“Jumping Over s Snake” One Week Before a Hunt

When I was growing up, if one managed to avoid a bad event, we called it “jumping over a snake.” Nowadays, various professions have fancier phrases like “sentinel event” or “near miss,” but it’s still the same thing. I had a similar experience last weekend. It was only 7 days before my last prairie dog hunt of the year and I was doing some last minute sighting in. Things had gone well w/ the 22 LR (Tikka T1x rifle w/ Spectre 2 suppressor)) and my handguns: 20 VarTarg (Howa Mini-action w/ McGowen barrel) and Nosler Custom Handgun in 22 Nosler. The only gun left to shoot was my Remington XP-100 handgun in 223 Rem Ackiley Improved. Imagine my surprise when my first fire forming load failed to fire. In addition, there wasn’t even a mark on the primer. The gun had never misfired. After 4 more rounds, the primers were still untouched. After doing a lot of research I suspected a broken firing pin or firing pin spring.

I’d never broken down the XP bolt before so I consulted a number of YouTube videos the next morning. I noticed the bolt lift was very stiff. The videos were pretty accurate although I had to use a penny to keep the bolt open instead of the usual nickel. After taking the bolt apart, it looked like there was a fleck of brass inside the body of the bolt near the firing pin hole. I couldn’t remove it w/ a Q tip, but it washed out after flushing it w/ copious amounts of carbureter cleaner. The firing pin assembly was dirty, but otherwise ok. After reassembling the bolt, I dropped the hammer on four primed pieces of brass. Happily, all four ignited.

I shot the 223 later that day and was very pleased. I shot 3 groups, each w/ 3 shots. The first group was shot without the suppressor, the second group w/ the suppressor and the third group without the suppressor. I made a small horizontal adjustment on the scope for the 3rd group, but you can see the suppressor otherwise had no significant effect on the point of impact. Next I shot 3 shot groups w/ 3 different 50 grain bullets (Speer soft point, Speer TNT and Hornady SX) and 2 different powders (Shooter’s World AR Plus and Accurate 2200). I really like how this gun shoots different bullets of the same weight to the same point of impact.

So everything turned out ok. All my guns are working and shooting accurately. Now I’m hoping the prairie dogs will cooperate on the hunt.

Small piece of brass from inside the bolt

Suppressor comparison

Bullet comparison