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Just wanted to share another bumbling stumbling trip to the deer woods, as well as remind folks about safety. I caught a ride back from an unsuccessful hunt last night to camp from a friend on a 4 wheeler, and realized I had some mud on my stock, upper, lower, etc when I got there. I brushed it off as a "I'll clean it up when I get home" kind of thing. Well, this morning I go to load my Bushy, and the bolt doesn't go all the way forward, forward assist? nothing. pull on the charging handle? nada.. I tried slamming the stock with a brick on the charging handle to no avail, then I hit the barrel on a block of wood and the bolt finally closes. It still won't pull back, so I do what anyone else who's hunting day was ruined would do.... I hid under a picnic table and pulled the trigger. Well, it fired and ejected and I soon found that a clump of red GA clay from the 4 wheeler, had lodged itself between the bolt and the bullet. I was able to clean the gun including the barrel out with a twig and a half a napkin to where it was serviceable, and later take care of a midday deer. The moral to the story is close your dust cover, and inspect your gun before every hunt...and bring a backup rifle just in case.

Yikes.... I'm glad that you and your gun are okay.

bushmeister wrote:Just wanted to share another bumbling stumbling trip to the deer woods, as well as remind folks about safety. I caught a ride back from an unsuccessful hunt last night to camp from a friend on a 4 wheeler, and realized I had some mud on my stock, upper, lower, etc when I got there. I brushed it off as a "I'll clean it up when I get home" kind of thing. Well, this morning I go to load my Bushy, and the bolt doesn't go all the way forward, forward assist? nothing. pull on the charging handle? nada.. I tried slamming the stock with a brick on the charging handle to no avail, then I hit the barrel on a block of wood and the bolt finally closes. It still won't pull back, so I do what anyone else who's hunting day was ruined would do.... I hid under a picnic table and pulled the trigger. Well, it fired and ejected and I soon found that a clump of red GA clay from the 4 wheeler, had lodged itself between the bolt and the bullet. I was able to clean the gun including the barrel out with a twig and a half a napkin to where it was serviceable, and later take care of a midday deer. The moral to the story is close your dust cover, and inspect your gun before every hunt...and bring a backup rifle just in case.

Markey, I hope all is well and nothing really bad became of your experience.

As an aside, when the socom/beowulf guys copied my work (thinking they could do it better) the one thing they couldn't do (well, one of many things they couldn't do), was put the dust cover on their system. Yes, they are running around without a cover. I designed ours so we could still have the cover. Nice system, don't cha-thinks? Let's all take Bushmeister's point to heart and use the cover, it really will work as intended.

Thanks for enlightening us.

If any of you guys have an Oops, please suck it up and share the problem, we all have a serious need to learn..t

After a good night's sleep, it dawned on me (no pun intended) that for the mud to get there, it had to come down the barrel, as the bolt would have been forward. So I guess I should have gotten the black tactical gloves for Christmas . Still a good idea to use the dust cover and I will try to remember to do so. Another positive is that my scope was dead on after all the beating that it took.