Always Index/mark my ram rod, to know when loaded.
Lucky it wasn't worse.
I seen the aftermath at our rifle club after a muzzle shooter shot his ram rod nearly 25yrds.
It's that time of year.
New guys with unfamiliar guns to them, loading up at the rear of the truck before daylight.
Stopped a 'City Hunter' with a pocket full of mixed size 12 ga slugs, while he tried filling his 2-3/4 chamber with 3" magnum slugs.
The old adage "we assumed" as it had been to the gunsmiths.
Well its the fault of the end user for not checking the bore or at least running a patch through the rifle before use as the Gunny may have left the bore with a good coating of oil which as we know liquids are not compressible.
Hopefully the young chap will have no lasting affects from this other than a few scars and a scary story mind you I bet he will have the jitters next time he gets behind a rifle.
Typical of these things though, we never get the correct story from the shooter as they don't want to appear foolish and probably know exactly what they did wrong. Then we sit here and parse it to death without input.