It should have been the Under Deer but when I pulled the trigger the first time it just clicked. I reset the safety and took a high shoulder shot with the Over barrel and he dropped in his tracks. It was one of those shots where the back end of the deer dropped and pulled the front half down with it.

I opened the gun and the ejectors shot the empty brass and the not-fired cartridge over my shoulder and into ankle-deep water in the oak flats. I reloaded in case the deer got up but he didn’t. After getting down I couldn’t find either brass in the slurry of pine straw, oak leaves, mosquito larvae and tannic water so I didn’t know whether it was the gun or the shell that had misfired.

When I got to the deer he was gasping so I decided to test the firing mechanism on the under barrel and finish the deer off at the same time. It worked on both accounts so I’m pretty convinced that it was just a bad primer.

One of the worn-out cliches that guys tell themselves when springing for a double is that the gun can shoot a fast follow-up if the first barrel doesn’t go off. But, until now, I really didn't believe it myself.

Rubberhead,
The photo seems to show the rifle with a single trigger. Many single triggers require recoil from the first barrel firing ( inertia trigger) to reset it for the second barrel. Double triggers do allow quickly firing the second barrel.
Mike

I am wondering exactly the same thing as Mike.

What caliber?

It's an inertia trigger - I just cycled the safety to ready the over barrel it was very easy and obviously effective... .30-06

Great account of hunting in the kind of place I love ....... the swamps of the low country, SC and GA. I copied this old post of mine and pasted it here rather than try to explain how to prevent the empties from falling to the ground/water.

"I have mentioned many times, when I have read posters exclaim that they hate ejectors because they hate littering the field and woods, or they detest searching the ground for ejected hulls, that neither of those options is necessary. All one has to do is trap the hulls with the palm of the hand, and do with them as you please.

Some of my friends and I shot a round of sporting this afternoon, then went back to a couple of the stations to work on a few presentations that we weren't happy with. After that, I asked a friend to video me shooting a few crossers to show how I trap the hulls ejected from my MX 8. I apologize in advance for the rotation of the camera in "mid-stream". He didn't realize that it would rotate the scene 90 degrees, but maybe you can see what I wanted to show.

In practice, I catch the rear end of the top lever with the meaty part of the base of my thumb, actually part of my palm, and use it to rotate the lever to the right, which puts my fingers in perfect position to trap the hulls in my hand and toss them in the trash can, to my left on this station.

It may look a bit contrived on this video, but it's because I was aware of the video in progress which made me think about what I was doing more than normal. I have been doing this for so much of my life it has become second nature, and requires no thought at all. I can do this on every ejector gun I own, from 12 through .410, S x S or O/U."

https://youtu.be/AI5oLrrzy2U

SRH

Stan,
You would love the place where I killed that buck. It's a typical lowcountry oak flat dotted with pines that holding water because of the recent tropical storm.

By the way, I know how to cup my hand and catch empties. I've been shooting ejector guns for more than three decades...the reason I didn't grab the ejected cartridges was because I didn't want a hang fire load to rip my hand apart...I was actually thinking rather than doing something "second nature".

Good thinking, about the possibility of a hangfire.

Swamps nourish a part of me that nothing else can.

Best, SRH

The water dried enough for me to find the misfired shell...

I am increasingly certain that it was a cartridge problem and not a gun problem.

That is a primer that is seated way too deep, reload?

If memory serves, the late Havilah Babcock loved quail hunting in the Low Country fields and brushy woods- I have his books in my library, of all his works, my 3 favorites are : "Tennesse", "Slim Boggins Mistake" and "Fallen Lady"-- RWTF

Or a pistol primer that snuck in?

Nope - Factory Remington CORE-LOKT 150 grain PSP. I shot most of the box at the range without any problem.

I grew up in the Lowcountry and started hunting in the fall of 1977. I shot real wild quail over my uncle's uncle's Brittany spaniel. I didn't realize then but am keenly aware now how "storied" my growing up was. I hunted quail and ducks in the same areas where Havilah Babcock and Archibald Rutledge roamed. At the time I was unaware of them or the history, I simply lived the life in front of me. I was given a boat when I was 12 and ran the upper Cooper River. I was forced to read Huck Finn but couldn't understand the fascination - it was what I did just about every evening when I got home.

Kid don't get to grow up like that any more.

Odd, that brass looks like it has been reloaded.

Rubberhead,
If our kids let our grandkids run like we did, the county would take them away. I often took my shotgun to school and rode the schoolbus to my cousin's and hunted til dark. Today, the SWAT team would meet me at the school's door.
Mike

I never joined the rifle team, but it made me think of walking the rifles through campus, taking them from lock up to the on campus range. Never a second thought or worry.

Maybe, if rh has reloading tools, he could see if it is possible to seat the fired primers in deeper on the fired brass like it shows on that light primer strike round. There is probably a quality control issue if it came from the factory like that.

If I had to guess, the primer seating step in manufacturing, or possibly even reloading, would have had a stop to prevent crushing a primer and maybe the firing pin pushed it in a deep pocket.

The misfired cartridge sat in a stew of rain water, pine straw and willow oak leaves for two weeks. I'm sure the tannins/tannic acid did a lot for the cosmetics of the brass.

Sounds like an interesting marinade;-) Do you have the recipe?

He was likely referring to the obvious junction of case web and case body that looks like the case has been resized.

The primer is also flattened, as if it's actually a fired primer.

I have a few boxes of that same ammunition, so I opened one and looked.

The Remington primers in the new cartridges look exactly like the one pictured, without of course the firing pin strike. They are seated as shown. The web junction is also evident.

The pictured cartridge is to my satisfaction a misfired factory round.