reading thru a lot of the thread, made me think, what kind of guns did your granddad use, and uncles etc?
My mom was from West VA and my dad from Rural Central Tennessee...
14, 15 and 16 I was taken out alot with some of my other cousins, just walking with them while they hunted... it was always the grandmothers, and aunts who wanted the men to take the boys out hunting with them.. ( probably not for our benefit, but more like getting us from under their feet)....of course they felt we needed to carry a gun.. and since hunting on farms owned by relatives, having a hunting license was much of a concern.
but the guns the men always hunted with were some brand of 30/30 lever action.... and they always looked like they had some miles on them... no scopes, just open sights.
for us boys to carry, they would pull out some really old lever actions, rickety as hell and having belonged to ancestor since past, long before we were born.
" this was uncle Lems he did in 1926".... we couldn't hit a barn with a shot from 50 yds with these things...and they always seemed to be chambered in some cartridge with funny numbers.... the bullets were shorter than the 30/30 rounds that our uncles used, so they must have been old pistol cartridges.. I remember the ammo always seemed to have green spots on them, and looking pretty discolored.. and the ammo came "all loose" from old cigar boxes..
We never really got any shots at game, as the men would take those... but they would always let us shoot 3 or 4 shots off at something being used as a target, just to say we did it. Some didn't kick at all, and some kicked like a mule.. we always tried to avoid being the one that had to carry those lever action rifles...
from my dad, I still have a Model 64 Winchester he bought in 1966 that he got for $49 from the base Rod and Gun Club, when we left England... and a Model 870 Remington shot gun he bought new on base around 1958 or so....and then an old Savage 24, that was my grandfather. 22 LR on top ( and shot out) and a 410 on bottom. I also inherited a Marlin 30/30 my grand dad had, that the story goes he bought it sometime in the 1930s from Western Auto in Union...Some ass wipe stole it out of my truck, back in MN.....no serial number on that or the Savage 24....
Those old rifles were cheap, and those owned by relatives who had served in the military, kept good care of them... the ones relatives owned who hadn't served in the miitary, we not so well taken care of.
Those old lever actions they had us boys carry back in the 60s, weren't worth much back then... but I bet these Cowboy action shooters, would pay a fortune for them nowadays.
None of my uncles brought back rifles from WW2, that I ever saw.. so no Arisakas or Mausers. I do remember Uncle Carl had a Luger tho he brought back, but in either side of the family, we were always not allowed to even touch a handgun.... my mother wouldn't even let us boys have a BB gun....
