What is your biggest airgun related disaster ?

[Lakey]

Well thats the question. What is your biggest airgun related disaster ?

Now I know some won't necessarily want to answer this, as maybe the memories are still too painful to summon to mind , but everyone makes mistakes, and it would be interesting to see what kind of disasters and mishaps others have experienced in their airgun shooting/collecting careers.

I have two that still make me wince a bit when I remember back to them.

1) Me and two mates decided to go night rabbit shooting with my pride and joy, a Webley Mk3, in .22 cal. It was an early gun with the finely fluted stock. One of my friends was a biker, and we had hatched a plan to shoot some rabbits on a farm where we had permission. It was a large farm, so my biker mate suggested that I rode on the back of his 250 trials bike, and took the rabbits when they became illuminated by the headlight. Well this proved a deadly method and we soon had a few rabbits.
My second mate had been itching to have a go, and after a while, I reluctantly handed over my pride and joy to him and watched the pair as they rode off to around a small field in search of the next rabbit. I stood at the edge of the field to watch proceedings.
After a short while, the bike stopped and I could see the rabbit frozen in the headlight. This was followed by a quick shot, followed by my friend jumping off the bike and running up to the still struggling bunny. Now the next bit is the real painful bit........ The rabbit was wounded, and required a quick dispatch. Now most of us might have given it the chop behind the ears, or shot again. BUT NOT MY "MATE" ., who raised the rifle over his head like an axe, and tried to club the rabbit. Of course he missed the rabbit ( not that it would have made any difference to the outcome), and smashed the stock in two pieces. well the pair slowly came back pushing the bike, and unaware that I had seen the whole thing, my mate had made up this story about tripping up in a rabbit hole, and accidently falling onto the stock as he ran forward to dispatch the rabbit ..... blah blah blah. He eventually found and bought another stock for the gun, but it was off a later Mk3, and didnt have the flutes in the stock. The gun was never the same again in my eyes and was quickly sold on.

2) My second bad memory centers on an early Holts sale in London, which I attended, and viewed the guns on the morning of the sale.
Amongst all the guns there were some good to average BSA underlevers. I was a successful sales rep back then, earning good commission, so had a good "bank" of money to spend that day. I looked around the guns, and there were a few oddities there that I didnt recognise. Well the auction started and I bid on several of the BSA's, being successful with four of them I think. I noted down the hammer prices in my catalogue, and then collected the guns at the end of the auction, carrying them back on the tube, in simple gun slips ( Thats how long ago it was ) .
Didnt think anything more of it, till a mate of mine read the auction catalogue a few months later.

The oddities that I failed to bid on ( that didn't make much money as I had noted down ) were a) A perfect Falke90 with all three sights b) A provenanced Gold Plated HW80, as given to the directors of the Hull Cartridge company, in good original order . A factory fresh Quackenbush No5, together with a Havilland and Gun combination rifle - I guess my excuse is that I knew nothing of these rare guns at the time, but I wish I had bid on them maybe instead of the BSA's . You live and learn. Sadly I have never seen any of those rifles again come up in auction in such good condition.