Home Forums Hunting & Shooting General Big Game How did you spend your first summer,s wage?

Entertaining a Girl Friend...and keeping my 70 VW Bug fueled and on the road...traveling all over the place...being a tourist...

I put 45,000 miles on my 1970 Bug in one year...

In college I averaged 40,000 miles a year on my junkyard refugee VWs.. multiple times, bought a body with a shot motor for $50 and go buy a motor with 10 to 20,000 miles out of the junk yard for $100 and install it..

It was always a VW Squareback.. camping pad and a sleeping bag in the back, and I was off on long weekends, semester breaks... etc....also worked my way thru college at the same time...

a lot of those trips were up touring eastern Canada, the Maritimes, Quebec and Ontario...

then up and down the eastern seaboard.. home to Virginia or down to Georgia and occasionally Florida...

no firearms in my life in those days...

Priming endless rows of tobacco, and fighting nicotine sickness on damp mornings. Used to get headaches so bad I thought my head would burst open.

But that Marlin Glenfield .22 was worth it.

Painting houses, and working in a car wash in 1957 provided enough cash to buy a weaver 4x for my first BG rifle, a used Remington M721 30.06 my dad had traded an old outboard motor for. Much of the rest went for the cost of Colorado deer tags, a cheap binocular, and ammo. I just wasted the rest of the money. My priorities haven't changed much.

Working on the family dairy farm. Wanted a win 88 but did not have enough so I bought a marlin 336 in 30-30, and it was not a summers wage but a years wage.

I worked in a sawmill in 1975 for $1.75/hr. Saved all summer and bought a brand new Ithaca M37 12ga for $175, taxes in with a gun case.

I hauled and stacked hay for ten cents a bale (20 cents, if I couldn't see the barn from the hay field). I made enough to buy a Martin D-28.

Chicks dig guitars and will choose the axe man over the rifleman every time!

I bought a ruger M77MKII 243 in 1994/5 can't remember exactly.

still my go to rifle, switched the scope out and dropped in a trigger, that thing is a shooter!

First real job (1979) I had, resulted in a 1970 Ford Torino GT. The car flew. It also improved by social life as now I had something other than a bike to get to town in. I spent an awful lot of money on a certain girl that summer as a result of that new car. As I recall I bought the car and put all the money back into the bank that I used to buy it. Probably THE best summer of my life until I met my wife!

First job for wages was working for a neighbor farmer driving loaded grain truck from field to granary at farm or to elevator in town. Was 12 at the time and saved my money to purchase a Rem Nylon 76 lever action 22 and a Weaver scope. Think I earned about $50 for the month during harvest and spent it all on the rifle which I still have. Fortunately never got caught driving without a license or I would not have had enough money to buy the rifle.

Stacked hay, mowed lawns, shoveled snow, had a trapline.
Bought a motorcycle at 14.
The whole world was within my reach...

I had a little different set-up... Black bear hides could be sold (had to have a trapping license) and went for $125 to $200 for the best spring bears in the '60s. My first gun purchase on my own was a JC Higgins Sears Mauser in 30-06. It seems the price was about $75.

I restocked it several years later and then sold it to one of my college professors in the '70s. His house burned a few years later and the rifle was lost.

Now we are back to having areas where black bears may again be sold.

I don't know if this counts as a summer wage, but I was a child model between years 1 and 3. Mom and dad socked that away for me and by the time I was 21 I had bought a Nikon Monarch 4-12x40 for my dad's Rem 700 that I was using for deer, 1/2 of a lightly used '99 Ford F-150 that my parents met me half way on, Lasik eye surgery, and a modest engagement ring.

The money I made in high school working as a sacker/checker at Tom Thumb, Rice Lover's Chinese Restaurant, Donut Palace, and owning a lawn business with my best friend was spent on various hunting and fishing items, and lots of movies and pizza with as many girls as we could meet mowing lawns with our shirts off (God, we were dumb in HS, but it worked often).

My first real job after my freshman year in college, as an engineering intern for a small oil and gas company in OKC netted me some real money. I went and bought a Stihl Farm Boss, extra chain, chainsaw chaps and a helmet with the idea that I could make a real difference on our 145 acres in the eastern Oklahoma County Cross Timbers. That was 9 years ago, and this past weekend my sister and I used it to set up a new stand location.


Last year, my sister used the Nikon, now on a late 70's 700 in 270, to take a small buck about 200 yards away from this new location. I'm sitting next to my wife of nearly 7 years, trying to help each other get through this latest teething stage with our second daughter. The truck I sold to a family friend on his 16th birthday after putting 100K miles on it with the only repair being a zip tie to fix the broken shift link. He's going into his junior year at Arkansas and has put another 60K on it with nary an issue. It's been almost 8 years and I've still got 20/15 vision. Great purchases all.

Clothes to wear to school.

Was a swamper in the cherry orchards ... toting boxes of cherries from pickers to the flatbed as it ambled through the orchard. 13-hr days at $1.75/hr in 1967 was good stuff. Believe my wages paid the electric bill for June/July/August that year. Dad's wages with 7 kids didn't cover everything.

Today it more about licking a finger and chasing the last of the gravy. Just Me on that..

That upsets a might.

First steady job was stocking shelves night shift in the local A&P. Ordered up a Model 660 in 308. $95 in 1971.A smith by the name of Sealy Masker had a camp on a local lake. He mounted a weaver scope and gave me some reloading lessons. He liked ball C2 & Frontier brass. I didn't know until later that Sealy was quite famous in the smithing & bench rest world.

My 1st real job, back in the early 60's, was bucking baled hay. I bought a small Honda bike. Toward the end of summer, I got laid off when the boss sold the truck I was working on. A few weeks after that, he and one of the other guys were using an elevator to load a truck and touched it against a high voltage line. Both dead.

First real summer job was in the 70s at a Wildlife Refuge on the Florida coast. I remember mosquito's, no see 'ums and ticks. Bought a Remington 700 in 30.06. Still use the rifle to this day, have others but that's my first.

Worked at a ranch in central MT and when I got home I bought a used, but as it turned out very accurate Win. M670 in 30-06. Used it for the next 20 years give or take before selling it to my cousin.