The .38 Short Colt

[Bob Wright]

Many years ago I had bought a couple of boxes of old Remington .38 Short Colt cartridges. I was plinking at an old sand/gravel pit near Memphis, a spot favored by many local Saturday plinkers. One shooter was plinking with his .22 rifle, some kind of .22 auto. He had thrown a bunch of empty 12 ga. shotshells into the water and was trying to sink them. (This was not as dangerous as you might expect, and there was a deep excavated pit, maybe fifty feet in diameter, and the water level was about twenty feet below the surface. Ricochets simply smacked into the opposite sandy bank. Any that escaped would go straight up.)

The rifleman ran out of cartridges and all of the hulls were still afloat. He invited me to try my hand. I was shooting my old Blackhawk .357 Flat Top and loaded a cylinder full of those Short Colts. When I fired into the water, I think I could have made a bigger splash had I thrown the cartridge into the water! But five shots sank five of those hulls. He looked at me and said, "Man, I hope you never have to shoot at me!"

(So far, I haven't.)

Bob Wright

 

[anachronism]

It's not the arrow...

 

[Mobuck]

In my foolish youth, I'd shoot any old ammo I could scrounge. I picked up some 38 short and long Colt ammo at the flea market cause it was waaay cheaper than common 38 Sp. First 38 short was squib that stuck in the forcing cone(I guess that was the lucky part) tying everything up. I managed to bump the bullet back enough to remove the cylinder and that was the end of that. I think I gave the old ammo to Mom's oldest Son for his junk collection.