What did you shoot in your youth?

1960........still have it,and it still shoots

We lived in a Borough at the time and it wasn't unusual for a group of kids to be walking down the street, Mod 25's in hand, heading out of town to do some shooting . No one thought a thing of it.

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Same here, we used to ride through town with the rifle slung across our back...

Daisy 1894. I realized I was a better shot than I thought I was When I got older and found out how inaccurate they are. When my oldest brother wasn't around I would sneak out with his Crosman 1400. I bought my own pellets so he wouldn't suspect anything. I murdered the sparrows with it. 

Wait a minute! I'm still a kid. 60's just a number. Let's go out and play.

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...with a wood pump handle Crosman 760 in between the two mirrors my story. I used to cheat and load 3-5 bb's in the smooth bore 760.

Once I got the 1400,I was amazed at the difference a .22 pellet made! The front sight got busted off,so off came the rear and I adapted to shooting that "clacker" instinctively. The more pumps that were added...the heavier the trigger pull got.

My how things have changed...

Mike

1st gun was some kind of spring action BB "45 ACP" style pistol. It was so weak you could easily watch the pellet arc to the ground 10 yards away. Then in '72 at 12 years old, I bought a Crosman 1st variant M1 rifle and I took it everywhere with me. Then I discovered pellets and picked up the venerable Crosman 760 in a trade. Soon after that was a Crosman 454 CO2 pistol in the mid '70s that I had well into my 30s, until it was replaced with a 2240.

I still have my original "wrist rocket" I bought in the early 70s.

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Hey Bro, I'm was also born in 1960!

I had one of those pistols too.

My first was a Daisy FieldMaster pump BB rifle at age 8.

Diana M27 pellet gun in 1970, bought in Germany where my Dad was stationed.

Had a C760 afterwards.

All those were worn out and then got another Diana in 74.

Lots of Daisy BB guns, my favorite was the target model which I shot Bee's with. First airgun I got that I considered a serious gun was a Sheridan .20 when I was maybe 9. A year later my brother bought one for himself and being a tinkerer he made a silencer for it out of foam hair curlers taped together in a tube. Imagine a 1x10 pipe vented filled with open cell foam having maybe 1/4" hole through the middle. He stored the silencer with a dowel stuck in it to keep the hole evenly formed. I used that design on both my single shot CO2 crossman target pistol and on the Crossman semiautomatic CO2 pistol----good times

Same as some other old timers mentioned -Daisy Model 25.I was 5, pictured here on the left with my older brother in1959.We got them for Christmas that year.Those cellophane packages of BBs Lightload mentioned cost a nickel.You could tell a kid owned a 25 because they always had a blood blister on a finger caused by the spring loaded tab from the magazine slipping loose and whacking it while loading BBs.

RAW HM1000X 

Red ryder 1988 50 year anniversary edition. Still have it.

Dasiy 25 for me. It was 1960 and bb,s came in a red tube that was crimped like a shotgun shell. They made great targets when empty. I hated loading that thing until I learned to speed load it by dumping the bb,s into my mouth and blowing them into the tube. The things kids won't do and remember.

Mike

Speaking of shooting "things" in our youth, some of our favorite targets back then were pine-cones of various shape and size.

• Every so often, one of the neighbors would be out painting stuff, and would give us the left over to paint our cones
• When I'd visit the grand-parent's farm I'd gather feather from the hen house... and dress up the cones as birds, to better shoot them
• Or we'd lug a bucket of them to the creek, and try to shoot them as they came down
• Then we'd be hitting the neighbors to mow the lawn, rake leaves, and clean up the ditch/park of empty bottles... to raise $ for more pellets!

I guess we were easily amused.

Hi all,

I have no pictures because now I live in the other side of the planet, but In my youth I used the following air guns.

MILBRO G25 cal. .177

FLECHA cal. .177

COMETA V cal. .177

DIANA 24 cal. .177

DIANA 35 cal. .177

NORICA MARVIC GOLD cal. .177

After that in the last 15 years only pcp´s.

BSA SUPERTEN cal. .22

BENJAMIN DISCOVERY cal. .22

AIR ARMS 410 FAC cal. .22

AIR ARMS 510 XTRA FAC cal. .22

DARK BULL cal. .22

KALIBRGUN CRICKET cal. .22

AIRGUN TECHNOLOGY VULCAN cal. .22

BROCOCK COMMANDER cal. .22

ARTEMIS P15 cal. .22

ARTEMIS PP700W cal. .177

Slavia 631 LUX. The most quality springer I had the pleasure of owning. I would kill to have another but unfortunately, they don’t import them from CZ anymore. The one I had before was stolen. Additionally, they’re costly now. My father bought one for $70 USD. Now they go for over $200. 

 

Back in the day I had a Benjamin pump and when I did not have pellets I would shoot finish nails and anything else I could find that was the right size. Looking back that was probably not the best idea but it was fun and it never gave me any issues.

Daisy Mod 25 pump action. All the kids.I.ran around with (late 50's) had one. If.someone showed up to shoot without Mod 25, they soon wanted one after they saw ours in action.

BB's were sold in little cellophane bags. Dont remember how much a bag cost or how many BB's were in the bag but one bag was generally enough for a good shooting session.

We lived in a Borough at the time and it wasn't unusual for a group of kids to be walking down the street, Mod 25's in hand, heading out of town to do some shooting . No one thought a thing of it.

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I got the same Daisy model 25 rifle for Christmas in 1962 when I was 9 years old. Still have it, and it works just fine.

Copper colored BBs came in cardboard tubes. I think there were 500 BBs in a tube?

Crosman Power Master 760 wooden stock. Christmas of 1968.

Back in 1954, age 12, my parents did not allow me to have a BB gun, but said I could have a .22 rifle after I had NRA training. After many years of that rifle, handguns and shotguns, I bought my first air gun, a HW 77 scoped rifle, in 1997 after seeing them at my gun club. Got "serious" with air guns about 5 years ago. The one I shoot most often is my Crosman Custom Shop 2300 pistol with a red dot sight. I encourage anyone who is just starting out to get a very accurate Crosman 1377 pump pistol for only $60..

Started with a Daisy Red Rider then upgraded to the Crosman 760. 13 pumps for starlings. 18 pumps for squirrels.

The venerable (to me!!) Marksman 1790. I must have put 10k pellets thru that thing. I knew nothing of rebuilding or even maintaining most anything back then. By the end, the barrel would not latch back up. I still managed to empty several tins that way. Also had I known then that Sparrows and Starlings were invasive, and considered more than fair game. there would have been a lot less guilty feeling nights, and a lot less of the birds..

Benjamin pump model 312. Killed a multitude of critters with that gun. Had it rebuilt after I reached adulthood and still own it.