Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Rimfires Shooting my first .22 - 50 years later

The first .22 I ever shot was my dad’s Remington 33 single shot. I still have that rifle more than 60 years later, along with his Winchester 94 .30-30 and J. Stevens Springfield 16 gauge side by side shotgun.

The first .22 that I owned was a High Standard Military Citation with a 5-inch bull barrel. Still have that one, too, more than 50 years after receiving it.

You've done a good job holding onto your stuff!

Got my first gun for my 7th birthday - a Winchester 67A boy's carbine. (never owned a BB gun)
Shot matches with it, while in junior high school - and LOTS of jackrabbits! Been several thousand rounds down that old barrel - probably well in the tens of thousands.
If I want to shoot it now, I have to ask our daughter - she asked and I gave it to her years ago. Her kids shoot it more than I do - and that's just fine!

My first 22 was the first gun I ever bought...a Ruger Mk II. I bought some walnut thumb rest grips and used ti hunt rabbits with it. People who shot it offered a lot more money that I paid for it because it seemed so accurate.

Anyways, as my sons were born...I bought them each their own Ruger Mk II's so they could have when they grow up. When it came time to give them out, my youngest chose mine over his NIB un-shot stainless version. He thought mine was cooler...So he has it now.

The same thing basically happened with our 10/22's too.

My first rifle was a Mossberg 22 in about 1963, but I can't remember the model. Had a T shaped bolt handle, tube feed, fairly heavy, and came equipped with target peeps, a hooded front sight, and was grooved for a scope. I scoped it up and had a couple of great wood chucking years. Shot well, but I was ignorant at the time as to ammo effects and lacked a mentor as well. Loaned it to a very close hunting friend though, and it was stolen from his rig. Have not seen a similar model since. Had it not been stolen, it would still be in my possession.

Do have a Winchester-06 I acquired from a mentor as a deathbed bequest. Probably about 85% condition as Win rebarreled it in the early 1970's. Can't bring myself to use it though. History was he acquired it in Colorado as a birthday gift in 1936. On day two, he went out unaccompanied for an after school shoot and lost privileges for the following year. That exchange also came with a Stevens 410 single and a Harrington/Richards 22 handgun all treasures that I hope to pass on to some deserving kid. Sadly, my own has no interest and a felony on his record as well.

Look up the Mossberg 146B. Some of those came with T handles and receiver sight.

Cooper57m:



That's it to a T. Thanks for the info. I will start looking for a replacement.

Just held one a while back as part of an appraisal. It is not for sale and I found very little about them. But I did find this one:
https://www.gunbroker.com/item/883935468

I had a shotgun and a 270 before I got a 22. It was a Nylon 66 and I still have it. About 1970.

I'm still shooting my first .22 more than 50 years later too, Eddie....

I found a Nylon 66 with SN 21147xx, my 1st .22 rifle, under the tree on Christmas 1969. I've probably shot 20K rounds through this rifle with only one spot of trouble, when I tried to shoot some of that wax covered Russian Junior-brand ammo in the sea-green boxes. With any good grade of ammo, the Nylon 66s were damn close to 100% reliable.

My first .22 that was mine alone I got in 1972. I had been chopping corn out of bean fields in central Michigan for a few days.(I was 11 soon to be 12). When I was done I was in the farmers living room to get paid when I noticed a dusty .22 on his wall in a rack. I said I'd take it instead of getting paid cash. My mother who was there to pick me up agreed when the farmer asked her if it was ok. Then he also gave me a $10 bill and a box of 50 shells. Carried it in my arms the whole ride home. Stepped out of our car like a conquering hero. It was featured in one of Field & Streams old "Gunfight Friday "segments on their magazine website. It's a Remington 511-x scoremaster that everyone calls the squirrelmaster around here. Wears an old Weaver wide angle 4x or a Leupold 4x depending. Reblued it once in the late 90's and it needs it again.

More .22 stuff: Years ago, my late Uncle had given me a Springfield 87A semi-auto that he found at a garage sale. It needed some work and once I fixed it up it was supposed to be for my son. However, after finding a magazine tube and some other parts it needed at Numrich, when I took it to the range it went full auto on me a couple times and jammed - a lot. So, it was stuck in the corner of the safe and forgotten about. Just recently on ebay I came across a guy selling trigger groups for the old 87As and I ordered one. I'm hoping that will fix the problem of going full auto.

Then, a couple days ago while perusing Gunbroker I came across a Belgium Browning T-Bolt Deluxe model from 1966 that was a salt gun that Browning completely repaired/restored/restocked in 1991. The gun was then put away and never shot. It looks perfect with the box and all the papers. This was the rifle I lusted after as a young teenager. Many a night I spent watching TV with a Browning catalog on my lap opened to that page. I won the auction. It'll get scoped with a Burris HBR 6X32.

Hey hunts nice posed pic of the 62a and the feral mini lion have to start calling you Don the terminator lol. Mb

Mike was a Marlin 81-G, bolt action with a tubular mag. As a youngster, used it for squirrels, rabbits, raccoons - also killed a bunch of feral hogs with it. Over the years, I refinished & checkered the stock, "browned" the barrel & action, & tried several scopes on it. Just got it out & looked it over - meeds to be cleared up, oiled, & shot!

Great old rifle!

Mike Holmes

When I was 7 or 8 my dad taught my older brother and I how to shoot with a Rem 552 speed master and a Marlin model 60 with the squirrel holding a nut on the grip. Neither were mine but were always available. My first gun was a Remington 870 Wingmaster magnum 20 ga with a 30” full choke barrel....imagine grouse hunting Northern WI with that! Anyway, I bought a deer rifle when I was 16, had to give my dad the $ to buy it at a gun show.

Which brings me to my first 22. I felt the need to get my own and when mentioning that to a friend of my dad’s he told me to get a T-bolt. I must have been 18 as I looked around the gun shows til I found one and bought it. Topped it with a Leupold 4X rf special and tried all sorts of ammo in it. Found a few that it liked including green tag and win power points. After that the squirrels paid dearly every fall and it is still to this day one of my favorite activities. Every fall when the weather is about right I spend a good day in the woods sneaking through the timber shooting a limit of squirrels with head shots.

The rifle was sold quite a while ago as I had my heart set on an Anschutz sporter and bought a 1710. Not sure it shoots any better, but that’s what I wanted. Later I tried a CZ 452 that didn’t measure up so I had Dan Muller turn one of his excellent rimfire barrels to a matching contour and I rebarrelled the CZ. Now that one shoots as well as the anschutz and either one is just as likely to go into the woods with me. Good memories with all of them!

About my only regret is when I was shopping for my first 22 a dealer had a pristine Kimber Super America with a Leupold 4X rimfire scope on a table. I remember figuring out how I could afford the $600 price tag but in the end just couldn’t swallow spending the money...man was that little rifle beautiful! That must have been in 1989 or so.

Interestingly, the T-Bolt that I just bought is coming out of WI. I know Dan Muller. I first met him when he was working for Rock Creek Barrels as their barrel lapper. He's a perfectionist. I've had both Rock Creek and MullerWorks barrels on my benchrest rifles. I won the 2015 IR50/50 Unlimited Nationals with a Stiller 2500X with a Rock Creek barrel.

Yep, Dan is a hell of a barrel maker. I used to visit him quite often and learned a lot from him.

Savage-Anschutz 141 bought in '66. Only change over decades has been to replace the little .22rf Bushnell scope with a VX2 3-9 EFR.

No idea how many cases of .22 it's shot up, but still used for youth activities, range time, killing woodchucks, crows, barn pigeons, red and gray squirrels, nuisance beaver, porkies, and one rabid skunk managed to brain without getting sprayed.

If cleaning harmed .22rf barrels this one should be wrecked. It still puts 5 CCI SV or Sub-HP into 1/2-3/4" at 50 yds.

Last week while perusing ebay I came across a guy selling a Mossberg S330 receiver sight for a nice buy-it-now price. This is the receiver sight that was meant to go on their Mossberg 340 series rifles. My M-W Mossberg 346 had a cobbed up receiver sight that was put on by a "gunsmith" about 49 years ago. It was some generic, crude sight that fit my gun's receiver contour but both holes didn't match up to the ones drilled on my rifle, so he only put one screw with an oversized head on it. It worked and held zero but looked awful. So, I jumped on the S330 sight and it came in yesterday. I took off the old sight and put on this correct sight, that was in great condition. I eye-balled the sight and gave it a rough adjustment and headed off to the range this morning. Sighting in at 50 feet, using a 1" orange dot on a white backer, I was amazed to see that first shot center-punched the target. I never get that lucky!! The next 4 shots made a 5 shot .221" group.That's about as good as I can shoot these days with a peep sight and a rifle that isn't a target rifle. I like to have one .22 sighted in for short range for shooting squirrels that are smart and athletic enough to get past the squirrel baffles on our bird feeder poles and manage to scarf up all the sunflower seeds. This will do nicely.