Taking my then 12 y.o. daughter to a local rural shooting range and setting up empty 12ga shotgun hulls on the 100 yard target rails so she can plink them off with my Ruger 77/22 rifle w/3x9 Leupold scope. She got so good with the rifle that I then had her shoot my Ruger MK I @ 25 yards at the same little targets. Now at 51 she just received from me a new Ruger 40101 .22 so she can take her two sons (12 & 17) to the range.

When an FBI friend brought his toys to play with. My first time shooting auto and I giggled like a little girl. Watching my wife shoot was even more fun.

This summer my daughter and her family came from northern VA to visit for a few days. Her husband brought his .22 pistol and the grandsons aged 10 and 12 got to shoot something other than my pellet guns for the first time.

We went out back to my "range" and they had a blast, the favorite was hitting the skeet pucks which were in a stand. Here's the oldest shooting my CZ 452 full Stock.

I'd love to have a full-stock rifle like your CZ 452!! Missed the chance to get a CZ 550FS, as well as the Ruger 10/22, but I see the occasional Ruger on some of the auction sights, maybe some day...

quote:

Originally posted by Expert308:
When I was a kid in Montana we would sit on a river bank and shoot at sticks floating down the river with a .22. Great fun.

That would be great fun. You can see exactly where your round hits.
We had a spot where the Great Miami river emptied into the Ohio river, could only get there in a jeep. And like skipping a smooth stone across a pond, we did the same with 22's. See how many skips before it hit the bank of a small island about a quarter mile away!

Green June beetles and BB guns.

As a kid we had an out-of-state uncle we would visit occasionally. He had lots of land with nothing around in any direction. He had a lot of firearms, and we were allowed to grab pretty much whatever we wanted whenever we wanted.

Back then I was a pretty good shot, and so was my brother. We each had a .22 that was "ours" so we'd head out in the morning with a few bricks of ammo and some empty shotgun shell cartridges. We'd line the shotgun shells up on a fence 20-30 yards away, and shoot them off until they got too beat up to shoot. After that we would put spent .22 casings on the fence and shoot at those for more of a challenge. It was a ton of fun, and both my brother and I got to be really good shots shooting at those tiny casings for hours every day.

I rarely get to shoot at all these days, and when I do I'm not even on the same marksmanship planet as I was when I was a kid.

two things come to mind immediately

first was a SF gathering at an outdoor range in Smoketown, PA where we had a literal blast - great time that day

the second was shooting at bowling pins on saw horses

why was that fun? well, we were shooting from inside a moving car driving laterally across the range bouncing up and down

When I was a child my Grandfather owned a farm that our family would spend most summers at.
There was a Bolens lawn tractor there, If I could pull the rope to start it I could drive it around the 300 acres and explore.
I had a BB gun that went with me everywhere.
Several creeks ran through the property and there were bridges that spanned the creeks.
The most enjoyment I have ever had shooting was with that BBgun (still have it) from the bridges at water bugs that floated through the creek.
When I die I hope to have my ashes spread there.

When I was in my teens I'd go down to the railroad tracks. A lot of trains were hauling coke in open cars to the steel mills and there was always some along the tracks. There was a steep bank down to a creek. Toss a piece of coke into the ripples and it made a challenging moving target. A solid hit turned it into a black puff in the water.
Some have mentioned corn chips and Neco Wafers. A box of animal crackers and an accurate 22 make for a cheap safari.

AR15 mag dumps into mud puddles kind of does it for me along with shooting 2x2 blocks of wood while it's floating down a small creek.

One time a friend said we could shoot at an abandoned gravel pit, with a 50 foot deep lake. He had four cases of empty beer bottles he taped over the top and threw them in the water to shoot. Great fun till a deputy sheriff crawled over the berm on his hands and knees with his gun in his hand. He ID's us, one guy had an unpaid parking ticket. We had to follow him to the sheriff's office to pay his fines.
I had a friends Winchester 22 mag lever action that had the serial number ground off. Thankfully he didn't check that!

My kid gun was my Remington nylon 66.
My dad was a production forman for Texas Pacific Oil company and one of my high school classmates and buddies dad worked for the gas company that bought all the natural gas from that area and they lived at the old TP camp.
We pretty much had the run of that part of the worlds stock tanks and land. There was an old dump site from years ago that had several old cars cans and stuff ever dumped.
We would go there for plinking and what fun did we have. No one or anything to worry about or get in our way. We tore that place up shooting 22’s.

His mother was our ammo dealer. She would make a weekly run to Abilene every week and she would bring us each a brick of 22’s which was around $5ea as best I remember which was very affordable for each of us in those days.

Really enjoy the end of harvest pumpkin hunt



Guns change every year. Last year it was the X95's in 5.56.

About 15 years ago, after a long day at work, was shooting an AR I no longer own, with a .22 conversion kit. I was at our clubs indoor range, just me and my brother. After 2-3 shoots it does a mag dump of the remaining rounds in the mag. Took me by surprise. Relapsed with different mag, did the same thing. It was fun as hell.

I replaced the trigger kit, which solved the problem, but wrecked the fun factor.

My dad moved down to Florida after he retired years ago. Bought a place in Pompano Beach right on the intercoastal down there. Everybody hates those “goddamn lizards”. Some of those iguanas get pretty big. I’ve seen a few 5 1/2 to 6 foot ones! For a little while, my dad couldn’t figure out how to get rid of until I visited him with a rather nice BB gun and a pith helmet.
He looked at the piss helmet and asked me if I wanted him to be a mailman.
“Naaa! You’re the great white hunter, Bwana!”
And then I handed him the BB gun.

At first, he looked at me like I was crazy. Something about not needing a BB gun since he was 12 years old.

The next morning, sitting on his deck, having a cup of coffee, reading the paper with him, he points at one of the iguanas. I went inside and grabbed the BB gun and zapped the thing.
“Ok, now what do you do with it?”
I chucked it into the water, and said crabs gotta eat too. I hit about 2 more, then came “Give me that thing.”

That’s all she wrote. The smile on his face was priceless! I had a lot of fun sitting on the deck with him, having a cup of coffee, or in the evening a cold beer, and plinking Iguanas.
He kept score too!
Had a little chalk board by the patio door-
Something like 400+ KIA 150ish WPD (Wounded, Presumed Dead)

Maybe 12 or 13 years old shooting wasps off wasp nests hanging off cypress trees over the river in our back yard.

It was a summer past time.

Then there's now.

Shooting rats all night long with the .22 rifles outfitted with TNVs.

quote:

Originally posted by Mustang-PaPa:
My kid gun was my Remington nylon 66………
His mother was our ammo dealer. She would make a weekly run to Abilene every week and she would bring us each a brick of 22’s which was around $5ea as best I remember which was very affordable for each of us in those days.

2nd to .22 Colt, I posted earlier, I still have my Nylon 66. Lots of rapid fire fun! I, too, am of that era of $5.00 of 500 round bricks.

quote:

Originally posted by CPD SIG:
My dad moved down to Florida after he retired years ago. Bought a place in Pompano Beach right on the intercoastal down there. Everybody hates those “goddamn lizards”. Some of those iguanas get pretty big. I’ve seen a few 5 1/2 to 6 foot ones! For a little while, my dad couldn’t figure out how to get rid of until I visited him with a rather nice BB gun and a pith helmet.

Funny you mention that, when we get a cold snap you don't need a firearm, these suckers start going into a weird state that they lock up, go dormant and fall out of trees.

They pick them up and turn them in to be euthanized, last count in one county was 4000+

I worked one year at a Boy Scout, became pretty close with the range-master who took a liking to the guys who enjoyed shooting. Me and a couple of other guys spent a lot of our free time on the range, as we got to the last couple of weeks of the season the range master started giving us brick after brick of .22 ammo to shoot, along with boxes of 12-gauge shells. Wanting to maintain the ammo budget for the next year but, not have too much left-over, we gleefully helped reduce the excess. I think we spent at least 4-5 days each week shooting. It was fun times.