Last day of duck hunting for me this year nearly turned into a disaster. I often joked that I would willingly shoot rusted ammunition because I was cheap but no more. I had gone through wet shells and tossed ones with rusted primers and thought mainly the ones that were left would either fire or not and I would just eject or chuck the ones that weren't touched off.

However, yesterday I experienced a 'squib' that could have ruined my barrel, gun or even my face. On a very slow day I joined my friends in drawing down on a bird and pulled the trigger, bang -pffffffffff.... and in that microsecond later my mind subconsciously flew back to my competition days and I did not follow up.

Everyone looked strangely at me and in my mind I knew I should stop but not why. I had to manually eject the spent hull but then my buddy told me to check the chamber. Oh yeahhhh. So in the middle of the swamp I unloaded, peered down the barrel and could not see daylight. Then I broke down the gun and with the barrel out could clearly see it had an obstruction.

Without a rod between us that was the end of my day. At home later I cleared the barrel and as expected the wad was stuck halfway up. The powder probably had been wet or corrupted and it had just enough energy to plop out the BBs but not enough to also expel the wad (the plastic bit I am holding). With a blockage, shooting another round would have over pressured the barrel and could have shattered it, possibly even injuring whoever was close. Very happy to have good friends who have their heads on straight!

All of my wet ammo now is far away from my gun. It has gone into my pile of post apocalypse pile of "ammo of last resort'.