Well, I had probably the worst hunting experience of my life. Nice 5.5 yr old 10pt that has never been in any of my pictures showed up Friday afternoon bow hunting and after evaluating him for 1.5hrs, I decided he was going on my wall.

Friday morning. I am in the blind he is there early with two other tens that are very similar but 4.5. When it is light enough to differentiate the bucks, i got the gun out the window and proceeded to shoot the deer.

Broadside at 96 yds, pull the trigger.....click. O ***** Misfire? Bad Bullet? I eject the shell and load another. Deer hear this and get a little weary. I aim and pull the trigger again. Click! Nothing. WTF? He goes in the creek next to the blind, I set off my feeder with the remote and load yet another shell. He comes back, I try to fire again and of course nothing.

Gun is a Weatherby Vanguard .270. Shot it at the range last weekend approximately 5 times, no problems whatsoever. That gun drives tacks and has never given me problems. Its not even imprinting a nick on the rounds. What the hell is going on? Gunsmith in the Katy area?

.......I used a fellow lease members gun and shot him this morning! So it turned out all right.

Broken firing pin, sounds like.

What did the primers on the "fired" rounds look like? Any indication of firing pin strike?

Did you break the weapon down after the range and clean it? Anything that might have gone back together wrong?

Did you take the bolt apart before or after the range/ or the hunt?

Didnt clean it after the range. Forgot to do it before I went out of town and didnt have time do it before I went out this weekend. I have not cleaned it after a couple of rounds before and not had problems so I didnt think there would be any issue.

I didnt break anything down. No cleaning supplies at my deer lease.

Cartridges look like they had a small scratch on them and when I pull the trigger it doesnt even sound right. Its a real weak noise (cick).

Help me! Its got a better scope than my 30.06 and I need to fix it before thanksgiving.

From the sound of it, you broke your firing pin. If I read your post correctly, it didn't dent the primer, correct? Take it to a gunsmith and they can fix it for you.

The wife gave me a 700 BDL in 223 Rem. about 8 years ago. The first time I shot it on about the 8th shot it quit firing.

I looked at the spent brass and noticed a perferated primer. The other brass showed some signs of over-pressurization, also. I took the bolt apart, throroughly cleaned it and re-lubed it. I have not had a problem since.

I won't shoot Winchester 5.56 FMJ in it anymore, though.

[This message has been edited by 76Ag (edited 11/6/2011 10:18p).]

Maybe it's dirty? Although I have never taken my bolts apart for cleaning. Should be easy to open and see. On my one rifle (win model 70) you can take it apart and look. Can you do that on the vanguard? It was used and I felt like looking. It was clean though and hadn't been opened since 1964.

Check yours out.

[This message has been edited by Brazosdog02 (edited 11/6/2011 10:25p).]

I'd bet on a broken firing pin.

The other thing I can think of is that you didn't cycle the bolt back fully when you loaded each round in the chamber. This will lead to a "half cocked" status (for lack of a better term), which means that there isn't enough tension in the spring to get a solid primer strike.

Doesn't a Weatherby Vanguard cock on opening?

Half cocked?

I don't understand this... (maybe my lack of using any blot action besides a remington 700 action)

If you can get a bullet into the chamber and close the bolt the gun should fire, correct? or is this not how some work?

On a Remington (not sure about the Vanguard's action), if you don't pull the bolt completely backwards, you can get into a situation where a round is chambered, but there isn't enough tension on the pin to detonate the primer.

I saw this happen twice on the Sniper challenge on the Military Channel.

May or may not be an issue with a Vanguard though, but it would be worth it to try before tearing the bolt apart or sending it to a gunsmith.

Holy crap. Won't be buying a Rem 700 anytime soon. That sounds weird.

Hunting with rifle on friday november 4th? Maybe it was the game warden god that kept your gun from going off.

Good thing you had a remote controlled feeder so you could extend this cluster****.

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Hunting with rifle on friday november 4th? Maybe it was the game warden god that kept your gun from going off.

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his first sentence states he first saw the buck while bowhunting on friday, i believe the meant to say saturday morning.

I do believe that when you are referring to the sniper challenge they didn't pull the bolt all the way back to load a round. Because every Remington 700 i have, as soon as you lift the bolt up you can cam it back over and the hammer is cocked and ready to go. As far as the seeing two snipers do it i was watching the same show and saw them not pull the bolt back far enough thus not feeding the round at all leaving just the click of the hammer when they squeeze the trigger.

As far as the vanguard goes , i have one and have yet to experience any problems with it, using handloads and factory weatherby stuff.kinda sounds like a busted firing pin. i would examine the bolt before i brought it to a smith though.

The first guy didn't have a round chambered, but the second guy did.

When I say "half cocked", I want to say (look it up, because I'm definitely not an expert on Rem 700 actions) that it will basically not set the trigger and sear correctly, so what happens is that the trigger operates, the firing pin springs forward, but not with enough force to detonate the primer.

At any rate, it's at least something to verify before going through the effort of pulling the firing pin from the bolt and/or taking it to a gunsmith. At least it would be for me.

Thanks for all of the help! I saw the deer bowhunting on Friday for the first time. Saturday morning is when I had my rifle.

Taking it to a gun smith just to be safe and will get back to y'all. Thanks!

Sounds like a weak firing pin spring to me. I had to replace this spring on one of my rifles. A good gunsmith told me to always leave your rifle uncocked.

I'm not a "hunter", but I think I agree with Chemist on this one...

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I do believe that when you are referring to the sniper challenge they didn't pull the bolt all the way back to load a round. Because every Remington 700 i have, as soon as you lift the bolt up you can cam it back over and the hammer is cocked and ready to go. As far as the seeing two snipers do it i was watching the same show and saw them not pull the bolt back far enough thus not feeding the round at all leaving just the click of the hammer when they squeeze the trigger.

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The same thing happens to me when I unknowningly have the magazine cutoff engaged on my Springfield '03 or Krag 1898. I pull the trigger and flinch like a mofo, but all that happens is "click".