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Childhood airgun memory, What's Yours?

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Rawroots

Rawroots

Member
Nov 13, 2017
459
355
West Olive, Michigan, United States
Approx 55 years ago I'd go frog hunting with a neighbor friend, we would grab our bb rifles and make the tour to 4 spots on nearby creeks, we would carry our rifles across the handle bars of our sting ray bikes, yup banana seats too. We would end up with only avg 3 or 4 but we didn't care, we would bring them home ,kick of our muddy tenna shoes and proceed to remove their legs and pull the skin off, then add a little crisco to a pan and make a mess on moms stove. Not much meat but we didn't care. I once had frog legs at a restaurant and they didn't taste near as good as ours.
 
SAVING LITERALLY EVERY PENNY, COLLECTING POP BOTTLES TO GET THE 2 CENTS DEPOSIT, BIRTHDAY & CHRISTMAS GIFT MONEY. YOU COULDN'T GET A NEIGHBORHOOD JOB, EVERY MAN MOVED HIS OWN LAWN ETC. WITH MY SAVINGS I BOUGHT WHAT I BELIEVE TO BE DAISY'S CHEAPEST BB PISTOL IN ABOUT 1957 FROM OUR GO TO SPORTING GOODS STORE. MOSTLY WORMS, BAIT, LURES. A BOX DISPLAY OF TARGET ARROWS AND A FEW DAISYS. ALL IN A 10' X 12' FRONT ROOM OF THE OWNER'S HOUSE, STUCK IT IN MY PANTS, SHIRT OUT, WALKED 3 BLOCKS HOME SNUCK IT IN THE BACK DOOR AND DOWN STAIRS. NEIGHBOR KIDS HAD DAISY BB RIFLES AND COULD ONLY SHOOT IN THEIR BASEMENT, I COLLECTED FIRED BB OFF THEIR FLOOR. MY 1ST TARGETS WERE A FEW SPENT .38 NICKEL PLATED CARTRIDGE CASES ON THE FLOOR IN FRONT OF MY CLOSET CURTAIN IN MY ROOM AT A RANGE OF 8'. I REUSED THEM AND THE BBs. SOON I WAS BORED BY MY ABILITY TO HIT THEM BUT I DID NOT DARE TO LET EVEN MY FRIENDS KNOW I HAD A BB GUN NOT IF I WANTED TO SEE THE NEXT DAY NOR TAKE IT OUTSIDE AND HAVE THE NEIGHBORS SEE IT. THE OLD DAYS WHEN EVERY ADULT AROUND KNEW YOU AND WOULD TELL YOUR PARENTS. NO VACANT FIELDS, JUST BLOCKS AND BLOCKS OF HOMES . DAD WAS A WWII ARMY VET FROM AFRICA ,ITALY, AND GERMANY. THERE WERE NO GUNS IN OUR HOUSE!!. I COLLECTED OTHER BB AND PELLET PISTOLS TILL I WENT TO NAM. AND GAVE THEM ALL AWAY BEFORE I LEFT.
 
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Struggling to pump my brothers Crosman 760 Pumpmaster at 4-5 and shooting birds. Getting my skin pinched in said MSP. 
My first personal real airgun was a Daisy 717 around 8, 

My first PCP was a .177 Discovery I bought from Rick Wellknicker in 2008.

Sold that to a "young man" in WV for his grandchildren just a year or so ago. Had been gone through by Aggelis Arns & a real good shooter.

Around 2011 I started in with Thomas tuned springers & AZ modified Rapids. The rest is history. I've probably bought or sold to a few here lol.
 
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i remember it was the best day of my life when my older cousin handed me the red ryder and i was off on a hunt across a berry patch and over a fence into a creek where some cows were hanging out under the trees .. it was a big mistake when i shot a cow in the butt and they stampeded all around me lol .. scared me to death i was hugging a tree lol ..
 
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There were so many. I actually ran the springs dead in several Daisy BB guns. I became a master of the "lob". The most memorable was when I was 12 and my Mother had told me a million times no pellet guns. The old Shoot Your Eye Out or Your Not Old Enough etc excuse. Well my Grandfather who I only saw a few times in my life came out to visit from the East Coast. We all went shopping and took off in different directions. I went with my Grandfather and took him directly to the magical Crossman Powermaster 760 I was not allowed to have "for no good reason" and "my buddy had one and he is same age". Granpa said "Poppycock". Your old enough and bought it for me. 

You should have seen the look on my Mothers face when we returned to pile back in the car. It could have turned a man to stone. I can see it now 50 years ago plain as it happened yesterday. Luckily Grandpa stayed for another week to solidify the deal. Those were the days. 
 
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My dad gave me a chrome Red Rider looking BB gun from when he was a kid. I squeezed the trigger while I had the lever open and it slammed my little fingers. The other childhood memory was my sister blasting my buddy in the forehead with my Model 70 CO2 rifle. She didn’t think it was loaded and he went to the ER to get the flattened pellet scraped off his skull. 
 
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When I was about 10 years old ( mid 80’s) my dad gave me a Crosman 1377. My dad ran his business out of a office/warehouse complex and they had a horrible pigeon problem. Hundreds of birds roosting on the buildings and making a terrible mess. One weekend my dad brought me down there for my first “pesting” job. Those birds where stupid. Never been shoot at until that day. I don’t remember how many I got but it was a lot. The most memorable shot of that day was when my dad had me get up on the roof of his building. They had a decorative metal structure on the front of the buildings and it was a perfect spot for those pigeons to roost and build nests in. When I was up on the roof I could look down inside this structure. I caught two birds sitting on a nest up there. I line them up and took my shot. Head shot both birds with one shot. I yelled down to my dad that I got two. He didn’t believe me at first. When the birds started thrashing about like most things do when shot in the head one bird fell out. We had our Chesapeake Retriever with us that day and was retrieving all the birds I shot. He scooped up the first bird when it fell down and a second or two later here came the second bird. It hit the ground thrashing about and the dog didn’t know what to do with it at first because he was already holding one. So he ran over to it and just stood on it as proud as could be. Wish we had a picture of that.
 
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Great stories guys!

55 years ago, my brother, who is 10 years older than me, surprised me with a Daisy springer out of the blue. It wasn’t my birthday or any special occasion or anything, he handed me two tins of .22 Daisy pellets and told me he had bought me some BB’s. I opened them and told him that these were not BB’s and he acted like he he had made a mistake. He then reached behind his chair and handed me my first pellet gun. I don’t even know what model it was but it had a scope mounted on it and I was the envy of the neighborhood.
 
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I will have to tell this air gun story.

I had orders to stay in the yard. Next thing I know I am down at the next farm, about .75 miles from the yard. The kid that lived there was about 3 grades ahead of me in school.

He had a hunting knife and a bb rifle. He told me what a great shot he was and If I could out shoot him he would give me the knife. I out shot him and he got mad and did not give the knife to me. I sailed on him with all I had. I was raised to do what you say. The fight lasted till my Dad came and found me. In the fight I lost one of my new shoes which was really bad.

So I got a spanking for leaving yard and my Dad having to hunt me down. The next day I got a spanking for not taking care of my shoes. I earned both.

However my Dad told his Dad the reason his son was beat up was because he did not keep his word. So at suppertime there was a knock on the door. It was the kid giving me the knife. He told me he was sorry and I could never shoot his BB gun again.

God Bless

Bobby
 
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Way back...I am 72 now...when I was about 12/13 I bought a crossman target pistol, a CO2 powered that looked like a Luger. Was supposed to be an actual match grade pistol. As we were in the local dept store browsing the varity of these crossman pistols I noticed one of them had a much longer barrel than all the others. I chose the long barrel model as it was different and the only one they had, all the others were shorter length. Shot that pistol for many years, my Dad and I spent countless hours and hundreds of CO 2 cartridges and yes that pistol was a tack driver!!! When I turned 16, care became important so I sold that pistol to get my first car. Paid less than 30 for it but sold it for 50. Some years later, I once again got the airgun bug and started looking into target pistols and quality springer rifles. I came across a very interesting article on match pistols at the local library. The artical was all about Crossman match pistols. It seems that Crossman made lots ofvthese luger type CO2 pistols with the standard barrel but only a limited number of the long barrel "professional" target models and they had become quite the collector catch if you could even find one!! I believe that the dept store "Mason's" where I bought my pistol accidently recieved one ofvthe long barrel match units unknowingly and I was lucky enough to be there at the right time to own one. If I had known, I certainly would have kept it. It wasn't until the early 90" s until I found another pistol that could match the accuracy of that old Crossman long barrel CO2 pistol. I looked thru some old blue books of guns at a show not long back and found my old pistol on display on one of the pages, it stated "very rare and extremely accurate, never produced for the general public" only made in small lots as a trainer for professional marksman" . Lots of fond memories there......
 
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Drooling at the Daisy "Champion 99" behind the counter at the local Big Blue store. Saved all I could for about 6 months and had about $23. The gun was just over $25. Dad knew I really wanted that BB gun and on one of our trips to the store, He let me buy it with my money, and even though I was short, he put in the extra few bucks, and bought me one of those milk cartons of BB's. I was in heaven then. 

That summer I spent Sunday afternoons with my best friend who would come home with us after church. We would walk about a mile down the gravel road to a small bridge with our BB guns and lots of BB's. We would throw empty pop cans in the creek on the upstream side. Then when the cans emerged on the downstream side, we would shoot them (or at least at them) until they either sank or were too far away. Just so many memories shooting at those cans, and reloading as fast as we could to be the one to land the last shot that sunk the can. Those were some good summers.


 
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Cutting grass and washing cars to get money to buy pellets for my Crosman 101.
1574025823_15737245685dd1ba5fbffef0.96115356_05-20-16-01-Crosman-101.1626842149.jpg

 
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has to be the summer of 1974 i was 12 years old lived in small town my buddys and i all packed bb pistols and a daisy youth buck in the waist bands of our pants i remember the pistols were a marksman repeater and a daisy 12 shot cowboy pistol we packed those guns around town all that summer being careful when went home for supper not to let are parents discover what we were up to many argurements were settled at the point of those three barrels or a shot to the leg many things happened that summer involveing those guns kids would be arrested for today we were probaly watching way to much bonanza anyways the 60s annd 70s was a great time to be a kid for me
 
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