There is nothing especially demeaning about owning a Nylon 66, IMO. My wife owns an Apache Black model I gave her new about 1972, after she proved to me she could kill bullfrogs with a shot to the white throat patch, with very few misses. She liked the looks of them and I got her one. She once killed 13 frogs with 14 shots with hers. It has now pretty much been relegated to the status of "armadillo gun". She's 70, and night before last she set her alarm for 3 a.m. and got up, got her rechargeable spotlight and her .22, and did a walkabout around the yard looking for armadillos.
They're not target guns, and they aren't for purists, but they are dog nuts dependable, and there's been a many a one of them used on Alaskan traplines for dispatching furbearers. Not to mention gators in the bayous and sloughs, squirrels, rabbits, whatever.
AFA dependability goes, maybe someone is old enough to remember this, I do, ........ in 1959 Tom Frye set a record by shooting 100,004 two and half inch wooden blocks, thrown into the air, with Nylon 66s, out of a total of 100,010 thrown. Only six misses. I can't remember the dependability factor of the rifles used but AIR it was very high. There was a picture published by Remington that showed Tom sitting on the pile of blocks with a 66.
I was given a Nylon 11 for Christmas in 1965, when I was 14. It was a bolt action, clip fed model. Futuristic styling, but very dependable and plenty accurate for any small game hunting.
