Did anyone else grow up around firearms?

I think I was shooting a .22 even before I learned to ride a bike. My dad used to have me shooting cans in the backyard and really hammer home the safety rules. Those early lessons really stayed with me especially things like respect, patience and staying focused. Guns were just a normal thing when I was a kid, did anyone else grow up like that?

My weekends as a kid were all about ammo, targets and my dad's old rifle. It felt like I was raised in a gun safety class and I learned that respecting the gun was way more important than actually hitting the target.

I spent my childhood shooting cans in the woods, constantly being told to keep that muzzle down. I still hear it in my head all the time

It's a family thing for some of us

Guns were a thing in my family too, hunting rifles and shotguns.

Nothing about arms in my family - on either side. When I left the city and my children were growing up I caught up with lost time and made sure that pattern ended. All my children shot and learned safety. There was rarely ever a time that if they wanted to do some target practice that it wouldn't happen. Besides, I liked it too

TheHound said:

I think I was shooting a .22 even before I learned to ride a bike. My dad used to have me shooting cans in the backyard and really hammer home the safety rules. Those early lessons really stayed with me especially things like respect, patience and staying focused. Guns were just a normal thing when I was a kid, did anyone else grow up like that?

Click to expand...

Sure. I was born in 1950 and things have certainly changed over time. My grandfather ran a 2,000-acre cattle ranch for absentee owners for about 50-years, and it grew in size to 3,000-acres by then. They would come out to visit for about 2-weeks per year. I always thought of it as Grandpa's ranch.

I learned the rules of safely handling firearms and how to shoot at a young age. One of my favorite memories was when I was about 5 and Grandpa had set up a bunch of cans for my older brother and I to shoot at. We were using .22's of course, and then Grandma brought out her Grandfathers .45 (might have been a .44). Her Grandfather had been a Texas Ranger when Pancho Villa was raiding the homesteads and ranches in Texas. I really wanted to shoot it like my older brother had. Grandpa had me sit down with my elbows on my knees and holding the single action pistol with both hands. Before he handed it to me he told me that it had a hair trigger so be sure to keep your fingers out of the trigger guard until you're ready to shoot..

I did that and when I was ready, I barely touched the trigger and it fired. The recoil rocked me onto my back with the pistol pointing straight up in the air. I pointed the pistol back at the hill and had Grandpa take it out of my hands before I got up wearing this HUGE smile. That was the last time I ever used a "sit on your butt stance" although in later years I'd often sit on my foot while shooting from one knee because recoil can't knock you over from that position.

When I was about 10, Grandma was just really upset about the woodpeckers around the ranch house. we had a bunch of bit Live Oak and White Oak trees around there and the darn woodpeckers were pecking holes in her house instead of the trees. So we'd go out there with the .22's we used for target practice using .22-shorts and shoot the woodpeckers. Took a while but eventually the woodpeckers stayed away from the house. They would fly from tree to tree in a 3-tree circle at first, but eventually they just stayed away or they flew over to the owner's cottage about 50-yards away or so.

Grandpa also had trouble with ground squirrels. He would plant Oat Hay and Alfalfa for cattle feed as well as some wheat crops for market. The ground squirrels would eat or knock down a surprising amount of all of those crops and Grandkids were always coming up to the ranch. So he started providing us with a box each of .22-shorts and one of his four different .22's to use. He could only poison them once every 3-years or they would get immune to the poison, so he equipped and set loose his Grandkids to act as "ground squirrel extermination teams". That's where we really go the safety rules ingrained in us and became very comfortable handling those .22's.

When we turned 12, earned our Hunter's Safety Certificate, and bought our first hunting license; then he would take us deer hunting. He had a number of deer rifles and the one I usually used was a Savage 250-3000 rifle. He took me out to fire it and check the accuracy on it. Ammo came in 20-cont boxes and was expensive so unless we ran into a problem, 3 to 4 shots would confirm that it was still sighted in. It had a peep sight, which I liked a lot. AND, I did get a deer on the last day I was going to be staying at the Ranch during deer season. That's when I found out I REALLY like venison liver, which I had for dinner that evening.

By the time I was 14, I was driving Grandpa's Willy's Jeep around the ranch instead of walking or riding horses. It was a 3-speed manual stick of course and had a button to push to spin up the starter. One day, he traded an old beat up (and skunked) step-side pickup for an M1-Carbine and added that to his "arsenal". I found a supply of hard ball M1-carbine ammo for about 50¢ more than a box of .22's, so I bought those and started using his M1-Carbine for squirrel and varmints. Then I bought some soft-nose ammo so I could hunt deer with it and I usually used that for ground squirrels instead of the .22.

About the time I was 16 and had an after-school job, So one weekend, I asked Grandpa if I could buy that M1-Carbine from him. He looked at me; said, "No", which was disheartening. Then he said he'd planned to leave a firearm with each of his grandkids when he passed, but didn't see the advantage in doing that. So he told me I could take it home with me that day. I've had it ever since and killed a fair amount of deer with it as well as ground squirrels and coyotes. I've also killed a LOT of cans and poked lots of holes in targets. It's a great little gun; easy to carry through the brush-filled foothills and mountains, and deadly accurate for taking deer out to ~200-yards. I rarely had to shoot more than 100-yards with it, which is good, because the front sight would almost entirely obscure a deer out around 200-yards.

I had 6 brother's and sisters although my older brother passed in 2016, and all of them learned how to shoot and hunt at Grandpa's ranch. Also learned how to fish on the two lakes at the ranch, ride a horse; work cattle with the horses; run a trap line; dress a deer, cook "Buck Hunter Eggs" (scrambled eggs with Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco sauce); how to swing an axe and a sledge hammer correctly (TV is terrible at it), build a fence, sink a deadman to keep the fence tight, light and maintain a fire to heat the house in the morning, bank it at night so there are coals in the morning, and probably a lot more things that I just take for granted. But firearms were just a natural part of life and you learned how to use it correctly like you would with any other tool. I passed on that tradition with my kids too, but it looks like it will go no further. I have one son in England and another one in Australia, so no guns there. My daughter, lives in NH (I'm in WA) and although she learned to shoot gun safety and how to shoot before either of the boys did, she has decided she really doesn't like guns anymore.

Like I said at the start, "things have certainly changed over time."

Sounds like wonderful years. You don't mention having to do any work but I bet you did!

Unshaven2897 said:

Sounds like wonderful years. You don't mention having to do any work but I bet you did!

Click to expand...

Yeah sure I did. When you went to Grandpa's Ranch, you typically spent all day with him. And, if he needed something done, you did it. I forgot to mention I also learned how to drive his tractor and his bulldozer too - Bulldozer was weird because you're pulling levers to control the tracks, which then control which direction you are going in. I helped him build fences from removing and putting in new fence posts to burying a deadman (heavy rock weight) to keep the barbed wire tight. Did a surprising amount of that over they years. The original fences had wooden posts and often they were pretty shot. Had to dig holes with a post-hole digger, which if you've ever done you'll know is one of the most frustrating tools in the world to use and the ground is always like cement where need to dig. And then... Grandpa drives his tractor up with a big auger on the back which drills a new post hole in about a minute. When I asked him how come he didn't use that auger to begin with, he says, "because you need to know how to dig a post hole with a manual tool, not a power tool. You won't always have access to an auger on the back of a tractor."

Moving cattle was another thing I helped with there whenever he needed to move them to a new pasture. I didn't mind that in fact it could be kind of fun once one of the younger grandkids was riding drag instead of you. Riding drag was no fun because, since you were riding behind the herd, you ate all the dirt and dust that the cattle kicked up. Riding along side the heard was much better although you really need to wear chaps when you do that. Cattle do move in a herd but invariably some will try to sneak off over or up a hill or down a bank and into woods or, if you're really unlucky, into a bunch of brush. If you see them soon enough you can run your horse over to head them off and get them back to the herd. Some of the horses he had were really good at working cattle and if you just got close to an errant calf or cow, they would cut him off and force him back to the herd. Then you just hold on to the saddle horn because your horses movements could change directions back and forth quickly like a running back trying to fake out or juke a tackler. You certainly didn't want to be caught leaning one way when your horse goes the other - good way to end up in the dirt.

And then of course there was the dreaded Harvest time with the oat hay and the alfalfa he raised. The Central Coast area of California, once you get over the first set of mountains, gets really hot during the summer. Most days are in the 90's and they could get up to about 104 or 105° and occasiounally 107°. That was always what it was like when it was time to harvest the oat hay. I was probably 10 or 11 when I went to harvest a field with Grandpa and this is one of those old open air harvesters, not the enclosed and air-conditioned ones. So you wore a long sleeve shirt with a buttoned up collar and buttoned down sleeves; made sure your pants were hanging over your boots and not tucked inside them; and wore a bandana around your neck. When harvesting, you get a lot of grain dust all over you and by itself it itches a lot.

Worse yet, we had a type of fireweed that would grow in with the oat hay and that stuff literally burns your skin when you get it on you. And of course, there's no avoiding it. That's the main reason we bundled up so completely. I remember that first day when we finished the field and came back to the ranch house; I took a bath because Grandpa was using the shower in the other bathroom. That bath water turned red from all the fireweed that, despite my best efforts, had made its way through to my skin. Of course you also had to watch you cutting blades too, so no day-dreaming. More then once we came upon a fawn bedded down in the hay while it's mother was elsewhere. You do NOT want to run over a deer with your harvester blades, or even rabbits or squirrels. Rabbits and squirrels usually run if you get anywhere close to them but a fawn that its mother is hiding, won't move. You have to stop, climb down, and chase it away.

Of course when we were at Grandpa's, we had to chop firewood for the wood stove in the kitchen, which was the first fire we started in the morning. Then the fire in the living room, which was through the swinging kitchen door. After we got into our teenage years and could reliably and safely drive Grandpa's Jeep, he'd let us take the jeep and go shoot grand squirrels after feeding the cattle in the morning if the graze was mostly gone. Feeding the cattle meant using wire cutters to cut the bale wire, and using the pitchfork to push about 8" pieces of the bale off the back of the pickup so the cattle would spread out to feed and not move around much. Then we had to count them to make sure they were all there. If one was missing, we went looking for it.

He also raised turkeys in big pens on the ranch and those were open air pens. Originally they looked like the wild turkeys do and later he changed to the white turkeys because they got bigger more quickly. We used to walk through those pens after checking the traps in the morning, and we'd look for turkeys with "drop craw". Their craw and become inflamed making a big bulbous protuberance below their neck and we were supposed to catch those and take them back to the ranch house for my Aunt to dress out and sell locally. Unlike wild turkeys, those penned up turkeys were really stupid. From time to time we'd find one with his head underwater in the water trays where he'd drowned. I learned real quick when catching those turkeys to grab them by the legs from behind and hold them out at arms length. They'd typically flap their wings when you grabbed them but the reason you held them out at arms length was that they'd also immediately on your boots if you didn't hold them straight out at arms length. Then we'd take them over and put them in the back of the pickup or jeep in a cage he kept for transporting them back to my Aung Gerry.

As I look back, it's really quite amazing all the things you learn when you spend a lot of time at a ranch you can go to, to visit relatives.

Twisted_1in66 said:

Sure. I was born in 1950 and things have certainly changed over time. My grandfather ran a 2,000-acre cattle ranch for absentee owners for about 50-years, and it grew in size to 3,000-acres by then. They would come out to visit for about 2-weeks per year. I always thought of it as Grandpa's ranch.

I learned the rules of safely handling firearms and how to shoot at a young age. One of my favorite memories was when I was about 5 and Grandpa had set up a bunch of cans for my older brother and I to shoot at. We were using .22's of course, and then Grandma brought out her Grandfathers .45 (might have been a .44). Her Grandfather had been a Texas Ranger when Pancho Villa was raiding the homesteads and ranches in Texas. I really wanted to shoot it like my older brother had. Grandpa had me sit down with my elbows on my knees and holding the single action pistol with both hands. Before he handed it to me he told me that it had a hair trigger so be sure to keep your fingers out of the trigger guard until you're ready to shoot..

I did that and when I was ready, I barely touched the trigger and it fired. The recoil rocked me onto my back with the pistol pointing straight up in the air. I pointed the pistol back at the hill and had Grandpa take it out of my hands before I got up wearing this HUGE smile. That was the last time I ever used a "sit on your butt stance" although in later years I'd often sit on my foot while shooting from one knee because recoil can't knock you over from that position.

When I was about 10, Grandma was just really upset about the woodpeckers around the ranch house. we had a bunch of bit Live Oak and White Oak trees around there and the darn woodpeckers were pecking holes in her house instead of the trees. So we'd go out there with the .22's we used for target practice using .22-shorts and shoot the woodpeckers. Took a while but eventually the woodpeckers stayed away from the house. They would fly from tree to tree in a 3-tree circle at first, but eventually they just stayed away or they flew over to the owner's cottage about 50-yards away or so.

Grandpa also had trouble with ground squirrels. He would plant Oat Hay and Alfalfa for cattle feed as well as some wheat crops for market. The ground squirrels would eat or knock down a surprising amount of all of those crops and Grandkids were always coming up to the ranch. So he started providing us with a box each of .22-shorts and one of his four different .22's to use. He could only poison them once every 3-years or they would get immune to the poison, so he equipped and set loose his Grandkids to act as "ground squirrel extermination teams". That's where we really go the safety rules ingrained in us and became very comfortable handling those .22's.

When we turned 12, earned our Hunter's Safety Certificate, and bought our first hunting license; then he would take us deer hunting. He had a number of deer rifles and the one I usually used was a Savage 250-3000 rifle. He took me out to fire it and check the accuracy on it. Ammo came in 20-cont boxes and was expensive so unless we ran into a problem, 3 to 4 shots would confirm that it was still sighted in. It had a peep sight, which I liked a lot. AND, I did get a deer on the last day I was going to be staying at the Ranch during deer season. That's when I found out I REALLY like venison liver, which I had for dinner that evening.

By the time I was 14, I was driving Grandpa's Willy's Jeep around the ranch instead of walking or riding horses. It was a 3-speed manual stick of course and had a button to push to spin up the starter. One day, he traded an old beat up (and skunked) step-side pickup for an M1-Carbine and added that to his "arsenal". I found a supply of hard ball M1-carbine ammo for about 50¢ more than a box of .22's, so I bought those and started using his M1-Carbine for squirrel and varmints. Then I bought some soft-nose ammo so I could hunt deer with it and I usually used that for ground squirrels instead of the .22.

About the time I was 16 and had an after-school job, So one weekend, I asked Grandpa if I could buy that M1-Carbine from him. He looked at me; said, "No", which was disheartening. Then he said he'd planned to leave a firearm with each of his grandkids when he passed, but didn't see the advantage in doing that. So he told me I could take it home with me that day. I've had it ever since and killed a fair amount of deer with it as well as ground squirrels and coyotes. I've also killed a LOT of cans and poked lots of holes in targets. It's a great little gun; easy to carry through the brush-filled foothills and mountains, and deadly accurate for taking deer out to ~200-yards. I rarely had to shoot more than 100-yards with it, which is good, because the front sight would almost entirely obscure a deer out around 200-yards.

I had 6 brother's and sisters although my older brother passed in 2016, and all of them learned how to shoot and hunt at Grandpa's ranch. Also learned how to fish on the two lakes at the ranch, ride a horse; work cattle with the horses; run a trap line; dress a deer, cook "Buck Hunter Eggs" (scrambled eggs with Worcestershire sauce and Tabasco sauce); how to swing an axe and a sledge hammer correctly (TV is terrible at it), build a fence, sink a deadman to keep the fence tight, light and maintain a fire to heat the house in the morning, bank it at night so there are coals in the morning, and probably a lot more things that I just take for granted. But firearms were just a natural part of life and you learned how to use it correctly like you would with any other tool. I passed on that tradition with my kids too, but it looks like it will go no further. I have one son in England and another one in Australia, so no guns there. My daughter, lives in NH (I'm in WA) and although she learned to shoot gun safety and how to shoot before either of the boys did, she has decided she really doesn't like guns anymore.

Like I said at the start, "things have certainly changed over time."

Click to expand...

Your childhood sounds super interesting, you probably didn't even realize how cool it was.

Karate_kid said:

Your childhood sounds super interesting, you probably didn't even realize how cool it was.

Click to expand...

I really didn't. It was normal for our family and we'd often take our friends from the city there for the day as it was only about an hour away from our house.

Had my own 22 at 10. Cept the ole man got to pick it out. A fine Mossberg target rifle with peep and globe and all. Seven lovely pounds.
By the time I was 12 I had moved up to his A303. Been doing aught six ever since.