[stumpstalker]

Ed:

Are you sure it was all buck fever?

This is what I believe happened with me, and it seems reminiscent of what led up to your ecstatic moments of hesitancy:

1) In the morning I had missed every bird.

2) Apparently spent powder residue or foreign matter was accumulating in the action, or breech and barrel faces, leading to a threshold point later in the day, so that when I thought my gun was closed, it was NOT fully-closed; thus, the safety would not move.

3) I was not aware of the developing condition in the gun, nor what I was doing wrong with my manipulations at critical moments when birds were going up. I was not pulling the trigger, did not know why, and just attributed it to a late-afternoon climaxing of vague ineptitude, Buck Fever.

4) The problem with the gun was remedied when I recognized that I had to snap the gun closed after reloading, and not close it gently, as I would on an empty-chambered gun.

Does that sound possible in your case? Has anyone else had the same experience?

The top lever not being centered should have been a give-away that the gun was not closed, but I don’t know where it had stopped-short. My eyes were elsewhere, with a bird about to go.

It is still a strain of Buck Fever, as I analyze it, but with a mechanical assist.