Remember, way back over 60 years ago, us kids would save, scrounge soda bottles for refunds, pool our money, and go out and buy a box or two of .22 Shorts. We would shoot at the rats all day at the dump or at least till we ran out of ammo. The smell of garbage on a hot summer day reminds me of those times. Those were great times and I am fortunate to have been born back then. Even though my two old shooting friends and I live a thousand miles apart we still keep in touch.

Today it doesn't get more boring for me than punching holes in paper or ringing steel targets. We have to have semiautos that burn box upon box of ammo to keep ourselves entertained. We put up with the range ninjas and the circus of wannabes. Yea, I know things have changed and so have I. When I go shooting today, I try to go when it's not crowded. There is nothing like just getting ready to squeeze off that perfect shot and have someone next to you crank one out of a .338 Lupa.

How bout the rest of you old curmudgeons.

one of the more amazing things from shooting as a youngster was shooting a 22LR at the correct angle into a pond, and seeing the bullet skip across the pond like skipping a rock.

to this day I am amazed at this. luckily I had a very remote area and a pond with a pretty good backstop for which to do such experiments.

It's like most things from 'back in the day,' I imagine.

I recall taking my only gun, a semi-auto .22, to the crick, shooting carp and anything else we could find (those suckers are hard to hit after the first shot, by the way). It was fun, and nostalgia makes it seem even more enjoyable.

Now, I have wayyy more guns than that single .22. I have greater resources, and therefore have more expensive toys. So, in most measurable senses, it's more fun now.

However, qualitatively, I'm not so sure. Like most things from my youth, bigger isn't always better.

I remember the joy of just driving around my first piece-of-crap car (which literally tried to kill me on numerous occasions; I called her Christine without any irony). I paid 20x as much for my current vehicle as that first piece of crap car, but I do miss Christine, and I often daydream about her.

Or, how about the simple childhood pleasure of blowing bubbles, or sledding down a big hill. Or playing the Atari 2600 in the Sears at the mall, hoping one day that my parents would dish out the huge amount ($125 or so back then, IIRC) for one of our own. Watching our 3+ channels of tv (big three, and 2-3 UHF channels), laughing our butts off at the Duke Boys, thrilling to the adventures of the Million Dollar Man, and crushing HARD after Wonder Woman (sigh) and Charlies Angels (sigh sigh sigh) even though I did not understand why at the time. . .

I do recall that, as amazing as the new Godzilla movies are, I certainly enjoyed the crappy 70's versions a lot more when I was a kid.

So, I do see your point. It seems 'more fun' in retrospect. However, I'm not sure if that is because back then was better, or just more simple.

Yes. It was more fun for a variety of reasons. Access to places to shoot was never a problem. Against a hill on a back road, unused gravel pit, etc. No one called SWAT on you.

We also did most of our shooting for fun or just plain marksmanship. The notion that every round fired must be "training" for some deadly encounter is a relatively recent trend.

It is not having an accessible place to safely plink at cans, blocks of wood, plastic jugs that I miss most. Now our habitat has diminished with the increased population and spread of subdivisions, local gov't regulation, etc.

We can go out in the desert and shoot all we want here in Arizona and I'm sure in other states too.

Yes, I have fond memories of shooting in those days, but not all types of ranges have problems and oppressive rules and range officers.

The indoor range I shoot at every week has management that knows me personally and knows that I bring 15 or so other people with me to shoot and have for over 7 years, so they pretty much leave us alone.

I also shoot trap or skeet or 5 stand once a week at a place that's great as there are no R.O.s at all and the place is on the honor system for paying for clay targets. It's great and you get to break things all day long (clay pigeons).

I am a curmudgeon but I am not old. So I will yell at clouds with you in spirit.

That said I miss the days of burning 500 rounds of 7.62x39 JUST FOR GIGGLES. You know lighting up some clay in the berm or making dirt jump etc. nothing more nothing less. The ammo was cheap, I didn’t have enough skill to worry about not having enough skill and it was all just fun playing with toys. (NOTE ALWAYS IN A SAFE AND RESPONSIBLE MANNER).

I miss just playing with and sharing my toys on a whim.

A creek with a rock wall about 25 0r 30 feet high.
Shooting the icicles off the wall with my glenfield 60!

Cans and bottles make awesome targets. Hand thrown clays (thanks dad!) for my brother and I are also memories of yester-year.

Bolt action .22 made a box of ammo go a loooong way.

One day I'll have enough land to safely have my own little range.

quote:

Originally posted by radioman:
one of the more amazing things from shooting as a youngster was shooting a 22LR at the correct angle into a pond, and seeing the bullet skip across the pond like skipping a rock.

to this day I am amazed at this. luckily I had a very remote area and a pond with a pretty good backstop for which to do such experiments.

Yes, and I remember how far a 22lr can travel after it hits the pond and then hits a tin shed way on the other side of the pond.

We used to set up army men in our unfinished basement and shoot them with our BB guns.

What fun dodging the ricocheting BB's hitting the concrete floor and walls

I despise shooting at a range. ANY supervised range.

For me, shooting is all about having fun. I want to be able to do WHAT I want, WHEN I want and HOW I want. I most definitely do NOT want to deal with someone looking over my shoulder, having to keep an eye on some bozo next to me or dealing with Safety Nazis, rules, regulations and restrictions.

So much so, in fact, that I'd rather not shoot at all than deal with range restrictions.

An abandoned gravel pit, a case of clay birds and a few boxes of ammo is my idea of "shooting".

Where I grew up (Tallahssee FL) there was this big area South of town where the NG guys would drive tanks. Dirt road access and degens would use it as a trash dump but that was cool with me and my friend Steve. Wed go out and shoot anything we found. Old refrigerators, bottles, phone books, etc. Have you ever shot a toilet with a 22? Damn that porcelain explodes. We found a bowling ball and Steve shot it with his Marlin 336 and the damn thing split in half.

So a few years back I took my nephew out there and we are shooting 22 and some 9MM. Not as much trash as I recall but we brought targets.

After about a half an hour, two mountain bikers come out of the woods and say "Hey your shooting in our bike trail area, and I really dont want to get shot".

So yeah, shooting was way more fun back in the day.

quote:

Originally posted by MNSIG:
Yes. It was more fun for a variety of reasons. Access to places to shoot was never a problem. Against a hill on a back road, unused gravel pit, etc. No one called SWAT on you.

We also did most of our shooting for fun or just plain marksmanship. The notion that every round fired must be "training" for some deadly encounter is a relatively recent trend.

I believe a serious factor was that we were "kids", and kids just seem to have more fun in their play activities.

I never had the experience of shooting just for fun. My dad grew up when every shot had to bring home something to eat, so we did no shooting for pleasure.

flashguy

Hitting actual movable targets is definitely more fun than paper. I still have the first 10/22 I was given 40 years ago that sank hundreds of cans while sitting on the bank of a lake. I enjoy going to the range but it’s nothing compared to being out with Mother Nature and friends.

quote:

Originally posted by Flash-LB:
We can go out in the desert and shoot all we want here in Arizona...

Living on the outskirts of Tucson in the late 60's and riding our bikes to the closest Circle K to buy a box or 2 of 22's and then spending all day in the desert without having our Mom's going crazy with worry... Yep, that was fun.

I was going to respond in a different thread about less range time due to lack of ammo; however this one is closer to why my range time has dropped almost completely off...

1. There aren't any good ranges near where I live now.
2. As the OP said the tactical-cool-guys are out of control. I mean I read Recoil magazine online too, but dang...
3. No one around me except my daughters to shoot with and they are at the age where other hobbies are first in line.

Now get off my lawn...

Growing up in NYC with liberal parents, guns were out of the question. Now is the fun time for me.

I don't care for most ranges primarily because the average shooter can't be trusted to be safe. They scare the shit out of me. I am in fear of being shot through the partitions.

The excessively controlling ranges also take a lot of fun out of it.

Last time I was in a range the guy next to me had his ten or twelve year old with him. "Great," you might think, taking a kid shooting. But damn - he was so full of bad advice that he was probably ruining the kid as a shooter. Even worse, everything (and I mean everything) he said was expressed in the negative. "Don't never do . . .." "Never do . . .." I don't think he gave one positively phrased instruction or once told the kid he was doing well. I shouldn't let others affect me so much, but he was terrible.

As a kid, I used to shoot at a dump too. I recall being impressed that Hi-Speed .22 shorts would penetrate the outer sheet metal of old car doors, while the "bigger" standard velocity .22 Longs only dented the doors. I didn't quite understand why that would be at the time. Perhaps the beginning of my ballistic curiosity