ever have bad reloads hurt your hunt?

[340wby]

Ill rat myself out here, when I first stared reloading I naturally had far less experiance than 35 years later and i had loaded up one box of 20 cartridges of 44 mag ammo to go deer hunting with a buddy that called at 11pm that night before,now it was a spur of the moment deal,I rushed to get my equipment together,and get some ammo loaded,I screwed up and failed to correctly set and read the powder scale and loaded less than 11 grains VS 21 grains of H110 powder under the 300 grain hard cast bullets Id loaded in my 8 3/8" barrel S&W model 29, now It was TOTALLY my fault,no question, and it taught me a valuable lesson, about double and triple checking EVERY phase of the reload procedure.
anyway, dawn found me sitting in a tree stand on the edge of a lake waiting on a deer trail, at about 7am a 4 point buck walked under the stand and I lined up the sights and slowly squeassed off what I thought was the perfect shot, .............PPFFFTTTUNKKK, the bullet hit low at 30 yards and the BULLET BOUNCED, IM sure it left one hell of a mark/brusies, but I tested the next couple cartridges against a tree stump and they left a gouge or bounced off that stump so I seriously doubt the velocity exceeded 200fps

I had a buddy load 60 cartridges for his 30/06 the night before leaving florida for colorado......as he had shot all his ammo up that day sighting in his rifle with a new scope! on a long planed ELK hunt! not a single cartridge seated enought to close the bolt fully, lucky for him his buddy had an extra box of factory ammo in the truck,but it was a huge surprise to find he could not load his rifle on opening day! lucky his ELK was shot at 60 FEET and any differance in trajectory was not important

[calsibley]

No, thank heavens I've always been okay in that regard.
My major boner was in assuming my rifle was okay based on it's last two trips to the range, then finding out at the most imoportune time that my firing pin was broken. That boneheaded move cost me a nice moose. Best wishes.

Cal - Montreal

[markp1]

Only when I forgot to put primers in the cases!! Wondered why they didn`t go boom. First AND last time too.

Aloha, Mark

[cozincowtown]

So far, NO!!

[kragman71]

Hello,
No,I don't think so.
I did have a recurring problem with loads with NO powder,when I was just starting to reload. I think that all the problems occurred at the range;I don't recall aborting any woodchuck hunts with my22 Hornet.
Frank

[calsibley]

I came darn close once, but did happen to notice the odd powder stick on my reloading table. It took me a while to realize I had failed to put primers in the case. Actually I've done this more than once, but so far have been able to catch it every time. You'd think more grains would escape through the primer pocket but surprisingly few do.

My biggest heartache was in taking paper factory shells on a rabbit hunt on a snowy day up here. They were European cheapies called Olympic, and the cold and wetness caused the paper shells to expand so they wouldn't work smoothly in my Rem. 870 pump. After a short time they wouldn't work at all. Fortunately, a friend had enough plastic shells to see me through the morning. Talk about someone who has to learn everything the hard way! I guess collectively we've pulled some real boners. Best wishes.

Cal - Montreal