re: Rifle "misfire" at a deer

That’s a “hangfire” allegedly. I’ve had it happen with a .223 round many years ago. Not while hunting. Recommendation is to leave it in the gun and safe for a few minutes if it goes “click” and if it doesn’t fire, eject and safely dispose of it.

Mine was the load as that rifle never did that again after hundreds of rounds.


LINK

It is impossible to tell what happened….but I’ll tell you a story.

When I was in high school (45 years ago) deer weren’t common at all. In fact they were so scarce, that when you killed one, you strapped it across the truck hood and paraded it around town before you cleaned it.

Well, I had hunted my food plots ally season long without seeing so much as a doe. The season was near closing, when I saw a silhouette approaching out of the fog. It got closer, and I could see that it was a heavy bodied 6 point. I braced my Remington 742 rifle and as the deer continued to approach squeezed the trigger slowly…”click”…. The deer trotted away from me into the fog never to be seen again. I was destroyed.

Later, when telling my grandfather what happed, he explained that everyone tries to close the bolt quietly….but you should actually let it slam shut. I had cleaned the gun with WD-40 and I suppose that didn’t help much.

That was the last time I ever deer hunted. I have since taken up duck hunting.

You better tell him to stop using it, an inexperienced hunter with a malfunctioning rifle sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.

Find a local gunsmith to look at it.

He probably can't shoot and is coming up with some BS excuse but safety is number one