We pretty much always shot 22 shorts, as they were cheaper than longs and LR ammo. Going to the dump to shoot rats, or just getting up on Sat. morning and grabbing my .22 to go hunt. Sometimes I had a shooting buddy, but most of the time it was just me. I still own that .22 rifle(Marlin 39A Mountie), and wouldn't take for it. Life was so simple then.

My buddies and I would walk the rail road tracks out of town. 410 shotguns and .22's became 12 gauges and borrowed .38's. The rail road supervisor highly encouraged us to shoot groundhogs as they dug under the racks. We complied the best that we could. Since RR property extended beyond the tracks we had ample "shooting range" to use (always with backstop). There were also several old dumps choc full of interesting items to shoot.

Years later the tracks are no more and urban sprawl is king.

Ranges are OK if well run however, ventilating an ad hoc target is still the most fun to me.


Lock N Load

Michael
USMC Ret

I shoot in some woods on a farm. I love the freedom and solitude. I'll kill a few boxes of clay pigeons or spend time shooting prone at paper from the truck bed at a moderate distance. Then I'll usually just sit on the tailgate and enjoy a beverage or two while enjoying the sounds of the woods. Its the best way for me to recharge.

quote:

Originally posted by RETTOP:

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.

Living south of Fairbanks Alaska in the 1950s and taking my dog, my pack, my fishing rod and .22 Rifle out each summer day was great also.

In the 80's, poor as a church mouse. I plinked a lot with my Winchester 1894 in .32 Winchester special. Rounds were loaded on a Lee Loader, Hornady 170gr. bullets. IMR 3031 powder. Pennies a shot, and it kept me sharp for big game season. The OP is right, it was more fun back then.

Nosticks,

No dump site for my friends and I. We either treked to a local quarry to shoot our 22s or hiked to Woodchuck Hill Road (yup, that was the name) and thinned that population.

Great times that today's youngsters are deprived of.

I grew up in the city with no guns. I didn't get into shooting until 20 years ago when I was 31. But I can see where the OP is coming from. The range warriors are a turn off and going to the range can be awesome or a pain in the ass depending on people there.

I'm lucky enough to have enough land to shoot on my own property now. It's fun. I am also finally taking classes at Sig Academy just for fun and skills. I'm enjoying it immensely.

No such exotic weaponry in my neighborhood...however Red Rider was well known
and bbs were easily acquired. There wasn't
a tin can or mud clod safe at certain times.

Sometimes Mr. Beeman would let us dig around in his
ever expanding collection of treasures he
hauled home on the bus from Paul's Main Auction.

I too remember a bolt action .22 with a box of 50 LR rounds. It would take the better part of the afternoon to kill what cans we could find.

Yes, those were fun days indeed.

First firearm for me was in 1961, a JC Higgins (Sears-Roebuck) single shot bolt action .22. My dad helped me mount a scope and we zeroed it in on a porcelain doorknob set on top of a fencepost. We lived on an oil lease outside of town, so shooting around there wasn’t much of a problem.

Until last year, the wife and I had acreage in the country, so a private range we had provided many hours of enjoyable pistol and rifle shooting. I lost count of the feral hogs I took down there. Sold the place, so now all I can do is go to a local indoor range. Weekdays, I can get in early and fire 100-200 rounds without too much bother from other shooters. Management there doesn’t bother the clientele unless someone is doing something really stupid or unsafe. It’s OK, but nothing like shooting in the outdoors away from the distractions of city life.

My best friend in high school and I would strap our 22’s to the handle bars of our bikes, and pedal the 5 or so miles to his uncles farm.( our town had a no firearms discharge ordinance but his uncle lived the next town over which was clear for shooting)
He had a very old steel target with 2 small ducks ( about 3” in size) that fell over when hit. Then a small bullseye about the size of an NRA fifty foot bullseye when hit would reset the ducks. When we left the farm one day, the uncle gave us the target. When I built my own house in the country the target was mounted to an old stump behind my garage. I would shoot from inside the garage
Later when I moved wet I gave the old target to another friend with a country cabin for his son to shoot at.
While in college ( small college in the country) we could keep our guns stored at the campus security office and get them when we wanted and set up targets in the woods around the school.
The small general store in the town had boxes of 22’s for a dollar

quote:

Originally posted by GT-40DOC:
We pretty much always shot 22 shorts, as they were cheaper than longs and LR ammo. Going to the dump to shoot rats, or just getting up on Sat. morning and grabbing my .22 to go hunt. Sometimes I had a shooting buddy, but most of the time it was just me. I still own that .22 rifle(Marlin 39A Mountie), and wouldn't take for it. Life was so simple then.

Marlin 39 lever; my favorite .22 rifles. My uncle had an early sixties Mountie, the .22 I learned on and still my favorite. My brother and I got matching Golden 39A's. Tack drivers, all of them. I sold mine sometime in my mid-twenties (big regret; must have really needed money; I don't remember).

I shoot at a State Wildlife Management Area . The range is unsupervised and right now mostly empty .Not too bad most days . Just don't go on a weekend . That's when the Elmer Fudds are out .

Still fun for me. My Dad took us out to my Grandparents place out side of town when my brother and I where kids. We shot gophers and bottles and had lots of fun. Eventually their place got annexed into the City limits so we you have to hike about half a miles over to the neighbors land.

Today I go out on US Forest Service Grass Land 10 minutes from my house. I shoot at targets for a bit and then hike over to the a prairie dog town and see what I can do to help the cattle ranchers out. I too like to go out by myself and not around others. Public Ranges piss me off.

I had a single shot 22 back when I was nine. I don't remember how much a box of 22 shorts sold for in the 50's but I must have shot thousands of rounds thru that little rifle.

I'm reliving my youth I guess because I am really enjoying shooting the 22 again. Oh, I have many more rifles and pistols to choose from now but the fun has stayed the same.

When I was young, we mainly shot a .22lr lever action at Grampa's ranch. We didn't all that often, nor very many rounds per day, but it was really quite fun. Targets were mainly tin cans and bottles that couldn't be recycled for money. Somewhere, I have a picture of the first porcupine that I shot -- Grampa, Dad, and I were all grinning ear-to-ear. Those were simpler times, and I look back at them fondly.

Today, I still shoot primarily at the same family ranch, and I still have that old 22 lever action. Instead of a shooting a handful of days per year, I now shoot roughly three days per month. I'm no longer limited to a lever action 22 with mediocre accuracy. I have a selection of quality rim fire and center fire rifles, with quality optics, in both bolt action and semi auto.

I have a decent selection of steel targets. I can set the targets up close, like we did in the past. Or I can set the targets at distances that were unfathomable to me as a kid. And anything in between. I have barriers and props to shoot from, to test and improve my shooting skills. And I now have shooting skills that I couldn't imagine as a grade-school kid.

I now can afford ammo in fairly large quantities. Decent quality match ammo, so I can shoot tiny groups, or so I can hit targets a long ways away.

I now have suppressors, which makes a whole lot more sense to my own well being. And the reduced noise helps to keep the neighbors friendly.

Times marches forward, situations change. I'll take today. I'm having a boatload of fun shooting these days.

OK, go find your local cowboy club and go out for some Cowboy Action Shooting. Low power cowboy loads in pistol calibers, single action pistols, lever rifles and 1800's style shotguns. If you are in a good club and a good posse you can have fun, be a "cowboy" again and interact with some like minded folks. If you want to pursue that competitive thing you can do that too, but the club and posse I go with are all out for fun first.

100 round brick of .22LR for a $1.99, a twelve pack of beer, a field full of gophers, and a couple of buddies.

Damned fun way to spend an afternoon.

(Yeah yeah yeah...I know. It was still a whole lot of fun)

my buddy had a barn and in one of the rooms they kept all the oats for the cows. every once in a while we would go in that room pull back a bag of oats and the mice would scatter we both had ruger single six .22 pistols, We would shoot the mice when they ran across the cement floor bullets flying everywhere but we never cared, fun times.

Funny how certain things really stand out from the past. Mine was probably 1970, two friends and I went up north for a weekend.

We took our .22's and went out dumpsite hunting along the two tracks, three of us in a '68 Barracuda convertible. We had lunch, and a six pack of cold Cokes. We quickly went through our ammunition as we were all using semi autos. Gordy went to town and came back with a brick of Super X's. The rats weren't too happy with us.