The Firearms Blog is one of the most interesting and instructive firearms sites on the Internet. Here’s one that brought me back…way back.
A Springfield 87-A was the first firearm I ever shot. My dad told me I was four years old. I remember him balancing the gun on his palm while I sort of climbed over the too-long-for-a-child-to-shoulder stock to aim and press its heavy trigger. It was my older sister’s rifle. It was passed down to me and this humble gun holds an important spot in my gun safe and in my memory.
The guy in the video got stuck with a jam-a-matic sample. Ours always worked fine with .22 Long Rifle High Velocity ammo. My dad sent me to the Western Auto store diagonally across the street from his jewelry store to buy ammo. .22 LR was 75 cents for a box of fifty rounds.
Memories…
My Gramps (a Mexican incursion and WWI veteran under Pershing) introduced me to shooting with his .22-caliber air rifle. We’d sit on his back patio and pick of squirrels in his berry patch.
Later in life he’d use me as a hunting dog going for squirrels in the woods. It was my job to hang around while he sat on a folding stool with a .22 rifle. A squirrel would come down, and I’d go around to the far side of the trunk, which sent the squirrel over to Gramps’ side, where he’d pop it. I’m sure it sounds insanely dangerous now, but it worked quite well. He’d give the all-clear, I’d grab the squirrel to bring back to him, and he’d field dress it (skin it, gut it, and behead it) to tuck into his game bag.
That was the first rifle I ever shot. I never could find a brand name on it, but it was a single-shot bolt gun that had to be separately cocked after being loaded and the bolt closed. I can almost feel the knurling on the round cocking piece at the rear end of the receiver just thinking about it. Time-worn with probably half of the blueing gone from repeated cleaning, the bore was still bright and that rifle was angle-of-squirrel-head accurate at 25 yards.
Once he taught me to shoot well enough we traded off some of the shooting, but his war wound was too painful for him to walk far through the woods, so I still did all the spooking and retrieving. After I got my dog (a doofus Golden Retriever, but a great hunter) we used him for that, and would sit for hours in the woods, just quietly talking and waiting. Some of my best memories of my Gramps are from hunting like that, and the fishing that we did.
Your Gramps’ rifle sounds like the dead spit of my Dad’s ancient old piece. I suspect he got that when he was a kid. All nine of us siblings made our first shots with that old thing. Dad could hit a dime a LONG ways off, but then he’s launched probably tens of thousands of rounds.
When very young and small I had to really work at cocking that beast. It wasn’t so bad when I got a bit bigger and stronger. Also gave opportunity to play the Big Brother Hero when my lil sisses needed help with cocking that rifle.
My first “real gun” was a Winchester model 62 pump .22 s/l/lr rimfire. Got it for Christmas when I was 9. My older brother got his Winchester model 1906 pump .22 for his 9th Christmas. Our Dad had a Winchester 1896 Winchester pump that shot.22 shorts only. Dad’s and brother’s had hex barrels. All 3 were tack-drivers. I passed mine down to my oldest son who will pass it down to his.
I remember watching the then newly released John Wayne movie “The Alamo” in 1960 and thinking that if the defenders had all been armed with a .22 pump repeater like mine, they would have slaughtered them Mexicans on that final assault. (my family are born and bred Texicans).
Retired now, my .22’s are still my “go-to” weapon for 99% of my firearm needs on my remote mountain homestead.
(correction)-my Dad’s rifle was an 1890 Winchester pump.
Ah, yes, those were the days. We could plink and have fun all afternoon.
on about two dollars, too……
Yeah my dad’s guns, .22 and .410 were both Western Auto brand. I remember collecting pop bottles from the road side to trade for 22 shorts at the country store. At age 9. No adult supervision yet somehow we all survived.
because you were reared right…..
Mine was a Rem. Nylon 66. Worked all summer picking beans, strawberries, making hay, and
piling brush to burn to buy it. I was 15 and I still have it today. It was 1964 and in rural TN the
legalities were not so strictly obeyed when the store owner has known you since birth nearly.
It still shoots great and has a million memories attached to it.
Dano
A nice memory. My first rifle was a Marlin 22 LR though I was 14 at the time. Nice gun but way better than I was!
My dad bought a Marlin Model 60 .22 long rifle just about the time Jack Kennedy was assassinated. We lived in Washington Heights in New York City, but since he was the superintendent of the building we used to shoot in the basement. He died in a car accident when I was 12, my Mom gave his guns away. After I left The Peoples Republic of New Jersey in 1989 for Virginia, the first gun I purchased was a Marlin Model 60. It still shoots like a laser beam.
My first rifle was a Sears Model 2C. This was a .22 bolt-action rifle that hold 7-rounds of 22 Short, Long, or Long-Rifle in the magazine. The 1970 Sears Hunting Catalog shows that it sold for $36.99.
Sears was a retailer not a manufacturer of firearms. They (typically) would get some established firearms manufacturer to produce a run of one of their models that would be re-branded with the Sears name. For example, my Model 2C is actually a Winchester Model 131 design. Winchester made a batch of these rifle for Sears marked with the Sears name and Model 2C designation.
My father bought the rifle for me in 1969. This gun logged a lot of memories. My father and I used to go squirrel hunting (a lot) back in the 1970’s to early 1980’s. We would use a squirrel dog and hunt them after the leaves had fallen in late Fall to early Winter. My father and I formed a “Two-man Team”. My father carried a 16 GA and would be the “Shotgun Man”. He would act to bag the squirrel if it tried to run and “ride out” through the tree tops to escape.
However, if the squirrel tried to hide instead, my dad would walk around the tree and turn the squirrel over to my side. I had a scope sight on the old 2C and I would pop the squirrel with a .22 LR LHP when it moved into view.
Between the 2C, me, my Dad, and a good squirrel dog, a squirrel was “hard put” to make a successful getaway! 🙂 We bagged a lot of squirrel for the frying pan. My dad was particularly fond of “squirrel and gravy”.
My father has been gone for a decade now and I seldom get out to hunt anymore. Nevertheless, I still have the Old 2C in the gun safe and it is still a “tack driver”. Needless to say, its value to me is much more than its “Blue Book” value!
I have a Savage 6B version that was left to me by an uncle. It’s in great condition. I have several other .22’s but I occasionally take it out and shoot it using CCI Mini Mags and it seems pretty accurate and functions everytime.
While vacationing at a ranch this summer, my two youngest children asked to buy toy guns sold at the gift shop. I object to toy guns because of the bad habits and behaviors learned with no appreciation for the risks and responsibilities involved with firearms.
I told them we would not buy the toy guns, but I was considering an alternative. After discussing the matter with their mother and getting her approval, I hired an NRA instructor at an indoor range which allowed shooters under age 10. The kids were more than satisfied to abandon their desire for toys when they knew they could experience the real thing.
They watched the Jeff Cooper “4 rules of gun safety” until they could predictably and confidentially recite them. https://youtu.be/Jjk3j2bsxVw?si=Lbkf05Nm1jtHbOBF
We also prepared in advance with basic handling, grip, muzzle discipline and stance using a blue gun.
They fired 22LR and 9mm pistols and now understand why handling and safety can be undermined by toy guns.
Of course, their mother bought the toy gun revolvers anyway, and I have to admit they look good in chrome. But the kids know all toy guns are loaded, never to point them at anything they’re not prepared to completely destroy or put their fingers on the trigger unless they are in the act of firing at a known target as well as what’s behind it.
My first hunting experiences were as a ‘bird dog’ for mom and dad on their dove hunts, retrieving the birds they knocked down. My first shooting experience was with my mom’s Stevens bolt action chambered for .22 short, long and long rifle. Dad would take me out to a gravel pit or the Trinity River bottoms to plink at cans (Ironically right about where the Dallas Pistol Club is now located). I have a picture of my mom wearing a skirt and blouse standing on a bridge shooting that gun into a creek bottom when she was about 15 years old in the late 1920’s or early 30’s. The road on which that bridge was located was one block over from where we lived when I was in junior and senior high school, and she learned to drive on that street since it was the farthest north paved street in Dallas County at that time. Again, that would have been in the late 20’s/early 30’s, and it didn’t take long for Dallas to have many, many more paved streets north of that road. Dad brought home a Weaver 4X scope when I was about 7 or 8, and we mounted it on that .22, which then became my first ‘sniper rifle’, doling out justice to the enemies of America. I still have that rifle and still shoot it occasionally, bringing back a lot of pleasant and formative memories.
Mine was a used single shot Winchester targetmaster I bought from a pawn shop for 3 dollars when I was 8 years old. I shot many boxes of 22 shorts which at that time was 25 cents a box. Still have it along with my first shotgun, a single shot 16 gauge I bought when I was 12