Started out with a dasiy BB gun got my frist kill with it at the age of 5. who knows how many cartons of BBs were shot.

Then a springfeild 22 bolt that one of "us boys" lost the clip for so it was a single shot.

It was long gone before I shot it.

quote:

I got the gun back after about three years, no problem, except it now had a different bolt, no acorn.

If I ever find the low-down SOB that took it I'll break his legs.

I understand. But his legs will more or less heal. I think I'd rather encourage him to strip naked (at gunpoint if need be) then shoot him with a powerful .17 pellet rifle right at the base of the penis. And lock the door on my way out.

I have no use whatsoever for thieves...especially those who steal family heirlooms.

I was supposed to get a Winchester 62A but they quit making them the year before I was to get my gun so my Dad got me a Marlin 39A.....he was adament that a hammer gun was safer.....a belief I do not share today!

quote:

I understand. But his legs will more or less heal. I think I'd rather encourage him to strip naked (at gunpoint if need be) then shoot him with a powerful .17 pellet rifle right at the base of the penis. And lock the door on my way out.

Why don't you tell us how you really feel.

I was given a new Rem 121 pump 22RF rifle the spring of 1949 but I had used dads old Rem pump rifle a few years before that. I too had a Red Rider BB gun befor shooting a 22 RF rifle. One of my jobs was to catch chickens with a wire leg hook and then cut off its head but I found that a head shot with the BB gun would put the chicken down when it was very close.

My first 22 to carry (age 8) and shoot (age 6) was my Dads 62A Win pump. My first .22 to own was a brand new 1975 Win 9422 at 10.

22, an old cooey, tube magazine, bolt action, gopher dispatchin, implement of destruction..

I'm suprized I don't have the flinch from hell.
I was 9 or so when my brother taught me to shoot with a 1903a3 with surplus mil ammo.
Later I bought a 22 heavy barrel for small game.

Cheers, John

quote:

Originally posted by Mike in Michigan:
Remington 511P. My father purchased it new in 1948 a few weeks before I was born. It spend decades behind the back door of the farm house. I have restored it to better than original bluing and wood and still enjoy it.

We had a Remington 510P. It's still in the family, and we've picked up a couple more of the 5xx's in the intervening years.

I started out with cousins hand me down BB guns. Then I had a break action pellet rifle. By the time I started first grade, I had a pump up pellet rifle. With it, during the winter of first grade, I went my first rabbit hunting. A man who worked for my dad, a farmer, could find rabbits setting. In fact, I don't think he could walk by a rabbit without seeing it. Whatever the limit was then, I got the limit. The limit at that time varied each year between 6,7, or 8 rabbits.

Joe A.

L1A1 SLR courtesy of the RAF.

My training gun was a Savage/Stevens model 46 Tube fed bolt, Dad still has it sitting on the shelf in the garage for disspatching vermin. He went 48 of 50 with the last brick of shorts I bought for him! Not bad for 73 year old

Started off with a Diana Model 17, then graduated to a single shot 22 LR, which is still in the family. Under Dad's tutelage.

Spoiled by starting out with a 22lr Mauser at 7 or 8. This is the miniature M98 which I still have. Years later I got a full size M98 --easy transition !

On Sunday afternoons at my Grandparent's house, my GreatUncle Walt would fill his water glass with whiskey and sit on the front porch with me. He would bring out his Winchester Model 4 and some shorts. We would shoot bumble bees off the flowers on the Wisteria vines or what ever else was blooming. I know it breaks a lot of gun safety rules, but that was how it happened. He used to give me copies of Outdoor Life and Sports Afield. Pretty heady stuff for a 7 year old farm kid in the mid fifties. He taught me to chew tobacco, fart loudly, sing dirty songs and drink whiskey. He would have probably introduced me to loose women had he lived long enough. He was a great influence on me, in an otherwise plain childhood.

Bfly
I was lucky!

My dad started me very early like 6 or 7 with a Daisy lever action BB gun.

And then the first firearm was a Winchester 72A bolt action with a tubular magazine and a fixed 4 power Weaver scope. I bet I put around 8,000 rounds through that and I had the trajectory figured out at longer distances. Once Saturday in a hayfield surrounded by sagebrush I shot 43 jackrabbits with one 50 round box of ammo. We only bought ammo by the box back then not by the brick like today.

Great memories with that gun and I never should have .......can't remember what happened to it if it was sold or traded. Miss it and the memories that went with it.

Likewise, my first shots were BBs. Then when I was a little older, my Grandpa taught me to shoot using an ancient Winchester single shot, bolt action, 22LR.
A funny story, from behind the scenes...
He taught me to shoot, using his method of aiming; aligning the sights so that the front sight just barely peeked through the notch of the rear sight. He always called this "taking a fine bead". I shot this way for years, all through my child hood and teen age years.
When I bought my first gun, actually a pistol, I was trying to hit targets by sighting with the "fine bead" method. Needless to say, the results were less than impressive. I adjusted on those sights every which way, to no avail.
I said, sort of in passing to an uncle, "I think I have been ripped off. This gun won't shoot for €#%£!". He asks me if I had been trying to shoot " the way Pop taught me". Well, of course I had. I didn't know there WAS another way to shoot.
So, Uncle Dwight tells me that the way we were taught to shoot isn't the way everyone else does, and tells me how he was taught in basic training.
Long story short, I went back, tried out the new (to me ) method and miraculously I began hitting my intended poin of impact. Oh it took a little adjustment to put the sights back where they belonged, but soon all was well and right in the world.
Some down play the so called " fine bead method" of aiming, but I can tell you for a fact, it DOES work. I have seen my Grandpa make shots that I could only hope of making. Many is the time of Pop hitting squirrel and other small targets at what is long distance for a 22LR. It's just what works for him...
That rifle, even though old as the hills in the days of my youth, continues to be one of the most accurate rifles in my collection today and 25 years later. Of course it is one of my most prized possessions. Neither love nor money could ever buy that rifle from me.

As young boy, 8, 9, years old, I tested shooting with an air rifle. But this wasn´t the "right" for me. "Learning" rifles shooting, I did with the Win M94 carbine chambered in .44Mag and the FR-8 carbine in.308Win from my dad. I was 13,14 years old. He have had also an .22lr pump action rifle, made by Erma, but this was only vor "plinking".
My first rifle I bought with 18 years, was a Browning M1886 in .45-70.

Martin

I learned rifle shooting with my Dad's .22RF Winchester pump action.
Don't recall the model, but it had the exposed hammer. He saved up
his trapping money (he and my uncle trapped SKUNKS) and got it for
$14 in the late '30's. It was a lot of fun to shoot, and pretty
darned accurate, too. We even took a few prairie dogs with it.

An air rifle is not a firearm, even the BATF knows that!

Brown Bess. I never could shoot a rifle as well as after I shot the Brown Bess for a while. You have to hang on tight through the long lock time and then follow through. If you flinch and there is a hang-fire, your whole body will lurch forward. Nobody heard that one before, I bet.

Follow through. Follow through. Follow through. Got it?

quote:

Originally posted by Walter:
Brown Bess. I never could shoot a rifle as well as after I shot the Brown Bess for a while. You have to hang on tight through the long lock time and then follow through. If you flinch and there is a hang-fire, your whole body will lurch forward. Nobody heard that one before, I bet.

Follow through. Follow through. Follow through. Got it?

Just the opposite with a 3.5" Bazooka.

Red Ryder BB, then a Crossman .177 pump up, then .22 top barrel .410 bottom barrel, awesome squirrel tool.Think it was a savage but not sure it was along time ago!!

Stevens single shot. Old enough that it doesn't have a serial no. on it.

Pellet Gun then a iron sighted Mossberg 800a .308

Around the house...

A .20 caliber Sheridan Blue Streak.



Around the farm and in the mountains...

An Iver Johnson Model X single shot made in 1921. (Which I still regard as has having the BEST style of open sights out of ANY firearm I own; As the uncle said that gave me the rifle, I could shoot a hair off a gnats ass at 100 yards with that little rifle). ha ha

Ruger 10/22

I started with a daisy red rider. The front sight fell off so I took a piece of tape and folded it over for a sight.

As far as inaccurate.....I used to shoot the heads off of grasshoppers with it.

I had a Harrington-Richardson Leatherneck semi 22RF. I didn't learn anything as I didn't know how to adjust the Redfield sights.
I guess I learned to shoot a benchrest 6ppc first. The 1 1/2 oz. trigger made it hard for me to handle even a good hunting trigger. I am not a good off hand shooter. Maybe I could learn with practice, but you have to practice!

I first started shooting with a 20 Ga shotgun, and it was many years later in ROTC that I picked up a rifle. I learned the basics of a rifle on the M16 A1, and then after that went back and picked up on .30 caliber rifles. I did not shoot .22 RF until starting with competitive shooting, and the .22's came after pistol shooting as well, so the rimfire was actually the last shooting experience I picked up.

This was probably due to my father's influence that too many of his friends and acquaintances treated the .22 RF as a toy or "not a real gun" and refused to let me own one, or a air gun for that matter until I proved that I could behave properly with one.

One of my good friend's kids got himself in more than a little hot water over that fiction, as while he graduated hunter safety and everything, he felt that it was perfectly safe to shoot a .22 in the garage, and the walls would stop a bullet- until the cops got called for the neighbor's house having bullet holes in it.

I started out with a Red Ryder BB lever gun when I was 6 or 7 years old. When I was 10 years old I got a Stevens 22 cal long rifle semi auto rifle. It would also shoot long or short rifle cartridges,but single fire only. You had to push the bolt handle into the bolt for single fire. Bob

Raised my son briefly on a 222Rem, because it was available.
But quickly switched to a 270 with the slipon butt removed because of length of pull and the animals available. The hard plastic buttpad was no problem, even at eleven.

Learned to shoot on Dad's old Daisy pump air rifle, which had his "special" sight adjustment to it. He swears to this day the barrel has to be bent and was when it was new and he should have returned it then, but with his sight adjustment hits just fine.

First firearm was a Ruger 10-22. Love that gun, but leaves a fair deal to be desired in accuracy. Like the feel of it the balance handling and construction materials, just not the way it's put together, because somethings got to be off. My second firearm was an old Sears 22 auto made by stevens that thing is a TACK DRIVER!!!!

Learned on a Mossberg target .22. It was a single shot which the safety engaged on every bolt cycle. Still have the rifle and I am going to get in restored.
Learned to shoot squirrels with that rifle also!Lots of fun times, a long time ago!

I learned to shoot with a Benjamin .22 cal pellet gun and my first .22 rimfire was a new Nylon 66 that I got for Christmas '75.

Winchester 75 22LR, then an SMLE 303 Brit. Love that rifle....

.177 Webley; then
.22LR Anschutz; then
.308 Parker Hale

I started learning to shoot with my grandfather’s Remington rolling-block .22 lr at age 4 years but I got my first rifle on my sixth birthday in 1943, a mod 67 Winchester single shot. Unfortunately it was lost in a fire when my grandfather’s ranch house burned, or I would still have it.
I never had a BB gun till I was ten years old.
…………………………………………………………………………………

Winchester 67 boys rifle. I loved that little rifle, still have it thinking about restoring it. New front sight, new blueing, Stock refinished. Dad didn't like BB guns. One of his best friends was blinded by two seperate accidents involving BB guns. DW

A 20 caliber Sheridan Silver Streak and a Winchester Model 62 22LR. I've replace the bolt, extractor and cartridge stop.
It was fun to see 10 LR cases hanging in a arc when the cartridge stop failed!