Oldies but Goodies....Memory Lane

[Bob Mc Alice]

In a previous post, Shakes stirred up some fond memories for me.

Firearms have been in my family long before I was around. My Dad and Uncle were into rifles big time. So naturally I was introduced to firearms and shooting at a young age. Started out with BB and pellet rifles like most of you probably had. My favorite was a Benjamin .22 pump. One day Dad said it was time to learn about real firearms. He had a nice Remington 514 single shot, perfect to introduce a young boy to the world of shooting.

After a couple of years of supervised outings to the range or the local dump (remember when this was allowed?) it was time to get my own .22 rifle. Having been a Cub Scout and then a Boy Scout I also had some training in the use and safe handling of firearms. I read Boys Life, Field and Stream, and Outdoor life. I always read and looked closely at all the firearm advertisements. So I had a pretty good idea of what brand of .22 I wanted.

So when the time came to buy my own, I took Dad with me to a local Western Auto store. It was 1965. There were many guns to look at in their racks. Winchesters, Remingtons, Savages as well as the Western Auto house brand models of these manufacturers. Dad tried to steer me toward a Savage as they were less money. But nothing doing. I wanted a Marlin bolt action.

Long story short, I plunked down 45 hard earned dollars and bought a Marlin model 80C, 8 shot clip repeater. Of course Dad had to buy it as I was no where near legal age to buy it on my own. I still have that rifle today. It is of a much higher quality than any Marlin produced today. Remember when Remington solids came in the green and red boxes, or the Winchester Super X's in the yellow and red boxes. 29 cents a box for shorts, a little more for longs and long rifles. Those were the days. The real black walnut stock has been refinished with Tru Oil several times, and the original Weaver C6 has been replaced with a Leupold 4X compact. It still shoots excellent with quality ammo.
http://s190.photobucket.com/albums/z94/ ... CE/marlin/ A couple of years later, I purchased my first big game rifle, a Winchester 70 in .30-06. I will save that story for another time.


OK......now lets hear some of your early years gun stories. What was your first .22 rifle?

[pistolero45]

Bob, that is a nice looking rifle.

My first .22 rifle was a Marlin 39A. I had spent the last two years of my military service overseas and really wanted to do some rabbit hunting when I got back home to South Dakota.

I located a used Marlin 39A and put a Bushnell 4x scope on it. It was January, and for the first three weeks after I arrived home the temperatures never got much above zero degrees. I would take my dad's beagle hound out and we would walk the frozen landscape in search of a bunny.

Finally, the sun came out and it warmed up to almost thawing. The dog jumped a cotton tail and I levered several shots off as they ran past.

All of my bullets missed. I can still see the expression on that dog's face. He was pissed! For three weeks I had dragged him out of a warm house and walked him around in the freezing cold.

I thought he was going to chew my leg off!

[shakes]

Bob that is a beautiful rifle. It just strengthens my point. Look at the line's of the gun, it flow's together like a piece of art. The grain in the stock, you wouldn't find that on anything less than a couple grand nowadays. Man it makes me wish I was a kid back then. Like Bob, guns were in the family from the start. My grandfather worked for remington as a barrel straightner before he volunteered to move out to some town called Richland, Wa. for the government, turned out to be Hanford. My dad has had guns since he was a kid as well and now he collect's them and has well over 300 firearms of different callibers and makes. Luckly his main interest in .22's and he's got some he's bought that he's never shot yet, old ones too that he finds at gun show's that are 95% or better, I remember we were at the local gun show and he found a 541T NIB with all the paper work, unfired yep that's just one of the guns I'll get someday. He bring's out stuff to the silhouette matched just to shoot because he's never shoot it yet and figures he may as well shoot em and enjoy em before he pass's on to the big range in the sky It's fun to watch the other guys try to figure out what he's going to bring out next. I didn't really have a first gun becuase dad had so many that I got to shoot something different every time be it rifle or pistol or air rifle. Mom was allways against the idea of letting me have a gun to early so I think my "first" was a ruger 77/22 with the synthetic stock when i was 14 or 15 good little gun those rugers are. So now you know why I like the older guns with the real wood stocks, there just a thing of beauty that you dont see anymore and its to bad

[Innocent]

So Bob, are you adopting daughters to leave your rifles too?

Innocent M

[Bob Mc Alice]

Mary, two kids was plenty. Unfortunately, neither girl inhereted any of my gun nut genes. And their husbands could care less about guns or shooting. One husband is a fly fishing fanatic, the other loves climbing big mountains. At least these are outdoor activities. For the last 10 or so Fathers Days, I have loaded up the camper with plenty of guns and ammo and spent the weekend out at CRC with Sara. The girls and their spouses have managed to come out for a few hours on "my day" and join me for some recreational plinking at the gongs with my .22's and HP's.

I spent alot of time with them in their early years teaching gun safety and marksmanship skills, but it never took hold. My oldest is actually a very good handgun shooter. They both have joined us on several big game hunts, but again, just to help out a little with the kill. No desire to ever try and take an animal on their own. This has always bothered me some, but to each their own I guess. And still no grand kids to possibly corrupt into liking the shooting sports, either. You either got this desire to shoot disorder or you dont.

OK...who's next?... What was your first .22 rifle??? Come on Mary, I'll bet you got a story to share.

[jnyork]

Lander, Wyoming in 1948-49 was a small, remote ranch town of about 2500 people where the Great Depression was just starting to end. As a nine year old boy, I would spend my 15 cents at the Saturday matinee and then go hang out at my favorite place, Spaldsbury's Saddlery and Sporting Goods. What a wonderful place it was: odors of new and old leather, new and old horse blankets, pipe smoke, original Hoppes and gun oil, occsionally a faint whiff of whiskey. Glass cabinets full of old Colts and Smith&Wessons. Racks full of Winchesters, Remingtons, Marlins, etc. More racks full of surplus Krags, Springfield bolt guns and trapdoors. Fishing gear too. Spitoons and sawdust on the floor.
One day a brand new Winchester 67 Youth appeared, price only $13.00 IIRC. I had some Christmas and birthday money squirreled away and conned Dad into spliting the cost. I didnt have to sign for it but Dad had to come down and carry it out for me.
I spent the next 3 years or so potting tin cans, stray crows and riding along behind Dad on old Poppin' Johnny, terrorizing prairie dogs. I learned to shoot with that gun.
At age 12 or 13 I got the hots for a new Remington model 512 at Spaldsburys, so I traded in the 67 on it This was in about 1952. Never looked back until much later in life.
In 1982, my Air Force career at an end, I moved back to Lander to start a new life. Every once in a while I would go to a gun show and see a Model 67 Youth and get a lump in my throat, longing for the days of my childhood and kicking my self for ever trading off my very first gun.
About 3 years ago my wife and I stopped at a yard sale put on by an older fellow here in town. He had some guns on a table and there it was, a Winchester 67 youth in very good condition. Got to chatting him up about it and asked him the history of the gun. He said he got it for his little son but the kid never took an interest in it, so it had been in the back of the closet for the last 50 years. I asked him where he got it, he said he bought it used at Spaldsburys in about 1952!! I gave him his $100.00 and ran for my truck , shaking like a leaf!
I cleaned it up and took it to the range to shoot a few cans, which I did, but it was difficult, I kept getting some smoke in my eyes.
My very first gun is back with me, and holds a place of honor in my safe. Life is good.

[Bob Mc Alice]

This is a great story jnyork, thanks for sharing with us. I think I was starting to smell that pipe smoke, too.

[Innocent]

All right Bob, you asked....

After a year of tagging along with my next oldest brother to the local range for a junior club 4P and the assorted matches they shot, one of the 'old men' that coached the team asked me why I didn't shoot too.
I remember my father cringing at the time as he had just purchased the top of the line Annie at the time for Jim, and all the other equipment, but he signed me up for the NRA saftey class at the ripe old age of 11.
After the class, we got to shoot some of the DCM loaned Mossbergs, made my pro-marksman first time out. Two months later at my first match, my father coaching me (in his fine naval commander way)turn out to be a total bust, which the old coach finally stepped in on. After convincing me to to clean my last of four targets (all prone) he took me aside and offered to loan me his Winchester 52 bull barrel if I would take care of it. Again my father was horrified, but Al and I had come to an agreement that he would not let my father interfere with. So at the age of 12, I started practicing with it, about two months into training me, Al was sent TDY to AK for an extended period of time. He left his rifle with me with intructions to keep practicing and never stop trying new things. By the end of the match season, I was beating my brother in 4P regularly, with my oversized (for me) old loaner rifle. My father had become used to the idea that I was determined to compete and decided to buy me my own but having had the older three graduate from private colleges less than 5 years earlier, one in college and my brother demanding the top of equipment for matches, I was left with the task of finding something used that I could afford. Another coach of the team, a former collegiate shooter from CO, had a sporter 52, that she had shot in college. She had three of her own children in competitions, all shooting Annies, thus she was willing to sell "that old 52" to someone who would use it. $70 later I came home with a 52, Seeing the old stock my father immediately went to his fathers old barn and drug out some air dried walnut from the rafters, a few months later I had a custom made stock on it for me, which I competed with until 1996.
My old coach Al died in 1982, three days after my mothers death, when I went to return the rifle to his daughter I found out that he had shot the rifle in the olympics prior to WWII, something I never knew when I was being trained by him.
The coach that I bought my own 52 from still shoots occasionally, even talked her into shooting some silhouette, and many on this web site know her son Jack Rowe, one of the older teenagers in the club.
Thus my love for the Winchesters.

M

[shakes]

Very cool story jnyork, I think I got some of that pipe smoke in my eyes

[Bob Mc Alice]

Came across this last night, too. http://www.levergunscommunity.com/viewt ... bdade159c3 Way to go.... JN

[Bob Mc Alice]

Mary, sounds like you have been shooting competitively for a long time. How did you drift into silhouette from 4P ? How long have you been shooting SB silhouette?

[Innocent]

Bob,
July of 1977 I started helping (along with a few others) a man named Luis Uribarri clear an old range on Federal property (part of NASA) to set up the first silhouette range in Florida. Still have some photos from the 1977 and 1978 states with Wigger in them. Went to silhouette because it required less equipment (then), I was approaching college age, and competing in that venue on private funding was extremley limited, and besides it was fun to see something happen on impact as well as some will verify the late Luis knew how to party and eat.

Mary

[Bob Mc Alice]

Well...I can see now that were going to have to prime this pump a little more to get 'er flowing. I should be in the basement catching up on all that reloading...but it'll wait. So here is the M70 story and my introduction to centerfire rifles.




My first centerfire rifle was given to me by my Uncle about a year after I bought the Marlin .22. It was a war souvenier, a Japanese Type 38 Arisaka , 6.5 Jap caliber. It was only slightly shorter than I was. It was a beat up piece of junk, but it still bore the Imperial Crysanthamum on the reciever. The bore.....well what was left of it , had barely a trace of rifling left in it. But it was a treasure to me. I proudly put it in my gun rack with the Marlin and pellet rifles mounted to the wall over my bed. We had a 75 yard shooting range on my Dad's property. After a year or so of demonstrating responsible safe gun handling, my Dad approved me shooting the Arisaka without him around.

The only ammo we could find at the time was new Norma hunting loads. Very expensive for a kid getting a measly weekly allowance supplemented by delivering newspapers on my bike. My Uncle sprang for a box to get me started. It was an exciting time in my life when I first got that rifle. All my friends were still in the BB and pellet gun stages, but I was now King of the area with a highpower military rifle.

I made that box of Norma last for a month only shooting a couple a week. I was always pulling them from the box and admiring their looks and construction. The accuracy of that gun was non existant. I could not hit anything I was aiming at. The rifling was so bad that all the bullets tumbled wildly to the targets. Anything that did get hit , got hit with the bullet smacking it sideways. I did not care a bit, it was still a thrill to hold and shoot. I was experiencing new things like recoil and noise!

After those 20 rounds were gone, my Uncle came up with a plan. He was able to find about 100 rounds of surplus 6.5 Italian Carcano military rounds. He pulled the FMJ bullets from the cases and dumped out the cordite type propellent. He modified an old Lyman 310 nutcracker tool to allow repriming of the Norma brass. We simply inserted the strands of propellent into the fresh primed cases. He then paper wrapped the FMJ bullets and pressed them by hand into the unresized Norma cases. A trip to the range behind the barn proved this crude loading process worked fine. This was my very first experiance at "hand-loading".

One day Dad, my Uncle and I were out shooting at our range again. We had the lid to a 55 gallon drum nailed to a fat oak tree. We were back some 50 yards shooting at it with .22's, 12 ga. buckshot and .38's. Time to pull out Arisaka! We took turns shooting the crudely assembled handloads at the lid. Any time we were lucky enough to hit the two foot diameter lid, its tumbling bullet tore a big hole in it. Well, it was my turn to fire at it again. I got lucky and hit one in the center pretty good. A split second later, that bullet screamed by at head level between me and my Uncle. Seems that oak tree resisted the sideways bullet and sprang it back towards us thru the hole in the lid at about the same speed it got hit with.


Well, needless to say this really upset my Dad. That was the last shot fired from that rifle. And the last time I ever saw it. He later told me he took it to work and cut it apart with an acetelene torch and threw the pieces in the trash. Now I was without a centerfire rifle. It took me another year to save enough money to replace it. I was finally old enough to go on hunting trips with Dad and his friends. During the time I was saving for a new rifle, I looked at all my Uncles collection of Gun Digest and Shooters Bibles. I was not sure what kind of rifle I wanted.

I asked my Uncle what rifle I should be saving for. With out hesitation he said " Winchester Model 70 in thirty ought six" . "You'll never have to buy another rifle". Coming from him, I knew it was the right choice. All the time I was saving money, I read as much as possible about the model 70. At just about a year later in Sept. 1967, I had enough saved to buy the rifle.

Dad and I went to an outdoor variety shop called Kellys Circus. It was kind of like an Army surplus store. They had a brand new Winchester Model 70 .30-06 in the rack. The guy behind the counter handed the gun to my Dad. He examined it closely as he and the sales guy lamented the loss of the pre '64 rifle. "Push feed, no controlled round feed, pressed in checkering?" . They were pretty critical of it. Dad then handed it over to me. I was in Heaven. I was holding "the Riflemans rifle." Wow!" I will take it ", I said. The price was $149.95. With the tax it came to $154.50. I handed over the most money I had ever saved to the salesman. Dad bought me a box of Winchester 180 grain Silver Tips as a gift.

What a beautiful rifle it was. It came with the Williams sights with a hooded front. I did not care about any pre or post year issues. This was my rifle. I made those silver tips last a month. One day after school I demonstrated the power of the '06 to my mother. Very big mistake. I got two glass gallon cider jugs and filled them with water. I placed them on a stump on our range, back to back. We walked back to about 50 yards. I sat down and fired a silver tip right into the center of the jugs. The huge resulting water explosion scared the crap out of my Mom. When my Dad came home from work she chewed him out good for letting me buy such a powerful rifle. Well, Dad was pissed at me and took the rifle away from me for two months. He would not even let me shoot the Marlin. And he made me go and pick up every piece of glass I could find.

Six months later I saved more money and put a new Weaver 3-9x on the M70. The following Christmas my parents got me a beginner Herters and Lyman reloading setup. I still use this equipment today.

Over the next 30 years I am sure I fired more than 3000 rounds from it. I must have shot a Noah's Ark full of critters with it , too. In 1997 my neighbor and good friend was looking for a good used rifle for his son. I had plenty of other rifles, so I sold it to him cheap, $150.00 His son still has the rifle and fills his Colorado big three tags with it every year. It is still in real good shape and still wears the same Weaver scope.

And that friends, is how I got my start in this lifelong rewarding hobby we call shooting.





It's a well known fact that we got some pretty colorful characters on this website. That goes for you blokes down under, too. Come on , dont be bashfull. Tell us about your early days with guns.

[pistolero45]

I guess I should finish telling the story about that Marlin 39A.

The beagle hound, named Snoopy, is long since dead. In fact several beagles have come and gone since him as well.

A few years after leaving the military I decided to go to college. And while there I met a spunky gal from Missouri whom I figured I could not live without.

Like most college students, I had no money. So I sold that Marlin 39A along with a Browning model B-80 shotgun and bought her a nice diamond ring.

We've been married 18 years now and our daughter has turned into a young lady we can be proud of. She even likes to go hunting and fishing with the "old man."

Sometimes I regret selling the old Marlin, but I figure I made a pretty good swap.



Thanks to all for sharing. Lets hear some more tales.

[Jim Beckley]

I started shooting just out of square pants. First a BB gun, a Daisy and then on to a .22. The .22 was a Stevens Favorite my Granddad on my Mom's side purchased I guess in the early 1900's. They lived on a farm and it was common then to have some sort of firearm around for pests, rodents and such, just stashed in a corner (unloaded of course). My Uncle was the next to have it and that is what I was taught to shoot with, and also came with that the clear understanding the difference between hunting and killing. Any mistake made with the BB gun or with the .22 meant no shooting for a while. My first gun that I owned all by myself was a 20 gauge shotgun, single shot, made in Spain, bought in the early 70's at K-Mart for less than 30 bucks and was it cheap, but the shot came out of the end of the barrel, so I was happy. Years ago there was a public range by the Chandler Airport that had a 100 yard range and one trap house, they had a trap shoot every Sunday, but my buds and I couldn't spring for a box of shells and a round of trap, so after the shoot was over my buds and I would ride our bikes out to the range and try to find the centers of the clay birds that were not busted and try to throw them and hit them. My Uncle passed away in 1988. The Stevens sits in my safe. It has hardly any rifiling left, there was no bluing it was a brown coating on the barrels then and most of it is gone and it is pitted like the devil. Next to it is the Daisy. The shotgun is long gone.