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Youngest shooting memories

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mousegunfan

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For those of us at home with kids on a Friday night, party days over, just dwelling on what's your youngest shooting memory?

I have 2. First about 6 years old shooting a handgun in the sitting position and the gun coming back on recoil and hitting me in the head.

Second was a 30/30 hunting in Maine at about 8 or 9. Freezing my ass off sleeping in tents in November because some Maine "youths" burned my grandfathers cabin to the ground. I remember shooting the 30/30 prone and it hurt my shoulder like heck. I doubt I could have shot a deer standing with that thing.
 
I can't remember which was first, shooting the BB gun into a cardboard box in the cellar with my father, or shooting the .22LR bolt action at boy scout camp.
 
At Riverside Gun Club in Hudson with my dad, a winchester bolt action .22 he bought while in the Air Force.
About 5 years old circa 1970
 
A Springfield .22 tubular magazine fed rifle on Grandparents farm in NH at least 30ish years ago.

Heavy trigger pull & broke hard if I remember correctly. Shooting everything from bottles to bees nests. Good times.
 
I don't think I fired a gun until I was 18 or 19. Some POS 16g pump action. We blew the hell out of an old TV in the sand pits in Bellingham, MA, back when you could do such a thing. Shortly after I got my FID and bought a single shot 12g.
 
I started at 7 years old. I grew up 5 houses away from the gun club, and me and the old man would go down on Friday nights, bring a pizza, and do some shooting. Loved it, and still do, me and the old man are still members of the club.
 
I went to the town dump one day with my dad (this is back when you actually backed up to a pit in the ground and dumped everything in). The old duffer that worked there always carried a .22 revolver in a holster to shoot rats and other vermin. I was mesmerized by it and so he asked my dad if it was OK for me to shoot it...I think I was 7 at the time. My dad said it was OK and he let me shoot all 6 shots that were in it...I don't think I came close to hitting what I was aiming at but from that moment on, I was hooked forever. By the time I was ten, I had my own .22 rifle, which I still have and almost every Saturday afternoon in the summer myself and my younger brother would walk the two miles to the dump and shoot rats.
 
I was probably 7 or 8 and we had just moved to a new house my father built.

We went out into the back yard with a box of 22s and a single shot Mossburg (I still have it) and shot at stumps.
I remember it like it was yesterday. I was hooked instantly.
 
Maybe 7 or 8 years old. My friend's dad got a call from a neighbor, broke out a slide action 22 and took us to the end of the street to shoot the muskrats that had taken residence in the neighbor's pond.
 
the city where I grew up, we had a lot of "shooting galleries" that were essentially a bus converted into one, with all windows covered with sheet metal, seats removed. Air rifles were chained to a table. They were usually placed near movie theaters and parks. They were a lot of fun. I don't remember how young, but I remember that I needed a boost to reach the rifle and cock it (brake barrel action) So every time we went by one, I had to beg for some money to shoot. They weren't cheap either. My bigest dream was to be able to afford more than a half a dozen pellets. I could not even imagine at that time that one day I'll become a filthy capitalist pig and build my own PPSh and AKs, just like in all the movies, and go the range where I can shoot crates of ammo until my shoulder falls off. God bless America!
 
We moved to TX when I was about 11, and my Dad took me shooting with his bolt-action 20ga (which I still have) in the dumps up behind our house. All kinds of fun stuff to shoot - TVs, barrels, bottles, cans, etc. Tried out different loads and slugs and saw how they did different things. I also got a crosman multi-pump BB gun and would spend hours roaming through the woods and scattered dumps with my brother (lever action daisy) shooting snakes and trash. My next door neighbor would on occasion let me shoot his .22 rifle in his back yard - I'd mow his lawn, and he'd let me shoot his .22.
 
Growing up in rural NH and being able to shoot in a sand pit right accross from my house. Shooting when you wanted, with friends and family. Just good times. Believe it or not without all the rules, regs, certs or whatever, we were safe. No one got hurt, we shot safe and just had a good time without any hassles. I miss that sand pit!!!!
 
I don't remember the first time I shot, but I do remember shooting my dads .22 bolt action up in Maine when I was very young. Another fun shooting memory was a bit later in life going to an M1 shoot at Holbrook and shooting an M1 carbine and later, my first pistol (a .22 Colt trooper MkIII that my father still has)

My recent interest in shooting sports has gotten my dad back into it too. We plan on joining a club together in a couple weeks. It will be fun to go out and shoot with him again.
 
I remember it like it was yesterday. Paul Revere riding through yelling "The British are coming, The British are coming" Dad said, "Take this and let's go"

All history from there
 
I know its not Friday nite, but for those with kids that need to wake up at the crack of dawn...

Shooting a .22 at 6 or 7 yrs old at pumpkins. Walking the woods hunting squirrels and rabbits.

Getting my 1st 12g at Christmas.

Good times and looking forward to doing much of the same with the next generation of 2nd amendment supporters.
[wink]
 
When I was about five my Dad bought an Ithica single shot .22 that looked like a lever action. You lowered the lever and the top dropped sort of like a falling block and he would let me shoot it with BB caps - remember those? One of my brothers still has the rifle and my kids learned to shoot with it. Good memories.
 
BB guns at 7 or 8. Bolt action .22 a few years later. My dad took us to an indoor range in the basement of a building on the UMass campus where we shot .22s as part of an NRA program.. I still have the marksmanship medals.
 
I'm guessing it was a carnival at the beach , I had to stand up on a booster box to unload a full auto " Thompson gun" at a red paper star. 75 cents for 100 bb's. Pure magic.
 
I was 6 or 7, Dad took me to the fields behind our house to show me how to shoot the woodchucks that were tearing up his garden. that would have been in about 1967.
 
Grew up in the South on a dirt farm outside the city limits. Dad had guns all over the place and Mom had forbidden us (the kids) to touch them. I would rather spit in the devil's face than disobey my Mom, so the guns were off limits. About 5 years old and my Dad and me were out working the fields and he had a 45 revolver (one of them cowboy guns) and he asked if I wanted to shoot it. He set up a watermelon on a stump and knelt down behind me and handed me the gun. I was holding it and he had his hands over mine. He cocked it and said "pull the trigger". I did. The watermelon exploded. Then he told me that I wasn't much different than a watermelon, so don't point a gun at anyone unless you want them to end up like that watermelon. Shortly after that I started shooting a 22 rifle. At 6 I had my own 22 and routinely hunted squirrels and rabbits. I use to go to a ravine that was in the woods behind the farm and plink. At 7, Grampa gave me a single shot 410 and I got to start bird hunting with the adults (Until that point I went on the hunts with them but I was cheaper than a retriever, so all I did was fetch downed birds [grin])

The family bird hunts were probably the best times of my life. I would always look forward to dove and quail season and walking the corn fields. That was the BEST!
 
My brother and I watched my uncle shoot coconuts off a tree with his service revolver when I was 8 or 9. He offered us both a chance to fire it. My brother took him up on it, I declined. Growing up in an anti household, that was all I saw of firearms until much later in life. First gun I fired was a Marlin 1894 in .357.
 
When I was about 10 or so I used to take my father's .22/410 OU, put it over my shoulder and walk through town to the dump where, with a pocket full of .22 shorts (couldn't afford many .410 shells), and shoot rats or about anything else that caught my fancy. Nobody seemed to think it a big deal. We knew enough that when people came we'd stop shooting and allow the folks to discharge their garbage. Then we'd continue plinking until our pockets were empty.

Can't imagine the extent of the SWAT teams that would descend upon any kid doing that in today's world. Things were far more simple back then and perhaps kids were given a little more credit then as well. We'd put our rifles over our shoulders and walk back home. Never was stopped or questioned.
 
Born and raised a city boy, so shooting opportunities were scarce (legal opportunities, anyways), but when I was 8-10 we used to attend all the larger, local fairs (Topsfiled, Marshfield and even Brockton).

I don't recall which ones specifically (perhaps all 3), but the midways actually had genuine, old fashioned shooting galleries... the ones with pump action .22's, spinning targets, clay pipes, moving targets etc.

As I recall... I couldn't hit a damn thing (crooked sights [wink] ), but the person operating the thing would give me some cheap ass prize anyways.

The 2nd big reward was me and my brother picking up and collecting pocketfuls of spent .22 casings, flattened, dinged, dirt encrusted and all.
 
third grade in colorado hunting jack rabbits with my dad. he would point them out and let me shoot all day.. needless to say I have never quit doing what I love
 
Grew up in the city and we didn't have anything except toy cap guns.

I learned about gun safety from a friend's father, when we were shooting a BB gun out at my friend's cousins' house in Carlisle. We learned to treat the BB rifle like a real one.

The best time I had as a kid was shooting a full auto BB gun at the arcade at Playland amusement park in Rockaway Beach , NY, where my grandparents lived. Never managed to get the center all the way shot out from that paper target to win a prize!

Also I remember once when we were on vacation in Los Alamos, NM, in the early 1970's, there were some kids shooting a .22 out behind our hotel, at some cans on a fence. We went out and asked to try, and that was a lot of fun, I remember wishing we could do that in our backyard.
 

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