What has actually quit on you in the field?

[thinhorn_AK]

If I told me how many deer I've killed while taking a dump, you'd call me a liar

I know a guy who missed a chance at a massive bull moose because he went to take a crap and didn't bring his rifle. If he'd just grabbed the rifle, he'd have gotten a 60" + bull in a great, easy packing spot.

 

[KenLee]

I know a guy who missed a chance at a massive bull moose because he went to take a crap and didn't bring his rifle. If he'd just grabbed the rifle, he'd have gotten a 60" + bull in a great, easy packing spot.

My Daddy would have beat me half to death if I didn't have a gun within reach.
Most of my positive hunting habits were instilled at a young age out of sheer fear.

 

[Steve300xcw]

Had a few nikons and a leupold scope crap out on me. Missed one of the biggest black tails I have ever seen due to that 4x leupold moving.

I also make now make sure to always have an allen that fits the turret set screws on my scope...........

 

[ElPollo]

Scopes lost zero multiple times… Leupold, Nikon, Primary Arms.

Been lucky with Rangefinders. Use a… Leupold…. Knock on wood. It’s a simple one and I keep it on my bino harness inside my coat under my armpit when it’s cold. Never had a failure.

Had a Mossberg 500 that failed to extract multiple times due to an extractor groove that wasn’t milled quite deep enough.

Multiple boot blow-ups over the years… I am hard on boots.

Had a military surplus GP small wall tent collapse under a blizzard when I was caught way from it once. That was a bummer. Broke the center pole, which I replaced with a pole made from a ponderosa pine. It was my house at the time. Can’t blame the tent though. It was 6” of slush, followed by 4 feet of snow.

 

[Beendare]

I loaned some buddies my 45yr old sawed off Mossberg pump for a float hunt bowhunting moose in Alaska. 2 weeks of rain and they dunked it a couple times almost losing it in the river bottom.

They had the great Idea of soaking it in cooking oil, twice actually and then told me by the end of the trip it wouldn’t return to battery when they tried to shoot some birds they saw. Lucky for them because there was a wad of mud and gravel in the barrel.

a strip and lube…plus I did one of those re bluing kits and its good as new

 

[Pony Soldier]

Just to be differant - I had an early season scout trip with my son and my horse broke. We were on the home stretch and she started kicking at her belly. When we cleared the rocks I got off to check for sticks or something irritating her. Upon not finding anything obvious, I looked closer and discovered she had developed a hernia and her guts had slid down the inside of her right thigh.

I got off of her, led her to the barn ( 2 miles), pulled the tack and led her out into the north pasture and shot her. She was to old to survive the repairs.

 

[ElkJunky]

I fell on my stock while hunting and broke it at the wrist. It was a shame, but I got a new laminated stock for $200 and I’m back in business.

 

[DawnPatrol]

I had a Ruger m77 .270 win fail to fire on an elk hunt. It was after a 20 yard belly crawl through the snow on a pretty cold day. My guess is snow/ice in the action/trigger?. Haven’t been able to replicate at the range since.

I had an action screw come loose on my CZ 550 30.06. I discovered it while I was cleaning it after an elk hunt where I had shot an elk 3 times in the chest from 350 yds, so it either didn’t matter much or happened after the shot?

I had a screw holding my rifle sling strip out. I also had the little Velcro deal on the chest part of my Kifaru gun bearer fail while jumping a creek (I sewed it on permanently after). Both caused the rifle to hit the ground real hard. But it only knocked the scope a couple MOA off zero in both cases.

 

[AKG]

Sig kilo 2200 would burn through batteries in an hour or so or at least seemed like batteries were dead. Sent it in and got a replacement that did the same thing, threw it in the trash. Flat tire on a Dodge neon I used to drive into a bowhunting area better accessed by ATV when I was in college, got a few lug nuts off then bent my tire iron trying to remove the last couple and used a hammer and cold chisel to get those ones off in the dark. Benelli SBE took a direct load of steel shot in front of the handguard and was no longer functional until I got replacement parts. Edit- thought this was a general gear failure thread, no rifle failures to report, my brother had a firing pin break in his ar when coyote hunting a couple winters back.

 

[sambo3006]

In the early '90's my Rem 700 30-06 wouldn't chamber my neck sized rounds on a cold rainy day.
Back in 1996 on my first elk hunt in Colorado I had a Win 70 push feed .338 Win mag fail to fire due to light primer strike twice on a big cow that was part of a group of a dozen. When I tried to chamber the third round, they ran off. I dogged them for about 3 hours and finally caught up to them. It went bang that time and I killed a big old cow much farther from the truck than I had originally been. That was before I knew about cleaning the bolt and trigger before an out of state cold hunt.
A couple of years ago I went to chamber a round in my Marlin 1894 .41 mag rifle and the round jammed in the action. Luckily I had a multi tool and was able to remove the bolt and clear the jam, so I was able to hunt deer that day.
Last year out in Utah my Bushnell Fusion 1600 rangefinding binoculars basically disintegrated on me on a muzzleloader mule deer hunt. I'd had them for close to 10 years and had gotten good service from them, but that was a crappy time for them to fail. Luckily I had brought a spare rangefinder, but not a spare pair of binoculars. Fortunately I was able to kill a buck without the aid of binoculars.

 

[mj23polaris]

I had my bergara factory trigger freeze up last year. We walked to a meadow expecting to see an elk in it, I loaded the rifle hike a bit. Well didn't see anything so I emptied the mag and racked the bolt to empty the chamber. Went to dry fire it to drop the hammer and it was solid no bang. Flicked the safety on then back off and the hammer dropped.

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[mj23polaris]

I had my bergara factory trigger freeze up last year. We walked to a meadow expecting to see an elk in it, I loaded the rifle hike a bit. Well didn't see anything so I emptied the mag and racked the bolt to empty the chamber. Went to dry fire it to drop the hammer and it was solid no bang. Flicked the safety on then back off and the hammer dropped.

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[khart_6882]

When I was real young and dumb I bought like a 49$ redhead 3-9 scope. It failed nearly immediately due to fogging issues

Sig kilo 2200 was great for a year. Now it needs a new battery for every time you push the range button.

Inherited an ancient Winchester 16 gauge (I wanna say model 12?) when I was in high school. Immediately took it duck hunting. Pulled the trigger and nothing. As I’m standing on the beach looking down at the thing it decides to send a round of steel shot errand into lake Roosevelt. Luckily I’m a slow learner so I got to experience this 3 or 4 more times before I put it in the gun cabinet. Actually, I believe I killed a few geese on the water by pulling the trigger then just holding on them till it went off. But those kind of tactics aren’t for amateurs haha.


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[Haggin]

Had a Howa 1500 discharge when the safety was taken off, once. Fortunately, the deer was in the scope. Rifle was part of a recall, if I remember correctly, and repaired via LGS. I've shot it several times since then, at the range, and never repeated the issue. Its in the safe still, cant bring myself to trust it or sell it.

 

[kloppy]

Had a Howa 1500 discharge when the safety was taken off, once. Fortunately, the deer was in the scope. Rifle was part of a recall, if I remember correctly, and repaired via LGS. I've shot it several times since then, at the range, and never repeated the issue. Its in the safe still, cant bring myself to trust it or sell it.

Had the same thing happen but with an R700.

I have also seen the tang safety lock up in the safe position on two separate Mossberg 500's, both mid-hunt.

 

[Turkeytider]

Cheap waders duck hunting. Taught me a lesson for sure on things that need to keep you dry and warm. Don`t go cheap on that stuff! Made for a cold, miserable day!

 

[Alaska92]

My partner. That’s why I primarily prefer solo.

 

[IChaseCoues]

I almost didn't get a shot at a nice blacktail on Kodiak due to a rusted up firing pin and bolt internals on my custom Model 7. Found a deer and got all set up then pulled the trigger and nothing happened. Like nothing. No noise or movement in the rifle. I laid there frantically trying to make it work while the deer stared at us a couple hundred yards away. Finally I took the bolt apart (yes I had to strip the Remington bolt with a pocket knife while laying on the tundra watching a deer) and scraped the rust around then dunked it in a puddle and put it back together. After trying it again I pushed the back of the firing pin with my thumb while lined up with the deer and pulled the trigger. Bang! It finally went off and the deer tumbled down the hill into a bush.
Long story short I was a desert southwest hunter that always kept my rifle clean and dry with very little oil or grease so dust didn't stick to it and that was the opposite treatment needed for the wet coastal place we were hunting for the week.
I'll oil the heck out of it if I go back to a place like that.

 

[6.5x284]

Tikka firing pin froze, was 30 below without wind chill. Kept in pocket rest of hunt and was able to shoot a buck later.

Savage Accutrigger had ice form and freeze solid in deep snow while on a gun bearer.

Rangefinder batteries. I had a bad batch of lithiums that died in any cold weather. Had to keep them in my pocket until I needed to range until I got back to where I could buy better batteries.

Hunting buddy had a complete failure of First Lite rain gear. The zippers literally just came off on entire jacket and left him soaked.

My left knee. Locked up bigger than shit and had to crawl out of the woods.

The wind. Seems to fail me every stalk in September.


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[cowboy300]

Guiding hunters I’ve seen a few failures in the field. Multiple aftermarket rem700 triggers fail due to dirty dusty conditions (mainly jewell triggers) several “custom” loads stick bullets in the lands (Hunter usually freaks out and rips the bolt back leaving bullet in barrel and action full of powder) multiple scope mount failures where you can physically see the scope moving in the mount system. Not sure on scope’s losing zero but there seems to be a correlation between vortex/leupolds and rodeos on animals but that could be poor shooting ability. Most hunters are not as good of shots as they think.