic tip bullet.  I would guess I have put less than 250 rounds through the rifle.

I took it to a local gunsmith and all we can figure is the first bullet never left the barrel.  If there was debris in the barrel there should have been some indication with the first shot.  In his 25 years in the business he had never seen anything like this.  The stock is busted up, the barrel is split (from one end all the way down into the threads) and the action appears to be bent. (Bolt rubs when its cycled). 

I think I will put it on my wall as a reminder to how lucky I was or I have even thought about sharing it with a Hunters Education course to show people what can happen.

As I said in the beginning, I wanted to share this with you, probably more a reminder on gun safety than anything else.

Open for serious thoughts about what your theory is on why it happened, was it the cold weather?  Debris?  Short load in the first shot?  I will probably never know, but just damn happy nobody was seriously hurt. 

Thanks for reading.

[washelkhntr]

Your one lucky man!

[halflife65]

Wow!  I have almost the identical setup except the gun is early '80s.

Not sure what happened - my initial thought was that the first bullet didn't leave the barrel but I dunno.  My uncle blew up a shotgun about 2 years ago but he actually had some stuff stuck in the barrel and didn't realize it. 

[denali]

WOW.   I'm glad no one was seriously hurt.   that would put the damper on a hunting trip   

[FC]

Sounds pretty simple, first shot was a squib and the second blew the gun apart. You are very lucky!

[bobcat]

If there was a problem with the first shot such as not enough powder or no powder in the cartridge, and the bullet didn't make it out of the barrel, I think you would have noticed something was wrong because the sound would have been a lot quieter than normal and there would have been almost no recoil. To me it would seem more likely that the second shot was the problem- but I have no idea what it could have been. Unless the wrong powder was used and it was way over pressure.

I take it the deer walked away unharmed?

[duckaholic]

Blocked Rifle Barrel Blows Up In Guys Face

[carpsniperg2]

Wow! Very lucky!

[bowhunterforever]

  Thats some scary stuff. I bet you were alittle nervous shooting a rifle for the first time after that happend.

[toothfangclaw]

is -9 cold enough to compromise the steel?

[Little Dave]

Thanks for sharing, glad you lived to tell.
Possible that any snow got in there?

[rasbo]

wow

[BallisticsNut]

Just out of curiosity, how many days where you out there prior to taking the shot?  Was the rifle cleaned prior to this hunt?  Was it raining/snowing at any point during this hunt?  Did you carry your rifle barrel up or down?

Not that I have any personal knowledge if this happening in another case, seems to me that this could have been caused by a multitude of the aforementioned items.  If the rifle had not been cleaned prior to this hunt, its possible there may have been a foreign body in the barrel prior to the first shot.  Wet cold weather carrying the rifle barrel up, could compromise the barrell/bolt over a course of a couple days (wet cold and condensation in the barrel, stored overnite in warm climate-repeat process) 

Whatever it was that caused this, I want to avoid the same "steps in the process". 

[jackmaster]

glad to hear that you can still walk the earth, that is some crazy stuff, i could almost guarantee that the cold weather made the barrel ice up, when you take a weapon from warm to minus temps then the barrel will ice up which caused the first round to lodge itself in the barrel and you obviosly know what happened with second, back in 86 or 87 here in washington we had a deer season where the temps dropped to 0 or below and i heard of a few people that almost the same thing happened to. glad that you ok man, pretty *censored*ty of winchester, to not really care, you would think they would love to test it to see if it was inferior steel.

[HornHoarder]

Did that really have to happen when you were shooting at a 170 class buck? Luckily you werent seriously injured. Lucky buck too.