Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire "Amusements" of My Childhood

After I was able to roll a hay bale over the fun was gone. Started learning how to drive a tracter at 5. My 2 brothers were much older than me. I was expected to take both their places.

the thing Im seeing is how much electronic stimulus replaces imagination and physical activity.

As kids we were literally "in motion" for 12 plus hours daily.

We grew up in the suburbs with a field out back and ponds and ditches within bike riding distance.
My brother is still my partner in crime!

Slingshots shooting crab apples from the roof and boomerangs in the field.

Bow and arrow and BBguns, lots and lots of BBgun time! We had to shoot the grass hoppers off the rhubarb!

Model cars and firecrackers..

Evil Knievel with a cinderblock and a 2x6.

Kites and paper airplanes.

Slot cars, HO an 1/32nd scale.

A Cox Car we bought with lawnmower money would sure zoom around if it had traction!

We had chores too but we sure weren't farm hands.

Lawn mowing, making mud balls, and playing in the sand box. Occupied much of my time.

No one had plastic toy guns and played 'war' with neighbor kids?
we played a lot of pickup baseball\football\hockey.
I remember crack the whip being crazy exciting.
Flashlight tag- Green Ghost Is upon Us

We did that with BB guns.

Am I right that it was asked for "amusement" and not amusement so in the negative sense?

For me it was soccer. Not wanting to play soccer as a boy in Germany was almost like this:

In chronologicial order:
BB guns, Nichols and Hubley cap guns, Army soldiers and mud forts, sling shots, black cats and cherry bombs, Benjamin pellet rifle, bicycle, .22 rifle, .410 shotgun, arrowhead hunting, baseball, girls, red 57 Chevy.

I grew up across the street from a mill pond.

'Shootin frogs with my BB gun was a favorite passtime.

Virgil B.

Marbles, anyone? Everyone I knew was always on the lookout for steelies.

I grew up with no houses around and no houses to the east for 60 miles. It was great. We were outside all of the time. Got immune to poison oak, but unfortunately brought it home to my Mom, who wasn't immune. On weekends it was chores in the morning and then grab the 22 and head to the hills, with instructions from Mom - be home be dark and take the dog with you.

On summer nights we would go up to the nearby lovers leap and throw firecrackers under the cars.

I only saw tether ball at this or that camp. Nobody had a rig at their house.

^^^This^^^

+ lots of fishing in the creeks and stock tanks.
And I had a 57 Chevy pickup.

LOL. We did that too. One of my Uncles, who was 5 years older than me, went to his grave a few years ago, still with a bb I put in him when we were kids. 😬

"Stretch" was another good one, using our Barlow pocketknives.

Can you imagine 7 year old boys playing stretch at recess now?

Oh, the horror!

My obsession was 'fort building'. As a little bitty kid, they were pretty pathetic but as I got older they became pretty elaborate. Mostly dugouts, with lava rock walls, willow and sagebrush roofs...enough room for weapons, rations, water and 1 to 3 dogs for heating, depending on how cold it was. Some archaeologist in the distant future will discover these 'sites', and the detritus from this ancient civilization...and will ponder in awe the brass .22 casings, beanie-weenie cans, BB's, juniper fork slingshot, carefully selected aerodynamic agate projectiles, small animal bones, spear points from sickle bar teeth...he will think what a savage, yet hinting at sophisticated tribe this must have been.

My brother died when I was 5 and my other siblings were 9 plus years older so I basically grew up as an only child. Loved Legos then building forts in the tree grove. We had an unnatural amount of Gardner snakes so I caught a lot of them and did unspeakable things to them. Most involved gasoline or firecrackers. It all changed when I got a bb gun. Put the hurt on the birds. Then when I graduated to a 22, there wasn't a rabbit on the farm. I shot that lever every single day and got darn good at it. I just traded it for a new lever and giving it to my son for his 8th grade graduation. It had a smooth bore and function wasn't great either.

Cowboys and Indians, War, marbles, and mumbly peg.

This version of mumbly-peg -
Sometimes the throw varies starting with the knife's tip on a player's body part (elbow, wrist, shoulder, etc.). The knife's handle is pushed so it rotates end over end so the blade sticks into the ground. This version of the game is shown in part one of the television miniseries "Lonesome Dove" between the characters Deets, Newt and Pea Eye approximately 30 minutes into the program. If one player succeeds, that player will then decide on the next "trick". The other player is sometimes given more than one try. The game repeats until one player cannot duplicate the "trick". If there are multiple players then play continues to "knock out" a player until only one player remains.

drover

My BB gun
My fishing pole
My GRANDPA
My faithful Golden Retriever
Camping with my friend and his family
Everything else in my childhood was magical too.

Is that Bruce Willis?