I have been to Granny's house before, you wouldn't ever see me pulling the trigger on this mean fucker.
About 35 years ago now, a completely crazy guy I knew somehow managed to get his hands on some large caliber rifle from somewhere and was blasting away at this junked out Plymouth Fury in his yard. I'm talking I could stick my finger past the knuckle inside the barrel, large caliber.
He was one of those guys who was always wheelin' and dealin' and it was best not to ask too many questions about where he got what or how, if you catch my drift.
.
He kept telling me that it was an Elephant gun and I figured he was just talking shit because he was famous for that too among other things.
It's been so long now I can't remember exactly what kind of rifle it was but I want to say it was a Weatherby. It was heavy as fuck, I do remember that and what happened right after I pulled the trigger of course.
He told me I just had to try it and not wanting to look like a pussy, of course I had to say OK, even if it was reluctantly.
I wasn't smart enough to shoot it laying prone, I had to try it standing up like he had been doing.
The guy was built like a fire plug but it was even rocking his world to shoot it I could see.
I was six foot tall and weighed a whopping 135 pounds at the time so I had to wrap the sling around my arm just to hold the front of it up.
It was so heavy that the barrel kept wobbling from side to side so I used the shiny drivers side door lock cylinder as a target and got the thing going in a figure eight pattern for a bit and then timed it just right and pulled the trigger.
A couple of things happened really fast at that point.
There was a giant roar as the thing went off, it knocked me completely off my feet and threw me backwards five feet, I watched both my feet come up and go over my head and I landed flat on my back in the gravel still holding on to that rifle for dear life. Knocked the wind out of me when I hit the ground too.
Oh did that bastard get a laugh out of it.
I finally got some air going and got up off the ground so I could shove that fucking thing back in his hands and walk over to that poor old Plymouth to see if I had even hit the damn thing. He was saying something but the blast had deafened me and all I could hear was a very loud ringing noise and I was having trouble seeing straight.
Imagine my total surprise to discover that the entire bottom half of that lock cylinder was completely missing with a perfect half circle gone out of it.
The top half was right where it was supposed to be.
I looked inside to see where the bullet had went and saw a bunch of daylight on the other side behind the front door.
The car was sitting at a bit of an angle from me when I lit that monster off and the bullet had gone through the lock cylinder, the drivers seat back and out just behind the passenger side door.
There was a hole on the passenger side damn near five inches wide with the sheet metal sticking out all around it.
When I saw that I started to believe that for once maybe the dude wasn't talking shit after all.
If it could do that kind of damage to a 1972 Plymouth Fury then it could more than likely knock down a fucking Elephant too.
It had certainly knocked me on my little ass.
5 comments:
My friend has a .460 Weatherby that no one will try. Except a stupid asshole like me. He brought it to the range one day and asked me if I still wanted to light on off. He said to fire it standing up since your body can more easily move and absorb the shock. While it didn't knock me off my feet I did a stutter step back a few feet. All the guys were standing around laughing as he handed me another round thinking that I would decline. I shot it twice more off the bench to see how well I could place the shots on target. That was a bigger mistake than firing it standing up. Leaning into it on the bench made it hurt a lot more. Ended up having one hell of a headache and a sore shoulder that lasted about a week. I think it also loosened my teeth. My buddy ended up giving me a loaded round to take home as a souvenir. It sits on the mantel in my game room next to a round from my bear and moose gun. Makes that .338 Win Mag look like a pipsqueak..................
Buddy of mine is a firearms engineer. He always has interesting stuff for me to shoot. One day he asked if I knew of an abandoned car in the woods. I happened to know just the car. He had a special round that was supposed to blow through engine blocks. It didn't quite do that on the old big block V8, so he was disappointed. However, I found it impressive.
Dad had a rifled 10 gauge bolt action with full brass casings. I shot it once when I was 17 and it nearly broke my shoulder. I don't know what you could hunt in the SE USA with something like that 10 gauge. I never touched that gun again.
My dad mentioned a neighbor who once had a double barrel 8 guage shotgun. His description "the first barrel knocked you down, the second one stomped you to death".
No sir, I think you were lucky you shot it offhand (standing up). Shooting prone, your shoulder would have received more damage and the concussion from shooting next to ground would be - excessive !
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