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orchidman
Senior MemberPosts: 8,364 Senior Member
Wheres the beating your head against the brick wall emoji....
Well, this sucks.........

Went up to the range yesterday to confirm zero's on my Howa 204.
For some reason the last few outings had resulted in a few misses on critturs. Set up targets at 50 100 and 200m.
First shot at 50m was 4" left but right for height. Next shot at 100m it was even further left......
Figured I must have knocked the scope at some stage so settled in to re-zero it.
A few adjustments and I had it shooting 3 shots touching at 100m and about 2" high. Moved to the 200m target and it was about 1/2 " high with 3 shots almost touching.......Thats more like it.
Soooo, we head off to a local farm to deal to magpies,rabbits, peacocks and deer. ( Conditions were 15-20mph wind and temps over 100f)
First shot at a magpie at approx 140m and the bird cackled and flew away......second and 3rd shots at 2 more magpies and all I succeeded in doing was shooting the legs off one.........Managed to vaporise a bunny at about 70m with the 4th shot. Just on dark a fallow buck walked out of the bush about 260m away so I decided to move stalk in closer .......and the light beat me. Crap.
Went to clean the rifle this morning and when I pulled it out of its gun sleeve heard a faint rattle......thought it was the sling so removed it. While taking the front of the sling off I thought I felt the barrel move ever so slightly in the stock, checked the screws and both action screws were loose.
Looks like another trip to the range..........
From shaken confidence yesterday morning to total confidence in the rifles capabilities after re-zeroing it at the range and back to no confidence after shooting at critturs in the afternoon.
Couldnt find the right sized torx head so had to go buy one along with some loctite to get everything snugged down.........

Still enjoying the trip of a lifetime and making the best of what I have.....
Replies
I knew about the propensity of those failures on both guns. I still failed to check them.
Funny thing though. I used nail polish on the threads of the scope base screws. Its all I had at the time. A couple months ago I bought an exercise bike. Two nuts kept backing out no matter what I did. Even with nylon inserts in them. Nail polish again. Haven't backed out yet. Anything to save a trip to the hardware. Now when the polish runs out. Should I buy more nail polish or get thread lock?
Son that's somebody with nothing to do with his time but keep me in trouble with mom.
No, that's only in Australia.
Son that's somebody with nothing to do with his time but keep me in trouble with mom.
Son that's somebody with nothing to do with his time but keep me in trouble with mom.
Son that's somebody with nothing to do with his time but keep me in trouble with mom.
― Douglas Adams
The older I get, the slowerer I get lol
Since then all my rifles get the fat wrench treatment as soon as they come out of the box. I have to say I have never used Loc-Tite on any gun action screws so that's a new one on me. I'll have to check on a few of the older guns to see if there has been a change. Interesting...