Fondest Memories

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.308 Norma said:
I have a few fond memories involving handgun silhouette (IHMSA) shooting too
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Brought back memories of when my wife and I shot in IHMSA. We were young and the kids would play in the sand under the bleachers. Most of the couples were young also, and they were a great bunch to hang around. Most of the wives could outshoot their husbands, and we just joked about it.
 
Family property at Lake Tahoe,Nevada my dad would sometimes go across highway 50 to a little store that sold fishing gear and .22 shells. We'd sit on the wall in the late afternoon, we'd chuck a couple pine cones out into the waves dad would load an old Winchester pump with one cartridge at a time and I'd get to shoot the cones bobbing away out there. This was over 60 years ago!! Still have the property and the Winchester.
 
In 1852 my ancestor walked to illinois from ohio and bought this farm where i now reside. He was carrying this rifle on that trip.
20151205_092342.jpg
The rifle and the land has been in my family continuously since then.

After a long renovation i got the rifle back in working order.
On December 13th, 2015 i was able to take a nice buck, on the same property, with the original rifle.
20151213_165300.jpg
I have been so fortunate to have many fond memories of shooting and competition, but this is one of my favorites.
 
Armored farmer said:
In 1852 my ancestor walked to illinois from ohio and bought this farm where i now reside. He was carrying this rifle on that trip.
View attachment 800816
The rifle and the land has been in my family continuously since then.

After a long renovation i got the rifle back in working order.
On December 13th, 2015 i was able to take a nice buck, on the same property, with the original rifle.
View attachment 800817
I have been so fortunate to have many fond memories of shooting and competition, but this is one of my favorites.
Click to expand...
WOW! That's all I can say, WOW! The coolist.
 
Armored farmer said:
In 1852 my ancestor walked to illinois from ohio and bought this farm where i now reside. He was carrying this rifle on that trip.
View attachment 800816
The rifle and the land has been in my family continuously since then.

After a long renovation i got the rifle back in working order.
On December 13th, 2015 i was able to take a nice buck, on the same property, with the original rifle.
View attachment 800817
I have been so fortunate to have many fond memories of shooting and competition, but this is one of my favorites.
Click to expand...
Incredible. Do you know who manufactured that rifle?
 
skipperSKS.jpg
This; That's my Dad with the Fu Manchu, my older son with my SKS, and my younger son picking up brass.That is a very rare smile for my son, we had a great day.
CamandGrandpa.jpg
A few years later, we went on a pheasant hunt, Dad and Cam with Cam's bird. I wanted my son to get a pheasant hunt with his Grandpa; some of my best memories are pheasant hunting with mine and my Dad.
 
One of my favorite memories is wandering around the desert in the foothills of the Franklin Mountains in El Paso with my English grandfather and my .22 rifle.

My Dad was in Vietnam and my grandparents spent that year with us. My grandfather had served 12 years (1919-1932) with the Essex Regiment as a young man, a good portion of those years on the Khyber Pass. He would tell me stories of his "Indian" service and was still a great shot. One story he told was the time that he dispatched a cobra with his MkIII* SMLE in the outhouse and put the entire garrison on edge until they realized they weren't under attack.
 
Hard to pick the fondest memories after decades of good memories that are hunting, shooting, and firearms related. Although Armored Farmers tale of hunting with a family heirloom reminded me of one of my most treasured hunting memories. That one involves the German Luger that my late uncle Marty liberated from Germany's V-2 Rocket factory in 1945 shortly after the German surrender. In 1997, about 4 years before he passed, we discussed using something like a 38 Spl. or 9mm to dispatch wounded deer, and he thought his old 9mm Luger would be ideal for a close range finishing shot. He passed in 2001; I inherited the Luger and carried it afield in deer season if such an opportunity came up. The gun's not mint but it works and in the early 1950's a lot of dump rats fell victim to it in my uncle's hands. It rode in a soft case in my knapsack during gun season for 10 years until Nov. 19th, 2011. I had knocked down a small buck at about 60 yards with my 870 slug gun in a shotgun / handgun area and he was kicking and thrashing but couldn't get up. When I reached him he was calmly laying there still breathing. His life expectancy was probably only a couple minutes even if I did nothing. It was a bittersweet moment finally getting to use the old Luger on what had been only "wishful thinking" by my late uncle and I. It's too bad I never got to show him the pictures and relate the story but one of my most vivid hunting memories will always be.... Standing over that wounded deer with his Luger; looking up at the dark gray sky, and saying to my late uncle: " Thanks Marty; I know you'd get a kick out of this".... and then putting two rounds into the back of the head/ neck area on the deer for a quick, humane, finish. This picture and story have also been previously posted here on a different thread but the OP wanted us to take a trip down memory lane on this interesting thread and that's one of my fondest memories of hunting IMG_1617.JPG , even if it was sad in the way that I never got to get a nice, framed, enlargement of that photo to give to my uncle.
 
One that has stuck with me the longest and still makes me tear up typing this is walking down to the lake with my Grandfather at our farm when I was a kid and at one point he said “Someday, this could be yours.” I told him, I’d rather him keep it and just let me come with him.
 
I had many great memories of shooting and hunting with friends of mine from work when I was 17 years old. One of my friend's family owned some acres out in the country and we used to go there to shoot and hunt on the weekends. My friend's Dad was a patrolman for a large metropolitan police force and use to spend some of his duty hours scouring the local gun and pawn shops for old rifles and shotguns. Two of my favorites of theirs were a well worn Remington Fieldmaster Model 121 pump action .22 and a slick shooting Ithaca 20 gauge pump action with a plain 26" barrel. We hiked many a mile walking where the gas company had clear cut the forest to lay their underground pipeline. Use to come across the occasional rabbit and ruffed grouse but sometimes the more immediate concern was with large packs of feral dogs who were attracted to the open trash dumps.

Even if we didn't spot any upland game we always finished the day target shooting back at the family property. Had plenty of 12 and 20 gauge shells as they were not all that expensive. Typically we ran out of rimfire ammo so we would pool our resources and head on over to the local Mom and Pop store to buy a couple of boxes of .22s. I think back then a box of fifty rounds might have run 49 cents. After awhile I figured on getting my own .22 rifle and decided on a Ruger 10/22 that cost me a little over $72 out the door. That gun was a tack driver right out of the box and it wasn't long before I bought a Weaver K2.5 scope to make the most out of the accuracy this rifle had. Still have the Ruger and have continued it's fine shooting tradition by letting my kids shoot it when they were old enough. More priceless memories with them!

xgZQSgg.jpg
 
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I don't have much in the way of fond memories of shooting with my parents or grandparents.
Grandpa Claude was a drunk. If he or his wife had a gun then it would reside in a pawn shop.
Grandpa Tony had guns, but they stayed in the closet. Grandma Rachel had psychotic episodes and was kept away from a long list of items that included guns.
Dad didn't trust anyone around him to have a gun and couldn't legally have one himself. Mom was the quintessential valley girl who had no idea what to do with a gun.

In this family, owning and firing a gun was an act of rebellion.

I do have fond memories of teaching my two younger sisters to shoot.

In fact, both are now better shots than I am.
 
theotherwaldo said:
Mom was the quintessential valley girl who had no idea what to do with a gun.
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Ha! You and my wife might have have had the same mom.:D
Seriously, I'm sorry to hear family's problems, especially about their problems with guns. However:
theotherwaldo said:
I do have fond memories of teaching my two younger sisters to shoot.
In fact, both are now better shots than I am.
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Good on you, Waldo!:)
 
With my older brother bird hunting during the late summer and fall of '79. Me, I was just out of the military after a nine year hitch. My brother was on a four month break from the Italian Seminary where he lived and studied the last two years. Years before he had befriended a member of his church that raised goats on a 150 acre + piece of property in Coryell County and we had free access to the place.
My goodness the dove and especially the quail were thick that year. I had a Mossberg bolt action 16 ga. shotgun my brother had some type of Beverly Hillbillies 12 ga 30 inch side by side. The goat weed on the north side was elbow high in late September and we would walk through it for a few yards then run a few feet. The quail would take flight and we would take our limit in less than an hour or so and before dusk it was down to the stock pond for dove. My brother would always make sure that we would drop off half of what we had and a 12 pack of Miller Lite to the three migrant workers that took care of the place.
My brother ended up leaving the seminary and marrying the daughter of the owner of the goat property. Over the next few years we had a few other hunting trips together for mule deer in SW Texas and, again, out at his father in laws place. Even with the great hunting and shooting experiences I had and continue to have with my son and grandson this time with my brother stands out. He passed away from cancer on Veterans Day 2002.
 
I have many fond memories but I'll share these two:

The first is my grandpa congratulating me and teaching me how to field dress the first rabbit I ever shot. It was at my grand parents farm and was the first time I ever went hunting all on my own... I remember holding the rabbit up next to the window where my grandmothers chair was so she could see it and the big grin on her face...... At the time that was like displaying the hunting trophy of a life time... I shot it with a 12 ga 870 that I borrowed from my brother.... I think I was 11 or 12 at the time.... Even back then I loved the smell of freshly fired shotgun shells....

The second was taking my Dad, a WWII vet to go shoot my M1 Garand and M1 Carbine and listen to his recollections of the guns and the war......
 
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My fondest memory connected with my M-1 Garand doesn't involve shooting it. It's the memory of handing it to one of my late uncles in 2007, a couple years before he passed. He had been a young marine in the latter stages of the Pacific theater in WWII and had carried an M-1. He said he hadn't seen one in person since 1945 but as he held one for the first time in 62 years he said he began to recall all about them. We discussed the subject and he was mentioning all sorts of stuff that could only have been known by someone who was very familiar with an M-1. He said he couldn't have recalled all that stuff on his own but once he had an M-1 in his hands he could recall it all like it was yesterday. He enjoyed looking it all over very closely and even spoke highly of them. I wish that I could have at least gotten an audio recording of that as it would have been an interesting piece of oral history.
 
Aside from the shotgun rebuild and my 23rd birthday, when dad gave me my Ruger 22/45, my other I wasn't even involved in. I just remember it well because it had both my grandfather and dad grinning and laughing about it. For reference, the only other time I saw my dad happy like that was when he won a small lottery and found a grill 80% off on the same weekend.
Dad called up grandpa and invited him out squirrel hunting, which was probably the last hunt he ever went on. Grandpa says "Sure, let me grab the shotgun." Does so, shoves a box of extra shells in his pocket, and heads out hunting.
The first squirrel they catch in a tree, dad points it out, and grandpa (to quote dad) "shouldered and fired smooth and quick as he ever did."
And was reminded very quickly that he hadn't unloaded the shotgun since last deer season.
Poor thing caught a slug square between the front legs.
 
I'm sure this will change in the future, but my fondest memories shooting were when I would go off into the woods down an old logging road in the PNW with my Ruger 10/22 and a hand gun. I'd bring something to eat and drink and a brick of ammo, and make a day of it. I would plink away for hours. Back then I was single with no kids and didn't have much to be responsible for. Didn't need to be anywhere or please anyone but myself. It was just a relaxing fun easy day with no hurry or worries.
 
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