Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Was your Father a Shooter/Reloader

My father hunted small game, deer and waterfowl, all with his 16 gauge 37 Ithaca, later a Remington 58. As I got older he pretty much just duck hunted with his younger friend who would become my father in law.) He never owned a CF rifle, but had a Remington 521-T that he was an excellent shot with. Also, his only handgun was a High Standard G-380 which he seldom shot. He never reloaded.

Dad was a trap shooter. He had competed at Vandalia and had a bunch of trophies. He occasionally did trips to a pheasant farm. That was about it.

Mom's Dad was the hunter. He'd grown up on a farm and enjoyed squirrel and pheasant. He did a lot of fishing and shooting with his father-in-law. When Great-Grandpa got too old to go anymore, Gramps gave it up.

By the time I was in grade school, it was all over. Frankly, I did not think about firearms and hunting until I was out of college.

Dad was one heck of a deer hunter. Only thing he reloaded was shotgun shells

My dad was a handgunner, reloader, caster....shot a couple times a week for over 50 yrs.

My dad was a good shot. Rifle, Handgun, and shotgun. He could shoot MOA offhand. Kill a limit of doves with less than a box of shells and shoot treed coons out of treetops with a pistol. He never reloaded but was a hunter. He took me to hunt and fishing for everything available to us or arranged for me to go do it with someone that knew how.

Coming from a pioneer family (settled Calif in 1847) , hunting was part of life. My dad as well as both grandfathers were ardent hunters and gun nuts. Dad traded his M1 for a Springfield as soon as he set foot in Europe during WWII since he didn't like those newfangled Garands. He started reloading in the 50's and hunted until his eyes started going bad (just like his father).

My father was a handloader/reloader as long as I can remember. I probably wasn't long out of diapers when he'd let me pull the handle on his shotgun reloading press.
He's an accomplished trapshooter, rifleman and hunter so it was a logical progression for me - though I'm a lousy trapshooter and never answered that calling.

My father did both. He started shooting when he was a kid, then started NRA Service Rifle in ROTC the 1950s. I remember him shooting an M-1, then an M-14, then an M-16 courtesy of the National Guard. He also shot bullseye pistol. After he retired he started into Palma and F-Class. He shot on the national team for several years, including matches in Canada, England, and Australia. He also set nations records for his age group until he was in his late 70s.

Reloading and hunting were a part of growing up for me.


Okie John

MY father was a hunter. He killed all his deer, which were quite a few, with a Marlin 94 in 38-40. I never knew him to have bought more that two boxes of ammo for it (50 in a box). When he passed there was almost a full box left.

For small game, we were allotted 6 rounds of shotgun ammo. Limit was four rabbits and two pheasants. We had best come home with either the limit or an equal amount of unused ammo.

In my early twenties a mentor schooled me on reloading.

My Dad was an avid hunter, small game and deer, and always pushed beyond the easy. He had wanderlust, always needed to see what was on the other side of the hill - and never needed coaxing to go hunting. As for being a good shot, not so much. He missed a lot of birds with his 16 gauge Savage-Stevens 311 double (with Tenite stock) which he bought new before I was born and clung tenaciously to for the rest of his life, which ended when he was young - only 59 in 1990. I still have that gun, which I thoroughly dislike but it's a "cold dead hands gun" to me. I patterned it once and the bugger shoots waaaay low (weird comb height and generally ill fitting/balanced - not one of Savage's better ideas) - bingo, mystery of Pop's poor wing shooting skills solved.

Rifles - a pretty decent shot. Pistols - well, don't ever ask him to cover you in a gunfight. Gangstas in Baltimore are better shots with pistols than he was.

I'm the one who talked him into handloading, for selfish reasons when I was a teenager, but he took to it with gusto. He was a tool&die maker so quickly started using his skills to augment our equipment. For example, he designed and built a nifty simple case trimmer which I still have and use for oddball stuff that isn't covered by LE Wilson for their trimmer which is my primary. At the time of his death he was working on a self made press, modeled on the C-H multi station H-press. I finished it years later and gave it to one of my nephews who itched to get into handloading and wanted some of his grand dad's tools. (Working in the tool room at the Mack Truck Engine/Transmission plant in our home town in Hagerstown, MD gave him lots of opportunity to "make stuff on the company's dime". "Government work," he called it.)

NO. He was a fisherman.

Unfortunately No.

My father, like a lot of men of his age here in Montana, grew up on a homestead during the Great Depression. Both he and his brother did a lot of subsistence hunting, as did my grandmother. She was an excellent shot--used a pump .22 rifle to wingshoot birds--and an avid hunter, also taking big game from pronghorns to elk.

My father never was much of a hunter when he grew up and got a decent-paying job, but he liked to shoot, mostly plinking with his Colt .22 revolver and a single-shot .22 rifle. He killed a couple of deer after I started hunting, but was in poor health by then and couldn't hike much. He never handloaded.

I started handloading at 12, mostly on my own though with a little help from one of my dad's buddies. Used the old Lee Loader hand tools for both rifle and shotgun ammo, partly because my handloading was funded by my paper route, and they were very "affordable."

Dad knew guns a little and was a fair shot. But he didn’t have a passion for it. He hunted some as a young man but didn’t keep up with it after buying the farm and starting a family.

I don’t know where my interest came from but as long as I can remember I’ve been passionate about hunting, trapping, shooting and reloading.

Dad did teach my brother and I to shoot and allowed us as much freedom to hunt and trap as he could considering we had dairy farm chores to tend to daily.

We did join the rifle team in high school and I credit that and a hundred thousand BBs for making me the phenomenal rifleman I am today. 😁

Dad kept me well stocked in BBs and turned me loose on the hoard of English sparrows that infested our barn. Starlings were a target as well but it took some precise placement to make a kill. I wish I had kept track of how many English sparrows I killed but it had be several hundred. They were prolific back then.

Dad hunted deer mostly - if it had "horns" it was fair game. He had two rifles, a 1962 Winchester 70 in 30/06 and a Winchester 70 in 7 Mag. He did not reload but passed on the outdoors and hunting that by the time I was 18, I had more rifles and handguns than he had (most of which he gave me as Christmas or Birthday gifts).

I didn't get into reloading until my late 20's but it was his influence that led to it. He's gone now, but hunts with me every season when I take out that old 30/06 or 7 Mag.

My father was only interested in duck hunting until his 50's when he did some deer hunting. He never reloaded. In later years we didn't get along but I am thankful that he bought me my first gun when I was 12 and he took me along on some of his duck hunts. Between that and Outdoor Life I became interested in shooting and hunting for my entire life until health interfered a few years ago. I began reloading in my early 20's. At first myself and two friends shared equipment for a year or so and then we branched out and bought our own equipment.

My introduction to hunting is probably the only fond memory I have of my father.

Jim

Lucky to grow up in SD, but never shot a pheasant in my home county until I was in my 20's. Deuel Co isn't a pheasant hotspot even now, and certainly wasn't then. It was in the 40's and 50's tho. There were no deer hunts until the late 60's; by the 80's we were overrun with them. We always had waterfowl tho. Lots of lakes and potholes, and so we fished alot as well for walleyes and perch mainly.

Given that, my grandfather was a hunter, and his father was as well. My dad was and so am I. We had three duck boats when I was in HS, and we had over 100 decoys, and for a while we had a fixed duck blind that we put out in a bay of a local lake. Lots of near death experiences looking back. Dark cold water, overloaded underpowered boats, yikes. But we shot alot of ducks and geese. We would go west from CL to find pheasants a few times a year. My dad was a much better shot with a rifle than I am; he was good with a shotgun also but I don't think he could beat me with one very often. My grandpa didn't hunt anything but birds and I have no idea how he was with rifles.

We had a Pacific shotgun shell set up for 12 ga and we loaded our own in AA and RXP hulls. About the time I left home, he got into metallic reloading as well. I don't load shotgun shells; if I figure my time is worth something, which it is, I can't see the advantage. I shoot very little factory rifle ammo tho.

Dad was a reloader, shooter and hunter. Started loading with him when I was 14. The deer rifle he gave me for Christmas was a Ruger tanger 7x57, which was in 1983 and basically still is a handloading only cartridge.

my dad was a fine pistol shot. but i could out-shotgun him by the time i was 11. my maternal grandfather was a fine shotgunner into his early 70s.

My father hunted mule deer and pheasants regularly with his brother and other family members in NE Oregon, in the area where he grew up. He was a good shot and killed many deer, but was not particularly interested in guns. For him, guns were simply a tool to be used in hunting and he didn't reload. He also liked to fish and be in the outdoors.

However, he got me started hunting deer at age 12, and I'm still hunting and shooting more than 60 years later.