doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Where did all the passion come from??

Deeply appreciate all the sharing accounts of Dads/Grandpas' guns. Sorta obvious is many of us came from non shooting or casual hunting backgrounds. Lucky the guy who had avid hunting family members. Without encouragement from the family, how did all of us end up here on BBS with a passion for guns and hunting? Give us your journey?

Mine is: First, I can remember only small game hunting less than a half dozen times with my father. Deer hunting yes, small game hardly ever. Grandpa's passed before I came of age. My passion began at age 7 with a Daisy 97 pump, just like dads 12ga. Terrorized the neighborhood shooting all the feathered foe I could find. By nine I had nagged the folks to get me a .22. Rules being it could only be fired with supervision. It was a Stevens Favorite. Within weeks I was at an auction down the street and they sold me a Stevens Favorite,a match to the one at home and this one unknown to my folks. Not wanting to wait for supervision, I hid this gun in Grandma's garage. Like the other one, it was a takedown and was highly portable. A dry creek bed behind Grandmas was the only cover I needed to reach the country to start my groundhog hunt. Despite the constant poison ivy from crawling the creek banks sneaking up on chucks, it was the best of times. Just turned 60 and the passion of those early days has never left. Always hunted anytime and anything I could, woodchucks to brown bears. Just bought a LC Smith this weekend and the same excitement is there as when my $2 bought my Favorite down the street. At least I don't have to hide it in the garage. Your turn......... Randy

Honestly,
I took a knife from the house and ran away from kindergarten school, spent the day in the woods til the police caught me.
At age 10 or so my parents gave me a gun and sent me outside to play.
The saga continues today.

I grew up being taken along on the occasional hunting trip where the fairly inept Doctor and Lawyer crowd dragged their a-5 auto's or 12 gauge M-37 pumps out to some-body's farm to harass a cottontail or two.While I was hooked from day one what I remember most was that at the end of the day it was obvious none of these guy's had any interest in cleaning or eating the game that had been harvested. They were just out to get away from the wife's and spew some testoerone.I remember the feeling I had when inevitably the game meat would be thrown away freezer burned with little thought.

As time went on the bad taste this had left motivated me to develop a genuine passion for all things outdoors and a staunch respect toward game conservation.

The other thing that is very much worth mentioning is that as a fifth grader growing up in Louisville, KY the Kentucky Dept. Of Fish and Wildlife would come into all the schools to teach a Conservation education program to all the kids.I can still tell you the mans name who came into our class almost forty years later. What is most amazing in our world of PETA and ACLU wackos is that my my 11 year old son had the same class taught in his school last year.

I lived about a mile from a trap range and, after a few years of listening to the reacket, decided to go over and see what they were doing. Someone handed me a gun and told me to try it. I got hooked on shotguns immediately and bought a BT-99 before the night was over.

A few years later, I met a new friend(?) who took me grouse hunting over his Gordon Setters. Life has not been the same since. This led to an entire safe devoted to hunting guns (mostly SxS), my constant companion, Moose (yep - a Gordon) and many days on the sporting clays range trying to figure out why I can't hit a grouse.

I tried other forms of hunting, but anything that isn't pointed by a good dog doesn't really interest me.

Sometimes I wonder what's next.

Hunted and shot from an early age on, thru my teens with my grandpa. College, job, marriage, children and more jobs - had other things to do like many.
My parents and brother moved to the country, and with my parent's help(money)I purchased some rural land - shoulda bought more.
Now what to do with it!
Started to deer and turkey hunt with my brother, added some coyotes along the way.
In shotguns, I went from a Rem 870 to a Merkel #8 after seeing quail on the land.
The Merkel to a Churchill ble, and some 20 or more sxs later, to my fall line-up of today. Its been a good trip, and I'm just startin' to get my feet wet!

I got the passion from my Dad. I miss that old dude every single day, and to be truthful, talking guns with you guys is pretty damn good for my soul.

Dad was a first order gun nut and tinker (MechE), and his father was a master machinist and shooter but not much of a collector.

I grew shooting rifle and pistol. My first time shooting was in 67, we shot a .22 rifle and .38 special. I don't remember what I hit with what gun but Dad was pretty excited. He asked me if I wanted to shoot a big gun and you know what the answer was. Out came the 30-06 M70. We shot all the ammo he had.

After the folks split up my brother and I lived with Dad. A bachelor pad in Orinda California (outside Berkeley) in 1970 woooHOOO!. Dad let his hair grow so he could get laid, but kept us 2 boys as close to the straight and narrow as those days would allow. The three of us would reload during the week and go to Chabot Gun Club on saturdays and shoot...and shoot some more.

Dad always had a project gun (or two) going and most nights after the homework and dishes were done, he'd settle into his big chair with the TV on and polish metal or rub another coat of oil onto a stock. He almost exclusively worked on milsurp rifles, sometimes sporterizing and sometimes just refinishing.

In the early 80's I had a C&R and Dad was a full FLL and we aquired a few toys. About that time our relationship changed from Father and Son to best friends. I look like him, act like him and think like him, so it could've gone either way but we were blessed with friendship. When I visit his home town, Bonne Terre, MO, the old folks stop me and call me Lee. I tell them I'm his son they shake their heads, give a deep sigh and ask how he's doing.

When I moved to NYC I sent Dad a safe full of non-city toys. I'd go see him in Georgia regularly and we'd visit with the guns, talk and drink, and figure out what to go shoot the next day. I started shooting shotguns in the early 80's with some guys at work and found my own thing, but the passion for guns and the urge to tinker came from my Father.

When I was in 6th grade, I went to a boy's school in New York City that had a 22 rifle range in the basement. How things have changed. I bet you won't find a lot of those in midtown Manhatan anymore! In any case, I discovered this was a sport a not-overly-large kid could compete in on an even basis (prone shooting only). As an additional benefit, the range was indoors, warm and dry. No need to go out and have some giant second-former pound you into the mud. That started a life-long love of firearms. The next step was competitive pistol and rifle in college and, joy of joys, shotgun shooting and my first pheasant. After that, it came fast and furious, birds, big game, dangerous game, anything that would go bang, anything you could eat.

I started my older son shooting at 9 and he has developed into a fast, natural shot, both on clays and birds plus being not bad with pistol or rifle. He has his first double, a 20 bore SKB O/U, and has been promised the gun my father gave me as my graduation present when he graduates college, with his initials added to the stock oval. The younger boy (10) has shot rimfire rifle and seems to be developing into a fair shot. I have every hope they'll divide up dad's collection rather than let it go to the auction houses. The thought that, a hundred years hence, someone may refer to a gun as his/her great-grandfather's is not a bad form of immortality. To encourage this, the rule about adding your initials will be ordained as family law.

Like most of you have stated, I started first also with a Daisy pump, I think model 25, pumped it one time and fairly powerful. The birds around weren't too safe. Later on had an uncle who was moving to Colorado and gave my dad his .22 when he was a boy, Winchester Model 74, .22 shorts. Took the pushrod out of the metal buttplate and put 20 shells in through the stock, pulled the lever back once and fired till empty. When my dad got it, it was in sorry shape. He took it all apart, cleaned it, reblued it and finished the stock. Still have it, looks just the way my dad finished it, probably 50 yers ago.
When old enough to hunt got my license for a shotgun and a license for a bow, New Jersey you had to take a seperate test for both. A few of my friends also hunted, but nobody was old enough to drive, I used to ask my dad to drive us to this one place 20 miles away and he would drop what he was doing and take us and most times pick us up. First shotgun I owned was a J.C. Higgins 12ga pump, ventilated rib, with a poly choke on it. For a 14 yrs old, it was heavy to carry, only used it for one season and by the following hunting season bought through my mom and dad on payments another J.C. Higgins, 20 ga double barrel, vent rib, single non-selective trigger, 28" barrels mod/full. Shot that gun until I went into the service in 1965. Still have both of them, and still in nice shape. Bought one of the first 20 ga Winchester 101's when they came out in June 1966. paid $166.85 in the gun club on post in Germany.
Ever since then, it seems I have been getting more firearms, had a few Remington 1100, got rid of them. Seems I'm addicted to sxs. Don't like o/u's any more either. Still have the 20 ga. Win 101 and a Beretta BL4 in 28 ga.
So even though my grandfather and father didn't really hunt, my father always made the time for me to take me hunting or shooting, or even fishing.
Now I will try and pass it along to my granddaughters when they get older.

I grew up in rural N. ID, where, particularly, big game hunting was (still is) a way of life! Of course, there was waterfowl and grouse thrown into the mix, but not much in the way of pheasant or quail, unless one traveled south 80-90 miles.

My father who ranched, initially, his father's land after WW2, fed the family on deer and elk mainly (butchering a beef in those days cut too much into the profit)well into my teens. By then my older brother and I added game to the family larder.

His main hunting guns were a Browning A5 12 which he shot very well, and his Win 270 which he made 1 shot kills with that I wouldn't attempt to try. The old adage "watch out for the person who shoots only one gun" held true for him for both the shotgun and the rifle!

My passion for hunting and guns came naturally from being around the two all my life. He used to take my older brother and I with him on most of his daily forays after big game, waterfowl, or grouse before we were old enough to hunt legally.

Many mornings, I remember him waking me up when I was as young as 7-8 years old to the smell of bacon and eggs frying at 4-4:30 am, before heading out to the duck blind or loading up his GSP to chase grouse, same with deer hunting. Nothing like sitting in a duck blind before sunrise listening to the marsh sounds and the whistle of duck wings.

Although he doesn't say much, I don't believe he sees the necessity of my owning as many firearms as I do. To him, the reasons for owning guns was the harvesting of game, and you don't get good with one, if you divide your time between a bunch of different ones.

I think my fascination with doubles came mainly from an uncle who was a bit of a "horse trader." He would always have something new in his display case, which seemed to always include a double of some sort, which he would drag out to the duck blind with us. He also would have the latest Gun Digest, Shooter's Bible or other trade magazine lying around. I would gravitate to the sections that advertised the doubles and look at them and think they were the coolest gun! Doing the same thing I did as a kid, only through the internet led me to this forum!

The Norwegian wife of a neighbor loaned me an occasional copy of his hunting and shooting magazines. I was a sick kid that learned to read before ever getting to school, ditto for shooting too. Read everything in those magazines, greatly expanding my preschooler vocabulary. Got to go hunting with various Scandihoovians in those very impressionable years. Those early impressions and informations never faded much but, were overlaid with decades of hunting and shooting experiences.

I am now back to hunting with nice old hammer doubles, Husqvarnas, Sauers, & Merkels in my recent decades. Guns that "understand" my native languages.

With the advent of Internet and the many shooting and guns BBS in the countries and languages I call "home", the exchange of informations is more active than ever before. This BBS is one of the very best, even if it it is top heavy with British and American guns.

Niklas