First Long Guns - Fun and Games, but also unexpected danger.

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Picher

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My first long gun was a hand-me-down Daisy Red Ryder that was very anemic and I had to constantly oil the bore/spring to get BBs out the barrel. The second one was a Daisy Pump that was more powerful, had a spring-loaded magazine and had much more power. I used to shoot it behind the house on top of the old clay pit that was our back yard. My shooting regimen primarily consisted of shooting about 10 big tubes of Winchester BBs a week and I became proficient from both the shoulder and hip.

Picture: My sister's boyfriend, Ken and me.

John and Ken.JPG

Ken had real guns and my family didn't, but he took my brother and me shooting in gravel pits, of which there were many along the Kennebec River in Sidney.

My brother bought a single-shot Remington 514, a twenty-dollar rifle, but I got to shoot it a lot and actually wore it out by shooting .22 Shorts in it, belling the chamber so when LRs were fired, they wouldn't eject.

I bought my own .22 rifle when about 14, a Stevens semi-auto, which I managed to shoot until the mechanism broke and couldn't be fixed, as far as we knew.

As I made money working for the family business, I bought and sold many guns and got good discounts at a local sporting goods store, trading about twice a year. Shooting became an obsession taking much of my time and money, but it was fun.

I was unusually steady and my friends didn't appear to be as fortunate. One guy who was a good shot and I became friends. He was the product of a formal target shooting program and was very slow to shoot, even at game/varmints. Lots of critters got away because of his deliberate style, but if they stuck around, he'd nail them often.

I went through about 15 guns during my teen years and finally ended up with a Model 39A Mountie straight-stocked carbine. That rifle shot really well, especially after I mounted a peep sight on it. It actually shot about 1 MOA at 50 yards from a rest...with my bespectacled eyes.

My varmint-hunting buddy and I were quite proficient at shooting varmints, especially woodchucks, as practice for deer hunting. We handloaded .30-06 125 grain varmint loads and made some pretty impressive kills. I had a 2.5X Weaver and he had a 4X, but since we were practicing for deer hunting, didn't see the need for more power and didn't have the money for more expensive
scopes.

12 John's Savage 110.JPG

Anyway, back then there weren't as many houses in the country, mostly farmhouses, but there were lots of woodchucks, so farmers loved to see us come to dispose of them. We loaded 125 grain varmint bullets for our 30-06s, but still were very careful as to background.

One day we were walking along at one of our favorite haunts when I spied a chuck on top of a nubble in a hayfield, but didn't want to shoot because the bullet would have skipped and landed a mile or so away, so we elected to go to the left and get behind a boulder/tree hedgerow until the background was safe enough to shoot.

When we got to the top of the ridge and looked at the "chuck" we saw that it was a woman lying at the top of the mound, sunning herself!!! My heart went into my throat, thinking that if I hadn't been as careful, she certainly would have been killed!!! We talked with her and found out that her boyfriend was hunting chucks, so she decided to get some sun. We apprised her of the danger of lying down in the grass with her woodchuck-colored hair. She thanked us and we decided to hunt elsewhere.
 
Not much danger, but lots of fun with a mint, original M-1 Carbine.

One of my aunts was a home nurse who had lots of customers in the 1950s. One particular lady had lost a son in the war, but he'd worked in an armory and stole an M1 Carbine in pieces, then reassembled it at home. He also had a couple thousands of rounds of military ammo, about 8 magazines, cleaning kits, etc.

Well, the lady, having no need for the rifle, offered it to my aunt, probably in lieu of cash for her services. Anyway, my aunt gave the rifle and all the other stuff to my brother and we had a really great time with it. I shot it a lot with my brother and really enjoyed it. When my brother was away at college, one day he accidentally hit a bus with his uninsured car and needed money. That was the end of the rifle, along with his pre-war Walther P-38, 9mm...and his 49 Mercury.

I'm caring for a commercial M1 Carbine passed down to a son-in-law, but have no desire to shoot it. Those days are gone forever!
 
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