Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Rimfires Your First 22?

I saw this thread in the Hunters Campfire section and thought it was a great thread but we might get more comments here. I'll repost my response.

I got my first 22 when I was 11 years old. Here is how it happened....

I had just started trapping and was in need of a 22 to dispatch the coons that happened to find one of my traps. I had been saving money for a summer by selling nightcrawlers. On a hot Saturday in July, there was an auction down the street from my house. Even at 11, I had been to enough auctions to know that they sometimes had guns. As I looked through the tables of mostly junk I saw wood and steel ,a Winchester 67. I went home to ask my Dad if I could buy it. He talked it over with my Mom and was told that my Gramps would have to go along to bid for me. I had $55 and all the confidence that I would soon own a real rifle. My Gramps and I went to the auction, why is it that they save the guns for the end? I was nervous and excited all at the same time. Finally the bidding started for the 22...$50, $55, $60, $65. I was sick and heartbroke. I almost started crying on the spot. $70, $75, $80. Sold!!! I looked up at the auctioneer and saw him handing me the gun! He handed it to me and said, Son here is your gun. My Gramps had been bidding behind my back the whole time. I hugged him, grabbed the gun and ran home.

I was one of my best days!


ddj

Winchester 67 with a peep sight for me! Loaded with a pocket of 22LR shells and my first decent coonhound a bluetick, Ann, we did alright. Raised enough money to buy a dozen leghold traps and a dozen conibear traps. Those were the days! After a few years I graduated up to a Remington 511. Still have both rifles.

On my 13th birthday, Dad brought out a short box that was kinda heavy for its size, and said, "Grandma and Grandpa thought you'd like this for your birthday". It was four boxes of Federal .22 ammo in the then red and white boxes.
Then Dad walked out of the room, and came back with a long white box, and said, "I thought you might want something to shoot them out of". It was a Marlin M60, just like the one Grandma had bought Grandpa, that I'd admired a LOT the summer before. I was tickled spitless.

That was in October. At Christmas, I got a Weaver D-4 .22 scope and put it on the rifle. That rifle has probably killed several pickup loads of rabbits and squirrels. That's no exaggeration, either.
I still have it, and use it a fair amount.

a marlin model 60 long about 1980 long ago wore out !! still have the skelton thought

late 70's Marlin 25 .... nifty little rifle, will be my daughters someday (after she outgrows her pink cricket)

A "Tru Test" single shot, close the bolt and pull the nob on the bolt to cock it.
Dad had it and let my brother and I shoot it a bit.
I got better than Dad realized and told my cousins "I can shoot the glass ball off the lightning rod"
Betca can't! so I got in trouble but got the rifle after an appropriate time to think of my choices with a firearm.

Remington 581 for Christmas in 1977; still have it.

I think I was 12, in the Boy Scouts and it was rifle badge time... No guns in the house and dad did not want to buy one. He did have a good friend, Art Vonn who wrote for Field and Stream. He offered dad a rifle for me to use. I was able to keep it for about 9 months.. In later years I found out how lucky I was. It was Winchester 52!!

Dad & Mom bought me my first .22 the Christmas I was nine. It wasthe first firearm I was allowed to keep in my room with the ammunition. I had a .32-20 of my own as well.

It was a Model 55 Winchester. A single shot, self ejecting, self cocking,self safing slamfire. Never very accurate and a bugger to take apart and put back together. My oldest daughter has it now.

That summer,my uncle Hubert Johnson gave me his chicken coop gun. It was a Remington tube fed bolt action with a tube safety. Now that was a gun! I got the rust off it, refinished it and added peep sights.

Ruger 10/22.

First was a Remington single shot 540, if I remember right. 1962, I was 10.

Later that year I bought a Ruger BearCat. My first handgun.

Mom had to sign for it, as they wouldn't sell it to me.

Now have a Winchester 67, (not the 67A). Just like the one that my Dad had since he was a boy. With the grooved forearm. Made about 1936.

Virgil B.

On my 9th Christmas, my Grandfather gave me his Iver Johnson Single Shot Safety Rifle. I still have it ---- 56 years later.

I got a Cooey Ranger (Model 60) under the Christmas tree in 1967. Santa brought it, but I think he got this rifle at Eaton's department store. Sadly, I no longer have it.

My first Cooey is probably why I prefer tube mags to this day.

Thx a great story D!

Thx for sharing

Dober

(side note, my first was a 580 Rem, still as accurate as most all .22's I've ever been around. I also did some trap line work with a 67. Cept mine was more like $7...grin)

received my first .22 as a Xmas present in 1962 as an eighth grader.

it was a iron-sighted rem model 572 fieldmaster. much later, about 1969 procured a used 2-7 ted williams 3/4 inch scope. it might have been half inch, not sure.

i still have them both, and they look like they have been through a war.

A Kodiak 22 magnum, still have it!

Christmas 1966..Marlin 39A-Golden. I was 14 years old. Sold the gun while was in college...

Bob

Winchester 1890 adapted for long rifles, sometime in the very early 60's.

Glenfield model 60, bought it from a friend in high school, still have it.it now sits in my garage and its for garden and chiken coop raiders.

Marlin/Glenfield 25. Pawn shop find when I was 18.