Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire My First CCW

Yeah, not as exciting or as recent as you might think.

An old friend of mine and I were trading memories last night and he re-re-re-told the story of a belligerent employee he had to settle down by displaying a Colt Detective. This prompted unearthing some old remembrances of mine. The earliest was when I was in third or fourth grade attending a one room country school. My family, like most of the families in the area, was going thru hard financial times. The early 1950’s were some of the wettest on record but starting in about 1955 the skies dried up and it didn’t rain for months. It was so dry the row crops didn’t germinate and the pastures and hay ground turned brown and bare before June. Dad had to sell the cattle and take a job at a warehouse in town. Mom and my sister went to work at a poultry plant and my brother joined the Army right after graduation. I was pretty much on my own on the farm most of the time. I had a BB gun, but it cost money to buy BB’s and it was pretty anemic when it came to anything more than sparrows. Even a rat was too much for it. Mom would buy me discounted comics from the Dime store which hadn’t sold and had the top half of their cover scissored off before being returned to the distributor. One of these was a cowboy comic and on the inside was a story about a kid who’s uncle made him a slingshot. Among other things the boy used it to kill pack rats and even drive off rustlers! The story went into detail and had close-up drawings of how it was made. Using all my 9 year old ingenuity and a key hidden in the medicine cabinet, I got into Dad’s tool shed. I found a saw and went after a “piss-elm” branch that had died and it’s nicely shaped fork had dried before falling to the ground. Some time spent with the draw knife and rasp formed it into something resembling the drawings in the comic. I soaked it in old harness oil until it wouldn’t absorb anymore. The next thing was to dole out a couple of dimes for two sets of flat rubber bands that I’d seen at the local Coast-to-Coast. I shortened the handle so the leather pouch would fit over the butt with just enough tension, from the bands, to keep it flat and taught. Over the next year this slingshot rode in my hip pocket every waking moment. My left front jean pocket was kept brim full of smooth, round rocks, filched from the gravel road and properly sized for the pouch. I spent every opportunity shooting rocks at any and every target-like object. Rats, sparrows, stray Tom cats and recalcitrant calves felt it’s wrath. I could hit a “snoose” can sitting on edge at 20ft almost 100% of the time.

That fall I returned to school. One 8th grader, named Bobby Olson, was not a farm kid. His parents owned a business in town and had built a new house on an acreage near the school. His mother didn’t have to work and she dropped Bobby off at school every morning driving a station wagon with polished wood panels. My Dad’s 1939 Ford pickup looked pretty sad next to it. Bobby wore new clothes and shoes and had a Roy Roger’s lunch box. I desperately wanted to be his friend but he detested me. He teased me and pushed me around at every opportunity. Like a whipped pup I took it and hung my head.

I joined 4-H that fall and it really opened a new world to me. Bobby was a member too. One thing that I really enjoyed was field plant identification. And, I was good at it. We’d go from farm to farm and identify weeds and native grasses. One evening we were at a neighbor’s place and after our field exercise everyone went into the house for snacks, except Bobby and a couple of older kids. I was walking along the corral fence and Bobby and another kid named Glenn were standing by the farmer’s machine shed. The farmer had just had a load of mud rock put in the drive. Bobby and Glenn started chucking rocks at me. I ran behind a bale stack. They stopped throwing rocks, so I peaked around a bale. Bobby threw a rock the size of a small Orange at my head. I ducked but it glanced off my ear. I put my hand to my ear and found it warm and wet with blood. With all the anger I could muster I drew the slingshot with my right hand and a rock with my left, For a moment I aimed at Bobby’s leering face but at the last second I moved a couple inches past and shot the steel siding on the shed.

The rock shattered on the siding with a startling crack. Bobby and Glenn both yelped in shock. Don, who was the 4|H sponsor yelled at us to stop throwing rocks and get to the house. Bobby and Glenn lost no time getting there. Don intercepted me and said, “Junior, give me that slingshot!” I looked him in the eye and said “ I will not. Bobby hit me with a rock and you didn’t say anything!” “No, I won’t give you my slingshot!”
Don walked away.

I carried my slingshot and a few rocks everywhere. Bobby let me alone after that.

Good story. Thanks for sharing.

Toletecgriz,

Thank you, funny how things like this pop up in your memory with such vividness sometimes.

Bully learned something that day.

Cool Story Johnny, Bullies are usually cowards when the rubber meets the road.

Good story.

Thanks for sharing, a great story.
I grew up one state south of you in the 50s and early 60s. Went to a one room school and 4H also. Not many of us one room country school kids left.

Yep

Gentlemen,
Thank you!
Yeah, bullies are mainly bluff and fluff…but, first day of high school I got talked into fighting an older kid who shoved me. Unfortunately, he was a pretty good scrapper and twice my size. I got in a really good shot to his left eye early in the fight. He never even blinked. I remember thinking “…uh oh!…”. He beat the tar outta’ me.

Dale06,

I know what you mean… most of my friends from that school have passed and so many were younger than me. Just saw in the local paper, where the last of three brothers who were all younger than me, had died. My first “true love”, died several years ago. Starts to make you think.

Good story, thanks.

Slingshot is a good first concealed weapon. Too bad you didn’t use it on the bully like Elmer Keith said he did when he and his little brother were confronted. He said in “Hell I was there” that he shot a bully/kidnapper in the mouth and his front teeth “went out”. The kidnapper then said “oh lawdy” and ran off. I laugh every time.

Old carpenter around here was renowned for his slingshot skil.

He is dead now, but would hunt and kill flushed pheasants.

Dick Edgington was his name.

A homemade all natural equalizer!

Cool beans

Not a slingshot but a 32 oz ball peen hammer. I was 120 lbs soaking wet and Steve was a linebacker on the football team. It was my junior year in high school and Steve routinely tormented me in metal shop. After a one sided engagement where I was his punching bag in the back of class, I picked up the hammer walked over to him and in a perfectly normal voice informed him if he so much as looked at me again I would destroy a knee and every step for the rest of his life he would remember I did it. The bullying ceased.

Let’s call that one constitutional carry.

I've watched my brother shoot a dove out of the air, he makes his n-gger shooters out of deer antlers.

Awww jeez ...
Not another pics or it didn't happen post...

Iraqi Beavis and Butthead Jr CCW slingshots.
Little fugga,s good with em too out to 25 30 yds.
Hit ya in the azz and legs.
They knew to aim below all the Ninja turtle plates and schitt.
Wasn't very funny at the time getting whacked by the little fugga,s.
But hilarious looking back on it now.
After 3 days of it in the same neighborhood.
Had a couple young wolves run em down.
Drag em back , took their homemade wrist rockets.
People in the neighborhood whacking em with their sandals.
Turns out they was a couple of little prick sunni kids causing problems in a mixed shia and christain neighborhood in Mosul.

They never came back once they got punished and humiliated.
People were glad their windows in their homes and cars weren't getting shot out anymore.

We got lots of free stone cooked flat bread👍👍👍 after that occasionally going thru that neighborhood.

Good story. Thanks for posting. I can recall the days when lots of kids turned to things like that because either they couldn't afford a BB gun or one or both parents were too afraid of turning their kid loose with one.

Great story. Well written. Seems like you could publish that.

My dad who is 86 now never did hunt or shoot guns very much but was a natural with a wrist rocket . He use to shoot marbles in it. I watched him shoot a sparrow of a fence one time . I was amazed.

Rene,

Tactical slingshots, huh? The multi band approach vs the single flat bands makes sense. The flat bands break way too often.

I once read that during the Cold War, in Berlin, the American troops along the wall would shoot the guard dogs the Commies kept in kennel runs near the wall, with wrist rockets and marbles. The target dog would yelp which would get the rest of the dogs barking. The red boarder guards would turn on the flood lights and sirens and scramble their guard vehicles with troops and more dogs. Nothing like an international incident to liven up a cold, dark night on guard duty.