Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire What turned you on to guns?

I had a foster brother who was much older, he enlisted in the Navy in 1940 and served throughout WWII in the Pacific. My parents worried about him constantly of course, we got our news from an old battery-powered radio of some sort, having no electricity in the ramshackle farm house we lived in.

In our family we had a 1903 Colt pistol, 38 ACP, my grandfather had found it one day in the 1920's as he was working on some railroad track, that being his profession. During the war, of course, ammo for it was unobtainable.

On VJ day, we got the news of the surrender from the old radio, joyous does not adequately describe my parents' reaction, their (foster) son would be coming home safe and sound!!

My father was so overwhelmed with happiness, he grabbed up the Colt and went out on the back porch and ripped off a full mag in celebration, me right beside him.

I was only 5 years old at the time, I thought that was the coolest thing I had ever seen, made me a gun nut right on the spot there and have been one ever since.
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Dad was an avid hunter/shooter/handloader. I started "helping" when my thumbs were strong enough to seat a primer with a Lee Auto Prime.

Walt Diznee

That bastid!

That's a neat story, thanks for sharing!

I suppose it just came naturally, just like fishing, building pipe bombs to fish with, building tree forts, girls, ect, ect.

I remember, as a kid, one of my grandfathers stopping by one time with his loooong barreled marlin goose gun in the back seat, must've been doing some kinda varmint eradication on his farm. And another grandfather shooting a diamondback rattlesnake with a 22 magnum derringer while we were branding calves on his farm. Probably two of my earliest gun nut moments

My father...

I dont know. I come from a long line of hunters but none of them were gun nuts. PA Game News came in the mail monthly and I just started gravitating towards the Shooters Corner page by Don Lewis naturally. He's still my favorite gunwriter.

I think a big part of it is genetic. My older brother was never really interested in guns (he's getting better late in life) but I've loved guns/shooting from before I could talk. I would page through the Sears catalog and pick out all the guns I was going to own and would head for the gun rack at every hardware/sporting goods store we visited. When I was 3-4 I found my dad's shotgun in the basement and drug it up the stairs, by the barrel, into our kitchen and told my (horrified) mom and aunt "I'm going hunting!". I didn't get to go hunting BTW and they hid the shotgun but I found it again and would take it out and shuck shells when nobody was home! I keep my guns in a safe now.....

My family members hunted, but I suppose the worst(best?) thing that got me going were the old western movies they played on the TV in the summertime, when we were out of school. All the usual suspects, plus The Lone Ranger, Sky King, etc. I've always been interested in firearms, and I had a lot of different toy guns in those days, too. I don't think a day has ever gone by that I didn't have some kind of firearm in my hands.
I'm "et up", as some of my friends say.

Dad would hold a single shot 22 let me aim and pull the trigger, no idea how old I was but I loved it and so it began

My Father.

I got cap pistolas while I was still shîttin yella. I would kill anyone in the Winn-Dixie, just for staring

I had a stick in my hands for a shotgun and cigarette filters in my ears, but my nose worked just fine as I followed Dad and Gramps in the woods shot gunning rabbits, squirrels and quail, I knew then and there I was HOOKED, and hooked hard, for life.

jnyork, Very cool story.

My dad gave me my first .22 Marlin when I was 6 yo for my First Holy Communion. My mom almost schitt herself, but dad wouldn't have it any other way. Since then, there's been no turning back. I remember walking behind him or my grandad in their tracks in the snow while they still hunted in the Adirondacks.

Thanks for the thread. I'm finding myself flooded with memories of the two greatest men I've ever known and endless outdoor experiences with them.

Dad belonged to a trap club and used to go up to Vandalia and bring back trophies. He'd hunted, but mostly he liked the comradery of the trap scene. I can remember him going off to a Turkey Shoot and expecting that he was going out and actually shooting a turkey.

Grandpa had been a bird hunter since he was a kid, but stopped when his FIL got too old to go with him. They were closer than father and son. It just took all the fun out of it.

Both men were over a decade past pulling a trigger when I graduated high school. I had zero interest in firearms. I had a subscription to Outdoor Life, but only read it for the fishing articles.

It wasn't until I was out of college that I started hanging with a bunch of guys:

A retired editor of a gun magazine, and past president of Ohio Gun Collectors
A retired Marine armorer that had owned his own gun store.
A semi-retired paratrooper in the IDF.
A veteran of The Bulge
A fellow with a degree in Pyrotechnic Engineering
. . . and a couple of others

Bob, the editor, got me interested in the value of my family's firearms. I had him out to my folks' house to look at what I'd inherited from my grandfather. From there, I asked to be invited out to the local gun range to try them out.

Within a year or so, I was shooting clays, been boar hunting, and belonged to a gun club. I was buying a firearm about every six months. Between Bob and Jerry (the ex-Marine) I had more than ample prodding.

We lost the first one of that bunch in 1992. Jerry died of brain cancer. The group waxed and waned over the years. All that is left of it that I know is Eli the paratrooper that I haven't seen in years and my hunting buddy, SuperCore, who was a latecomer to the bunch in the mid-90's. Bob died a year ago. He hadn't been to the range in a decade due to bad knees. I helped him on his last trip to OGC.

I saw that they killed stuff. When stuff gets killed I can grab said stuff.

Hopalong Cassidy

Cue up Hank Jr. "It's a family tradition."

Goes back to being a very little kid watching secret agents, cowboys, soldiers, gangsters and cops, using them on TV. Toy guns, very early, became the main props in my play. I think it's a guy thing.

Couldn't wait to get the real ones, and my father relented when I was eight and got me a lever action Daisy BB gun for Christmas. At fourteen, I bought a friend's Crosman .177 caliber pellet pump gun with scope for $45.00 (a fortune for me at the time). Got a Remington Fieldmaster pump .22 for my sixteenth birthday, and a Mini 14 for my seventeenth birthday (I had convinced my folks that it, too, was only a .22, LOL ... and I wasn't technically lying, LOL). I bought all my own guns after that. The rest is history.