Discussion Forums

Paul Leverman

Most of the contributors here are gun people, I'm sure. And most take the maintenance and cleaning regime of their personal prizes very seriously. Who would want to pull a rusty piece of crap out and go shooting? No one. But what about the other equipment that we use? From recent and personal experience, I can tell you that one very important piece of equipment that should be checked on a regular basis is your shooting bags.

I had all my equipment loaded into the car, ready to rock off to the range, and went to put my sand bags in with the rest of the equipment. Wouldn't you know it, just as it was passing over the rifles, whooops, there goes the seam and there goes about a half pound of sand into two actions. I can't say here what I said then, suffice it to say it was not meant for family listening.

Yeah, I know. Why didn't you have your rifles in a case? Truth is, I don't own a rifle case, never have. Don't know why (other than the above) a person would need one. But that's just me. I'm old.

Anyway, the five hours is what it took to completely strip these two rifles, right down to bolts and triggers apart and each piece cleaned, to get them back to where I felt I could safely load and pull the trigger.

The upside: new sandbags and really clean rifles.

Check your bags.