Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Your First Firearm - Story Please

I remember the first duck I dropped with my grandfather's 20 gauge. I would have been 12, and I rose before dawn on a frosty morning - so cold the cooking oil had frozen solid in the bottle on the kitchen bench. I snuck out for a poke up along a string of dams that followed a valley from my parents place across into my cousin's, to see if I could put a duck up. I saw nothing at the first dam, but as I crossed into my cousin's and came up on the second dam a black duck took off, and before I knew it I'd dropped it, fair in the middle of the dam.

Well, that was a huge rush! Right up until I realised that it was a good thirty or forty yards from the nearest bank, in a dam with ice on the surface around the edges, and I had no means of getting to it. I tried throwing sticks, and rocks, hoping to drive it to one side, but that did no good at all. In the end I thought well, there's nothing for it, I'll have to swim. I stripped off and swam out, and when I came out there was my cousin standing outside his shed in the first grey light of dawn, pissing himself laughing. You blokes in the colder parts of the US are no doubt used to the cold, but I was freezing. Still happy though, and I dragged my clothes back on and raced home to show my folks, proud as Punch.

Turned sixteen and old enough to hunt birds on my own around the place. Dad took me to Osco Drugs and shelled out $26+ for a Rossi 20 gauge single shot. It wasn't much more than a piece of pipe with a wood stock on one end but it went on to become the snappiest little quail guns I've ever had. At least I could usually drop one out of the covey before they all disappeared.

One day my kid brother decided to sneak it out of the house without telling me or anyone else, but couldn't get it back without me finding out because I missed it the next day. A year or so later, the hired Mexican was tearing down an old straw stack and found it. Covered with pitted rust and cracked stock. Just about ruined.

Took it in and had it bead blasted and reblued while I repaired and refinished the stock.

It still sits in the corner of the closet. Sometimes I take it out and remember the good times that only a sixteen year old can have. It also crosses my mind what a little [bleep] a kid brother can be at times.

My brother bought me a Ithaca single shot lever action , model 66, 22 lr. $15
I was 8.
We went out back and shot it ,a box or 2 of shells.
I also fired a long tom 12, knocked me on my butt, everybody laughed , but me.

I never understood why anybody thought that was funny. To hand a kid or a woman a gun larger than they can handle.

The first gun I hunted with was a 410 single shot Essex, and I still have it. It was the family "learning" gun, and it was made plain to me that it would be passed on down. I wanted a 22 rifle something bad, and my father took me to a local hardware store that sold guns, and let me handle some. I wanted a Remington single shot, but I was still fairly young, and had trouble working the safety, as it was really stiff. Anyway, when I was 12, I got a Remington 511 Scoremaster for Christmas. I have no idea how many times that rifle has been fired, but it's been a lot. I still have it, and will until the day I die.

Dan oz: Good for you on that retrieve!
I am glad you lived through that incident.
Was grandpas 20 gauge a repeater of a single shot?
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

Remington 788 carbine length .308 (yeah...i know, i know ) money I made sacking groceries on the weekend at the Ft Campbell commissary. The gook mafia would only let us white kids sack groceries on sunday. I was 14 yrs old.

Enlisted wives tipped the best.

Fat, bitchy, officer's wives sometimes gave .25 cents or nothing.


Pistol Pete's pawn in Oak Grove, KY.

It's a porn shop now. lol

The first firearm I ever used was my Dad's (now mine) M62A Winchester pump 22. I was about 8-9. The first "gun" I ever used was my Daisy BB gun that Dad and Mom got for me as a Christmas Present when I was 6, to see if I was too young to learn to handle a gun safely, and how well I would take to them. Well, it was a duckling to water, so at 8 I was allowed to use the 22.

At about 8-9 I also started to shoot the 300 Savage (I hated it because of the kick) But i did kill game and some ranch animals with it when it was needed. When I was a boy out home had only 2 guns, both rifles, the 22 pump and the 300 Savage.

When I was 12 I got my own rifle. The first one I ever truly owned. A push Feed Winchester M70 in 270 with a Weaver K4 and later the same year I got an Original 36 cal Colt 1851 navy revolver, which I fixed up to good shooting condition with the help of our new neighbor, who was the head of restoration for the Nevada State Museum at the time. Christmas of my 12th year Dad got me a Herders reloading set up. Dad also bought me an Ithaca M66 single shot 20 gauge.

My next 2 rifles were a Mauser 270 I stocked from a blank when I was 12-13 (following a plan laid out in a gun magazine) and a re-creation of an S Hawken I made with a print and parts I got from Dixie gun Works.

In that same period of time, around 14-15 years old, I got a 1st generation Colt SAA in 45 at a gun show and again our neighbor oversaw me as I did a restoration on it to perfect functional condition. I used loads with black powder and also some loads with Red Dot powder in the old 45 and learned to shoot revolvers quite well. Later I got a Ruger Old Army and shot that a lot too.

When I was 16 I got a Super Blackhawk and a Beretta BL-3 over/under in 12 gauge. When I was 17 I got a S&W M29 with an 8-3/8" barrel, and my Dad also got a Stainless Ruger Security Six in 4" at the same time.

At 18 I joined the USMC. In my time as a Marine I managed to get a handful of other guns, (5 that I can remember) but didn't really start to gain any numbers until I was discharged and went to work on contract jobs and as an instructor for the D.O.D. Between the time I was about 30 to the time I was about 50 I acquired a few hundred, but I have gone the other way in the last 10-15 years and sold off most of them.

So up to the time I was 18 those guns listed above were the only guns we had in the household, and even the Savage M99 was sold after I got the 270, so our home had those and no others.

I got a Winchester 77 semi auto 22 at the wholesale price, even though Winchester prices were franchised.
I was 12 years old in 1963 and had to use my own money, because my father was so cheap. When he died in 2012, I went on a gun buying binge with his money.

I had a hand-me-down Stevens double for a few years, wish I still had it. Mine was a 311.

Oak Grove was full of some good pawn shops at one time. Do you remember Softhearted Sam's and Hardhearted Hannah's?

About 1968-69, my first gun came from my uncle. My parents made me pay for it as a responsibility issue. Paid for it from the bean walking money my grandpa paid me.
It was a Savage 24 22LR/410. Shot my first pheasant with it that fall. It is now in the hands of my oldest son and it will get handed down to my granddaughter when the time is right.

Diamondjim: that will be a happy day when your granddaughter gets "your" combination gun.
Enjoy that and I hope you will be just as happy when she hands it on down to her child (your great grandchild).
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

Yeah, I've got a dog now, who is happy to do the swimming.

My grandfather's 20 ga was a double (SXS).

my very first gun my dad gave me his used Savage 0ver/under 22LR/410 gauge,i shot a lot of stuff with that gun birds,gophers,ducks,pheasants,and things a should have not too.shot thousands of 22 LR ammo thankfully my uncles worked at Federal cartridge and kept me well supplied,i still own that old o/u savage and yep purchased a couple more over the years too. I plan on giving my newest savage o/u 22lr/410 to my grandson when he gets a little older the new savage o/u has a safety on this gun.

Sure do

Right in front of gate 4


Also

gate one flea market

Bell glade trailer park lol
ASAC's automotive. Every dumb broke E4 financed chrome cragars and kraco stereo for his chevy monza lmao
the Winners Circle motel
Big Star grocery store
Ponderosa-Bonanza steakhouse *gag*
Mrs Winners, and the water tower beside that's gone
Charlies Steakhouse- struck by lightning burned to the ground
Bricks military store

All gone

James...when I was 15 yrs old

My mother went into the PX one day and filled a shopping cart with rifles and shotguns. Clearance deal

2- remington speedmaster 552s
Savage 24 o/u 20ga/22lr
Savage 410
Savage 110 in 30/06
2- S&W 1000 semi auto 12 ga

Those were the good old days. Many moons ago, J.C. Penny's sold guns, and in the little mall in Hoptown they had a store. They decided to quit selling guns, this would have been probably in the early 80's, certainly no later. The marked their guns down, mostly Remington shotguns....the good 870's, at a really good price. I was flat broke, having just got through cutting tobacco and paying the help. All I could do was wish.

My dad for some reason was dead set against BB guns. At 11or 12 years of age he bought me a remington field master .22 for Christmas. My first firearm.

Everybody went to ASAC's. Charlie's Steakhouse......now that is a place I still miss. Best steak anywhere to be had anywhere close. Do you remember the Family Drive-in. Rumor had it that more families were started there than anywhere else, hence the name.