Ok, I have a new M4 and have probably shot 500 rounds through it with 0 malfunctions until yesterday. I have been shooting the green tip Lake City stuff just to run through it and the local gunshop gave me a free box of 20 Wolf rounds to try. I didn't plan on shooting them, but my wife loaded a magazine and loaded these up. She started to shoot the magazine and I was watching. I thought she was near the last round and when she pulled the trigger a round didn't go off and I started to give her a hard time for anticipating the recoil.

Then I looked at the port cover and noticed the bolt was forward. Figuring I might have a bad primer and the round could cook off I tried to eject the round and the bolt is just plain stuck. It looks like the bolt is about 1/4 inch from being seated all the way.

When I pull back on the charging handle, its seriously stuck. My weapon was cleaned and lubed prior to shooting Sat, and all my 6 years in the Marines, I have never seen an m16 do this so I am at a loss. Also, the forward assist is no help.

Of course, I can't take the upper/lower off because of the bolt being in the stock a bit. I want to avoid taking the stock off, but will if I need to.

Should I just take this straight to the gunsmith, or is this a common thing and there is a trick to this?

try this.  it's what the mil does.


hold the rifle like you would shoot it.  
go to a knealing position and place the butt stock on the ground barrel straight up and away from you.

hold the front stock with your left hand and grasp the charging handle with your right hand.
pick the butt stock off the ground about a foot and then in a quick hard motion jamb the butt stock into the ground.  cradle the forearm in your left hand to keep it under control.  all the force should be on the charging handle and it should drive it down and unlock the bolt and clear the jamb.

it will clear in 1-3 hard slams.  
like i said that's the way the mil does it.

good luck.

i had to do this once... 2k rounds of wolf and 1 of them got stuck. i just pulled hard on the chargeing handle tell the extractor took off a piece of the rim then used a solid cleaning rod and tapped it a few times tell it came out. trick was getting the bolt/carrier out first. also it fired before getting stuck.. dunno if that made any diffrence.

Quoted: try this.  it's what the mil does. hold the rifle like you would shoot it.   go to a knealing position and place the butt stock on the ground barrel straight up and away from you. hold the front stock with your left hand and grasp the charging handle with your right hand. pick the butt stock off the ground about a foot and then in a quick hard motion jamb the butt stock into the ground.  cradle the forearm in your left hand to keep it under control.  all the force should be on the charging handle and it should drive it down and unlock the bolt and clear the jamb. it will clear in 1-3 hard slams.   like i said that's the way the mil does it. good luck.

Put it on safe first and keep your face away from muzzle.   But other than that, WHAT HE SAID.

Thank you everyone for your replies.  It took about 10 good hits to get the bolt back and round out.  I am going to go over everything with a fine tooth comb but everything looks good so far.  

Being able to whack the hell out of my M4 once again reminded me why I love these things so much.  Also thank you for teaching me how to deal with this problem :)

--Josh

On a side note, I purchased a bronze membership to support the site since I would have payed more than that if I had to take it to an armorer.  Thanks again for the help :)

--Josh

Nothing is wrong with the rifle, it's just new and needs some time to self-polish threw live fire.

Dirty dry camber +Wolf ammo is going to lead to a stuck case.  The fix to the problem is to run the upper a little on the wetter side with CLP to allow the CLP to break down/flush the fouling (both burn powder and the powderized polyurethane scraped off the cases).

Also, normally, the case gets stuck after being fired.  On this you do the same butt stock clear method, and as long as you can get the bolt back (read extractor strips off the rim) you're still in good shape. With the bolt locked back, you just take a cleaning rod down the muzzle and bottom if against the webbing of the spent case and use the palm of you hand/piece of wood to wild against the back of the rod to free the spent case.

Quoted: Dirty dry camber +Wolf ammo is going to lead to a stuck case.

That just happened to me on Monday! Twice! I guess 1200 rounds of Wolf at one time would make any rifle dirty!