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I don't remember for certain the first gun ever shot, but I believe it was a .22 rifle - and most likely it was a Winchester Model 69A. But the most unadulterated fun I had shooting as a kid (and they're still fun even now) was with good ol' fashioned air power... BB guns! -RC
Once upon a time, there was a young boy, and that young boy went on a trip with his family to visit an aunt and uncle and his two cousins. When the boy returned home, he proudly brought with him a Daisy air rifle (model number now long forgotten) missing the forearm stocks, the BB loading gate and with a broken buttstock.
That Daisy, with an ingenious new loading gate built by the boy's Wonderful Father, and the stock splinted to the receiver by same, was a constant companion for the boy in his daily treks into the wilds of the big, oak-shaded yard and beyond. It annihilated many an aluminum can, buried BBs in just about every tree the boy could find, punched paper targets from time to time when more animated targets were scarce, and missed many a tweety bird. He shot a few pellets from time to time, but they were expensive and required single-shot loading - and the boy was always cheap, and he always liked repeaters.
The boy was trusted with the airgun for several reasons. First of all, he had been taught gun safety at a very early age, and most effectively had been allowed to handle and shoot his father's "real" guns under close supervision, thus proving to him the power of guns and removing the shroud of mystery from them. Secondly, he had promised Dad not to point it at anyone or use it destructively - and a broken promise of that magnitude carried with it the very real reciprocal promise of a warm backside and confiscation of the Daisy (in that order - his Dad had made that clear).
After a long life of hard use, the Daisy finally gave out on the boy. It would no longer pump up - the seals were long worn out, and no amount of heavy oiling could coax them into working again. The boy didn't like this a bit - the Daisy had some heft, felt like a man's gun, and he would miss it - but he did have to accept it. So he stowed the Daisy in the closet for a time.
A few years later, the boy went scalloping with his family and another aunt and uncle. This uncle was kind enough to provide the boy with a Crosman 788 (he thinks that's the model) BB gun, in prime condition. Yeehaw, the boy was back in the airgun business!
Upon receiving strict orders from his Dad not to take it apart (the boy loved to tinker and see how things worked), he immediately retreated to his room to do just that. Lo and behold, he could get it back together, but it didn't work quite right. The boy took it out to try it, but it wasn't the same - just wouldn't work. After a day or so of the boy's heartbroken moping and not using the gun, his Dad inquired and discovered what the boy had done. So his Dad properly reassembled the gun through quite a lot of time, effort, and uncouth language, and the boy was happy again. He left it intact this time!
Until it, too, gave out. It seemed like he had barely warmed it up with the several thousand BBs shot at many different targets. Sure, there were the birds shot and eaten, the overhead telephone line shot dead-center (which bore a brand new patch the next day, and about which the boy kept his mouth shut), the transformer on the power pole out front, which bounced BBs beautifully, the homemade darts shot through the barrel with little or no accuracy... but those years seemed so few!
A post-mortem dis- and reassembly proved that the boy had learned to put stuff back together properly, but that still didn't make the gun work. An attempted Frankenstein-esque resurrection of the Daisy using another old Daisy (which the boy talked a friend out of) proved fruitless, though it did reinforce the boy's love for guns, tinkering with guns, and trying to make broken things function again.
The boy hung it up - after all, he was a big-game hunter now, and hunted deer with the menfolk during the hunting season. He satisfied himself with shooting at the clay pit in the woods on hunting trips, or going to the range with his Dad during the off-season. He toted a .44 magnum carbine in the deer woods, and a LeFever Nitro Special .410 double for small game. Who needed BB guns, anyhow?
Well, the boy graduated high school and got himself a job (that's how life used to work, remember?). He received a wonderful gift from his Dad, a .45-caliber muzzleloader with all the trinkets. But what did the boy go and do with a chunk of his second or third paycheck? He bought a BB gun, a Crosman 760 Pumpmaster. He just couldn't escape the pull of airguns, that can-clobbering pleasure which they alone can deliver. He scoped it and tried vainly to make a target gun out of it, then accepted it for what it was - a good, knock-around BB gun.
That's been a lot of years ago... well, a little over fourteen to be exact. This year, that Crosman died. Yes, the boy had had it apart before (had to see how it worked!), and he took it apart again to look for problems, to try to fix it. Again, it was fruitless. The 760 remains as remains in the boy's shop even now.
Today, the boy returned to his roots with a $30 Daisy Power Line 856. This one sports a Truglo fiber optic front sight and an elevation- and windage-adjustable rear sight. It's all black, and will be used primarily to discourage stray cats from trespassing, on the strength of a pump or two applied against their backsides. It has already been zeroed and used to riddle an aluminum can, a la the good ol' days.
The boy has also now learned that Daisy Manufacturing Company has defined the "maximum shooting distance" of the Power Line 856 as 286 yards with a BB. And to think, he always considered the much more potent .44 magnum to be a "hundred-yard cartridge."
- Russ Chastain