I’ve always loved my 999 and it has been used and abused hard. It was my trap-line gun and it lived in the rain, snow, and mud. After thousands of rounds there never was a glitch.

Anyway, not the gun’s fault, but yesterday I had a weird incident. The day before I had fired a few blanks to get the new 8 1/2 week old pup accustomed to gun fire. When I ejected the empties, I noticed the one had only the primer ring left. I assumed the rest of the casing just dropped on the ground – I know, I should have checked the bore right then and there.

Yesterday, I fired a few more blanks. I then happened to look down the bore and couldn’t see daylight. The casing from the day before was about 1/2" to 3/4" from the breech. I got the cleaning rod and it wouldn’t budge. I guess firing the additional blanks really wedged it in. I then clamped it between 2 pieces of wood on the drill press and from the breech end I used a small bit to drill out some of the casing. I then used a larger bit (still smaller than the bore diameter) and gently tapped it and it moved a bit. I once again got the cleaning rod, and with some additional tapping, the casing slid out.

Fortunately, the subsequent round was also blank and not a .22 round. Everything is good but lesson learned: always double check when something out of the ordinary occurs.