Gary Reeder
when the Reeder clan used to go to the real nice outdoor
Wednesday, March 13, 2019, 15:07

range in Sarasota the older range master would put us all the down on the left hand side away from most of the other shooters. We would use the range to test out the new cartridges we were working on. One time when we got there he walked us down to the left side and there was an older fellow there shooting his 22 pistol one handed like the old farts do. The range master asked him to move about 10 feet further down away from us. The old goat bitched about being moved and asked why he had to move. The range master told him it was so he didn't get blood on him. The old fellow moved.

The blood comment was sort of a running joke there as there had been times when we were testing new stuff out and ended up with a little blood on either us or the guns. Our 450 GNR, 416 GNR, 375 GNR#2 and one or two others during the testing ended up causing a tiny bit of blood here and there. In the testing we had to run the loads hot and hotter to find where maximum was, and that sometimes resulted in some bloody knuckles or small cuts from pieces of cases flying back at us.

One time when we were trying out the 9.3 X 74 in a Contender the gun opened up, the case split about a half inch from the base, the piece of brass flew back and stuck in my forehead, resulting in a little blood. I wiped the blood off and thought we needed to try one more. I figured maybe it was just a bad case. This time the gun again opened up and again the case split at the web, sending it flying back at me. This time instead of cutting my forehead it hit base first and stuck,burning the 9.3 X 74 caliber into my forehead. Kase kidded me for a week about that. We gave up on that cartridge with factory ammo in a Contender. I used it in Africa later using the milder 9.3 X 72 loading data and it did fine.