Quote:
Originally Posted by MK2750
When I see all the people admitting to racking rounds in the heat of the moment with cold hands it sends a shiver up my spine. Considering that some rifles need the safety off (and many others that admit to never using one) to cycle the action. Add to that the possibility of poor muzzle control when trying to get loaded up with an animal possibly escaping and it is down right scary.
I know, buck fever is a myth, young hunters never get that and having to fumble around loading a gun just makes things more challenging. Especially when one considers how many "accidents" we hear about while loading and unloading.
Elkhunter11 makes a prime example above when a hunter in his party had an accidental discharge when loading a rifle to fire at an antelope. Excited maybe, cold hands maybe, multi tasking??? I have read enough of his posts to know that he wouldn't hunt with someone he considered unsafe. Muzzle control saved the day but that is a weak excuse for an incident. He might well of injured himself from the unexpected recoil alone. So this experienced and presumed safe hunter has an incident while loading a rifle but we should be teaching young and inexperienced hunters that this is the way it should be done.
And when considering slip and fall type incidents, would one rather fall with a break action shotgun in the open position with shells in the pipe or one locked up solid with the safety on? It would almost be inevitable to take a tumble and still keep the gun open and if it did slam shut it would be hot without safety considering the mechanics of a lot of break open shotguns.
There is obviously two sides to this argument. People that scope you are idiots, be it loaded or presumed empty. I was taught, along with the majority of others, that all guns are to be handled as if loaded and not to point them at anything I wasn't going to shoot. Your attempts at making legitimate, safe and legal outdoorsmen look stupid is not going improve the gun handling practices of idiots.
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Actually the odds of falling with a shotgun broken over the shoulder , and the shotshells not falling out of the chambers, and the action fully closing, and the trigger being struck are extremely remote, compared to the odds of falling with a closed chamber and the tang safety on the same gun being moved, and the trigger being struck. . I actually don't like tang safeties because if you trip, your hand can easily slide forward and move the safety to the fire position. As for my own SxS hunting shotguns, they have auto safeties that engage automatically when the action is closed. As such, the odds of everything happening that needs to happen in order to accidentally discharge one of my upland shotguns in a fall are pretty much non existent. I have seen people slip or trip, when carrying shotguns broken over the shoulder, and usually both shotshells fall out of the chambers, and the action does not close.