I admit it. I'm one of the old farts here on AR, just grumpier and dumber than most.

But that doesn't mean I've forgotten everything. In fact, one of the "perks" of getting older is your "long term memory" gets sharper and sharper. This is why your Grand Pa or Aunt Agatha always begin their tales with, "It seems like just yesterday when......."

It really does seem like yesterday in their minds, and quite often in mine.

Anyhow, I thought it might be fun/sad/educational if I would start a thread of what guns, shooting and hunting USED to be like in this country. Some of you may not know some of these things. Some of you may not believe what you're about to read. But I've got enough faith in the integrity and memory of the older members here that I feel pretty safe in assuring you what comes next is true.

So, with that said, I invite all you members who've been around the canyon a few times to tell it like it WAS. Anything you remember about the "good old days." Even if what you remember isn't so good!

I think it will be fun to compare notes on the past and present about our guns and sport.

Nuff said.

I'll start it off easy with a little tidbit I remember that brings a tear to my eye and a serious case of STICKER SHOCK to me each time I go to a gun store:

Who remembers ordering a 100 lb keg of powder for $40 or less?

(Can you say .40 cents a pound?)

I remember passing up a Parker 410 double on the "used" rack at Oshman's for $69.95 (cause I didn't have that much).

I remember just taking a rifle knife binos and a packboard
now you have to pack more eletronic equipment than an
aircraftcarrier battle group

My dad tells me, back in his day of being a young wipper-snapper, that he used to grab his .22 and a box of shells in the morning and go chase rabbits and sqirrels till evening. You could walk for miles in any direction and never have to worry about who's fence you crossed. As long as you didn't cause any trouble no one cared if you were on their land.
Try doing that in this day and age.

I'm in my fifties, but get looks of amazement when I mention my friends, all between 13 and 15, walking down the streets of our town to go hunting on farms just outside the village limits. Only thing ever said to this group carrying shotguns was, "you boys be careful, hear." This was in Michigan.

Remember when every pick em up had a gun rack in the rear window with several rifles - don't see that much anymore.

Sorry Pecos45

I am just a spry young wipper snapper..
But i do remmber buy Gray B for 1.00 a can and buying it at the trap club for about 8.00 a keg
700 X was about the most expencive powder you could buy so everone bought herter's 209 trap powder work as good a 700X
My fist shotgun was ordered for me by my Dad ( when you could still have it delivered to your house)
Ted Smith was still around and kicking he alway's drove a pure black Mercedes-Benz And was kinda a spooky old man to a 8 year old kid...
You could stand in almost any field a shoot once in the air and point down range with your next pipe and alway's drop birds be it duck or what ever ..
A sack of bird shot was like 3.25 for Number 7
Plastic wad's were fer city boy's and so was store bought Shell's. every one reloaded and if you did not then you WERE a city boy ..
I remmber once i was with dad in his 52 Chevy pickem up
and he ran off the road on an ice corner and hit an alder tree hard enough to send me flying uner the glove box
and the damage done to the truck was a small dent in t he left fender.. dada tighed a rope around it ( the bumper )
and fixed it looked like new .. try that today in your new car or truck.........
Dad build our house 1560 Sq feet for a little over
3 grand he got most of the lumber from working on the dock's as a longshormen.

Ya have to remmber i am only talking about 1962 to 1964 is all dad built the house though in 1956...

So all you true old timer's have a leg up on me
Old gezzer's

AH!.I remember gas for 32cents per gallon,gumballs 10 for a nickle, and Reno County paying 2dollars per ear on yotes as a bounty,after a summer hunting them I could shoot all winter and spring

I can't remember back as far as some of you, but I do remember getting my first 3 firearms(all well used) for my 6th Christmas. Got a Savage 22LR Pump, a Savage M24? 22LR over a 3" .410 and a 16ga double barrel LeFever. I was taught how to properly care for them during that next year and for the 7th Christmas I finally got some shells and cartridges for them.

We had a Ceder lined coat closet that the firearms were kept in. My Mother would let me open the door and sit on the floor so I could just look at all the firearms behind the coats. M99 Savage in 22Sav High Power, M99 in 303Sav, M70 30-06, M12 12ga, Fox 12ga, Parker 20ga, single shot Win 22LR M67?, etc.

Our "Grade School" Principal would take 4-5 of us boys Squirrel Hunting behind the school on selected days. You had to have good grades, good attendance and your parents permission. We would take our 22LRs or shotguns to school on the bus and leave them in the Principals office. (Don't they still do that today??? )

I remember sitting in the woods on the Mr. Blakemore's Farm which adjoined my Grandfather's farm squirrel hunting. He had a huge mixed Pecan and Walnut grove that the squirrels really enjoyed. As I sat there staring intently into the trees for a bit of movement, my ears were on full volume listening for cuttings dropping. All of a sudden I was jolted back to reality when a Doe and a Buck entered the woods. First live ones I'd ever seen. I don't believe they ever saw me, but how they were able to avoid hearing my heart whamming away is a true miracle. The hunt was over for me as I ran back to tell the folks I'd actually seen a couple of Deer. Explained to Dad that I REALLY NEEDED for him to let me learn how to shoot the 303Sav. His reply was that I was still too young and we needed to let those Deer grow a bit anyhow.

Rabbits in the front basket and tieing the LeFever across the grips as my BIG Tired 26" (used) Schwin provided some mobility with the Beagles trotting along with me. Even had "fenders" on bicycles back then to keep(some of) the mud and muddy water off.

I remember on mornings before school preparing everything for hunting after school. Along with my books etc I would take my rifle in my car and of course I would carry my pocketknife in my pocket.

Doug

My best memory is being able to take a gun and sometimes a bird dog, and pretty much hunt wherever you wanted without being branded a felon.

I can remember taking my shotgun on the school bus and keeping it in my locker. We had a rod and gun club at junior high. You could hunt anyones property you wanted long as you didn't do anything stupid, until all the city people started causing problems like driving their cars through fields and leaving gates open and not paying attention to where they were shooting. An eight year old country boy had more common sense in the bush than a 50 year old city slicker it seemed, were better hunters and didn't waste shells. We used to have air raid sirens when there was a fire to alert the volunteer firefighters who would phone in and go directly to the fire in their personal vehicles. Hunting was simpler and you didn't need all this crap that everyone packs around nowadays.All you needed was a gun, a few shells, and a pair of boots, oh yah, and a pocket knife but that wasn't considered hunting equipment cause every boy carried a pocket knife everywhere all the time.

Rushing to finish the paper route then taking the 22 between my knees on the motor scooter and riding five miles to the farm to hunt rabbits. Going to the creek on the neighbors farm before daylight to hunt squirrels. Then later with my boys and now with my grandkids.

My shooting career got off to a fast start when my brother married the daughter of the biggest gun nut in my home town. HE...my brother's father-in-law...had over 50 guns and reloaded for all of them. Plus he had a son a couple of years younger than me so the four of us became a natural hunting team.

The rules were simple: Hunt with any gun you wanted, but you had to load your own ammo and bring back the cases. Oh, and you had to cast your own bullets too cause we seldom shot jacketed.

Somehow me and my brother usually took 30/06 while Mr. S and his son usually took 270's...all of us throwing cast bullets.

Back then in southern New Mexico the Jackrabbits were so thick that when you fired the first shot it seemed like the earth moved as all the rabbits in front of you took cover or moved to different bushes.

We would all stuff our pockets so full of the big rounds of ammo that we could hardly walk and then we'd spread out and hunt in long looping circles about 2 miles in circumferance...driving herds of rabbits in front of us and shooting all the way around the loop. Shots would be from 100 to 350 yds. Our cast bullets would practically cut a jackrabbit in half and seemed to never stop. I can still hear the wicked whine of a deformed bullet as it streaked over the mesquite bushes ahead of us. Some sounded really sinister.

At the end of each loop, everyone dumped their empty cases and then filled their pockets with fresh ammo. Those were the best afternoons of my life.

But I learned a real love for making bullets as well. We would do that together a couple of nights during the week, casting, lubing bullets, sizing and putting them together...all of us reliving last weekend's shots and planning where we would strike next.

We thought it would last forever...

In 1956 hunted ducks in South Los Angeles where the Harbor Fwy. and the 91 cross when the area was a swamp full of Mallards.

I grew up hunting deer in what is now the X9 Draw Zone using a 6.5 Carcano using military ammo that I filed the coppper of the front to make a "soft point".

In 1958 my brother bought a new M70 Featherweight for under $100 at Hi Greens Sports Den in Westchester, Ca.

In the late '50s I hunted quail behind the Sheriff Sub Station in Malibu, Ca.

In 1962 bought a new M70 300 Win Mag from a gentleman named Zane Denman in Thousand Oaks. Don't remember the cost, had to be cheap as I was in college. I know he is gone, I wonder if his son Bob(?) is around?

i remember hunting with my 22 s&w pistol(rabbits, turtles, bullfrogs and about anything else that wasn't out of season) all morning. then one of my parents would pick me up and, on the way home, stop at a grocery store to get a coke. i would walk around in the store with my gun on my hip, and nobody acted like i was a terrorist!!

there is one thing that all my old memories have in common..."the older i get...the better i was!"

cheers...bud

Fun thread!

I'm not THAT old, but my finest memories of hunting in the "good old days" here in Oregon are of going after mule deer in the central and eastern part of the state back in the 1970s. I was just a kid back then, just starting my hunting career, but the hunting was something else! I remember it like it was yesterday.

We'd hunt a really remote ranch on the west fork of the John Day river that took a couple of hours with a 4X4 to get into, and we had locked gates to unlock, close, and relock all the way in. Along the river there were irrigated alfalfa fields that provided a lush feed for the many mule deer that inhabited the property, which was some 60,000 in size, and our small hunting party were allowed to hunt all of it.

The deer would come down at night to feed in the alfalfa, then early in the morning they'd ascend a series of very, very steep, rocky canyons, where they'd bed for the day at the highest elevations of the ranch. We'd drive some absolutely incredible bad roads up that led to the top of the ranch, then stop and glass, park and hunt on foot for the day. Lot's of buzz-worms (rattlers), lots of coyotes, and lots of deer in every canyon! There were so many deer it was incredible, and we took a fair number of mature bucks off the property over the years.

It was on this ranch that I took my first good mule deer buck, and it was there that I really learned to drive a 4X4 in truly tough, high-desert country without getting into trouble. It was also here that I grew to love and respect the wonderful .270 Winchester cartridge, as well as the Model 70 Winchester rifle, Nosler Partitions, and Leupold scopes. This ranch also taught me the value of truly good binoculars, and how to use them properly and effectively for hunting. I also made friendships there that have grown over the years and have endured to this day.

I'll never forget any of it........

AD

When I turned 16 I hired on as a wrangler at Spirit Lake Lodge on the edge of the high Uintas primitive area. The pay was $1.00 per day plus room and board.



When visited by a professional fisherman and his wife, I held the horse while he shot a photo and she said, "is that all your making? Why do you do it?" I replied, "this isnt a summer job to me, its a summer vacation".



It usually took about an hour to heat up the pot belly stove enough to get a hot bath, so they could have come along a little more regularly, When I would wake in the mornings there were always blacktail deer in the pasture with the horses, and every day when my chores were done I would hop on my favorite horse and go into the primitive area and find a new lake. I found every one within a 7 mile radius of the lodge which was close to 2 dozen lakes. Spotting Moose was almost a daily occurence. One day I gradually inched up to a cow moose and her calf so close I would be embarrased to say, if not for my trusty steed I wouldnt have even tried it.



When the summer was over I took my earnings (about $100.00) and bought a Savage 22. But I got a lot more than that that year, I got the most memorable summer Ive ever had. My horsemanship developed dramatically that year.



I still have a Utah Big game proclimation from that year, a resident big game lisence was $7.00 and I recall several instances of deer occasionally running through the middle of camp, that always made for a great wake up call for the camp loungers and got them off their asses in a hurry.

Not to put a damper on things But I remember when I made a lot less money took me alot longer to buy shells,guns and cars for the number of hrs worked. We had a heck of a lot less deer and bear. Just seeing a buck was good and getting a doe permit was once every 4 years or so. Now we are shooting 5 to 6 times the deer.

Now it takes a 10th of the hrs to buy a good rifle or shotgun ect. My first job I was making $1.35 a hr I .22 shells were 50 cents a box. Now I am making 25 times that much .22 shells are 82 cents a box. I used 870 was around 50 dollars now they around 200. I am way ahead of the game. My first car cost me 800 dollars used I was making 3.25 a hr. I just brought a nicer used one for my son for $1300.00 he is making 8 dollars a hr. Just some things have jump out of line most things are cheaper per man hr then 30 or 50 years ago.

I will admit I miss the freedom of hunting all over the neighbors lands now every tom dick or harry buys it up the first thing they do is put up no tresspassing signs. I guess the big city mentality is here. Yes I miss being able to order guns through the mail. Are freedoms have been taken away.

Yes there were some good things about the old days but there are lots of good things now. One better enjoy ones self now or you well just be old and grumpy and miss out of a lot of good fun.

I remember being in grade school and we were all supposed to come dressed in costume for Halloween one year. One kid showed up dressed as a hunter and was carrying his .410 shotgun. This was in NEW JERSEY! As far as I remember, he was not in any kind of trouble for it. Could get two pieces of candy for a penny back then too.

LOL!... you really are a sociopath!

Time has an interesting way of distorting reality... in many ways "these are the good old days"...