Yep, much more fun back when I was 10-17 years old. Started out with BB guns, then pellet guns and then .22 which if I recall correctly, was at 13-14 years old. We lived in a rural area with about 500 acres of semi farm land across the the road with the farmer not living on the land. He was a good guy who also enjoyed shooting and he told us that as long as we don't screw his crops up, we could have unlimited access. There was shotgun upland bird hunting mixed in as well as trapping in the creek.

The good old days. Now, it's a public range or occasionally an invited to a friend's parent's ranch for hunting and shooting and other such Tomfoolery.

My friends and I would save up for a milk carton of copperhead BBs, take our Crossman and Daisy rifles to the woods and spend the whole day shooting. That kind of fun has never been duplicated for me.

Some of my fondest memories are of shooting at the dump with my Dad, brothers and uncles.

Every time we visited my Grandparents, we wanted to shoot. Most of the time my Dad would say "maybe next time."

To piggyback on my other story
My first shooting experience ( around age 6 or 7)my father took me out to the state land and set up a few cans. I sat in his lap as he single loaded shorts into a well used mossberg.22
He would support most of the weight of the rifle at that age. A big rite of passage was when he felt confident in my safety and skills to hand me a loaded magazine and shoot in repeating mode.