22 caliber rifles and a story about my Dad.

[solo1]

During the Great Depression, my dad hunted squirrels to help fill out the meat pot.

He had a model 69 Winchester .22 rf bolt action with a Lyman 438 scope.   He always sighted it in each year by taking a 3x5 filing card, drawing a 1/4 inch wide line down the middle of it and thumb tacking it on a good backstop  at a distance of 25 yards..  He would adjust the scope to hit anywhere on the line.  Once done, he would then turn the card 90 degrees and do the same. When done, he would then shoot the tack.  It worked great since he was only doing one adjustment at a time.

His record was 24 squirrels with 25 shots in two days. !0 were fox squirrels and the rest were smaller fast moving red squirrels. They were all shot in the head!    Good shooting!

Since I take after his ways,(more conservative in firearms) my rifles show it.

 Here's a pic of my three .22's.   The top one is a Savage model 12 in .223 Remington, 24 inch target weight barrel, 4x16 Bushnell scope and a Delphos trigger that can be adjusted down to 6 ounces SAFELY!  I've not done any serious shooting with it yet since I 'broke in' the barrel.  A quick check at 50 yards produced five shots in one hole.  I bought it with the intentions of shooting in matches and NOT for squirrels 

The middle one is a model 75 Winchester .22 rf that I stupidly changed from its original configuration as a target .22 to a squirrel gun. It has a four power air rifle scope adjustable for parallax at 25 yards.  Centerfire scopes are fixed adjusted for parellax at 50 yards, too far for serious squirrel work.

The bottom one is a Sears Ted Williams .22rf single shot lever action Falling Block, kind of unusual.
I bought this cheap from an estate. Probably just a plinker compared to the other two as far as accuracy is concerned.

I looked at the thread on 1022's, Marlins, and Glenfields.  All are great .22's too.

Excuse the spelling on parrelex, too lazy to look it up.

Oh yeah, I once rode my KLR 650 to the range to shoot pistol, now it's bike related.

[Dubsvalk]

I have an old  Winchester 22 pump action rifle with open sights that is a fun gun to shoot!
Dubs

[FLAVALK]

Nice collection! I have an old single shot, bolt action Remington "Target Master" .22 that belonged to my grandfather. Its from the 30's and accurate as snot. I hunted with it as a youngster and a grownster.....killed many a squirrel with it. Thos are fun guns to shoot and the .22 is about the only one left that is affordable

[R J]

My grandmother bought me a .22 for my birthday, forgot which one, but it was a Marlin lever action.    Still have it and haven't shot it since my last son was a toddler, he is now 45 years old.

That is funny, head shooting, I always thought i was just my grandfather that was making that up for me to do.

When we were hunting, if I got a head shot, I got a nickle, if I made it an eyeball shot, it was a dime.

He always told me if it wasn't an eyeball, it was not a good kill.

Somewhere along the line I picked up a semi automatic .22, forgot the brand, and I'm too damn lazy to walk about 10 feet, zip open the case to find it also.   All I will say about it, it was a piece of crap.    It jammed awful easy, and pretty often, so the old lever action got the call, and it did not have a scope.

[bscrive]

When I was younger I had a few 22's.  I had a single shot Cooey, a Winchester model 9422 (loved that gun).  I also had a 22 that looked like an M16 with retractable stock and another that looked like an AK47.  Both were not very accurate but looked cool.  I got rid of them all a number of years ago when they brought in the stricter gun laws up here.  Never shot them much anyways.

[BigAl]

Whilst showing my Dad how to use his Baretta 22Long Rifle Semiauto Bobcat, I shot a hole in his Brand New Refrigerator.

He put duct tape on both the outside hole and the interior holes.

Refrigerator fine, he then placed a picture of me that was magnetized holding a Bass  I had caught in the past over the hole.

It covred up the duct tape and made a nice frig magnet.

After our ears stopped ringing and all the smoke cleared it was then pretty funny and we both felt pretty lucky to be alive.

He never got used to that gun and I traded him my Airweight Smith 38 Crimson Trace Laser Sighted Revlover for the Semi 22 and he has

been happy ever since.


I bought both of them so he was not out a penny.

Unless you figure in the holes in his frig.

You can't make this stuff up.

[solo1]

Lots of memories connected with .22's.

During WWII war years, after delivering my paper route, I'd get on my Schwinn bike and peddle 15 miles to my favorite woods in the country.  The Winchester .22 rifle was slung on my back and getting there involved about three miles through Ft. Wayne. Never got stopped and no one made a big deal about it.

I kept it up when I put a Whizzer motor in the Schwinn.  Later, I rode my Matchless 500 Thumper there, still with the rifle slung over my shoulder.  My mother made me a denin and rubberized bag for bringing back the squirrels. The bag was slung over the other shoulder. The bag wasn't the best idea as the squirrels would end up curled and stiff, hard to clean.

Those were the days!  .22 long rifle ammo was fifty cents for a box of fifty and gas was 20 cents/gallon.

[Serk]

Wayne - I was gonna make a comment about "You couldn't do that now!" and in many ways you couldn't (Especially as a child riding his bike with a rifle) but, a few years ago I'd gone to a gun show planning to get a handgun, so I rode my Valk. Fell into a great deal on an AR15 that I couldn't walk away from, so... Rode my Valk the 30 miles or so from downtown Dallas to my home in the suburbs with my new AR15 slung across my back... No problems at all, although I did get a few funny looks!

[FLAVALK]

Those were the days!  .22 long rifle ammo was fifty cents for a box of fifty and gas was 20 cents/gallon.

We had an old one-room bait and tackle "store" in our town that also sold a few guns and ammo. Me and my buddy couldn't afford a whole box of .22's so the gentleman who owned the store would break a box and sell them to us individually. I think he charged us something like $0.02 each. We bought shotgun shells the same way....had to make every shot count!!! 

[solo1]

More memories!   We used to shoot rats at the open garbage dumps. We used flashlights and pistols, generally .45's and .38's.  We always wore boots and tucked our pants in them (rats charge when their wounded, LOL).  At one time we used acetylene miners lamps on our caps, boy, that dates me!

We also went crow hunting (legal) shooting from the road, (probably illegal.)  My buddy had a new 22/250 custom rifle with a 20 power Unertyl scope. We saw one crow perched on the top wire of a barb wire fence about 100 yards from the road.  Jim took careful aim, fired, and it was interesting to see a explosion of feathers and two feet still hanging on to the fence but nothing else.

[The Anvil]

Wayne - I was gonna make a comment about "You couldn't do that now!" and in many ways you couldn't (Especially as a child riding his bike with a rifle)

You can do it here but you'd have to go a little ways north.

[Spirited-6]

I have a Model 67 Winchester that was bought for me for my 15th b-day. How old is that ? 

[Serk]

Oh, and speaking of childhood rifles... My older daughter got a hot pink Cricket-22 as her first rifle when she was 4...

And the newly born triplets each had their own .22 rifles before 18 weeks of gestation...

[solo1]

Serk and Anvil.  I could carry openly in New Haven today but not in the Ft. Wayne neighborhood today, although legal.  The old neighborhood has gone way downhill. 

I bought Mad6Gun a 1022 Ruger when he was younger and Psychotic Bovine, my youngest son, a Marlin 39A., both excellent rifles.

[czuch]

I have a Winchester 67 also. .22 shorts. Man is that a fun gun. Tack drivin pigeon remover.
Times were better when TV shows were about Cowboys instead of Lawyers.

[R J]

I remember one time my grand father was growling about all the pigeons in the barn.

Told him I could try to get rid of them.   He never asked how and I never offered either.

Every Wednesday he went to the Sales Barn and watched the cattle that were selling.

Figured that was a good time to remove a few pigeons.

Got out my trusty 22 grandma had given me and I plunked away all afternoon.  I had like 30 or 40 birds laying in  pile when he came home.   OUCH, the 1st thing he did was look at the roof.    YUP, there was about 100 holes in it from the rusty little .22.    Yes sir, I got my arse blistered royally.    I think the thought of it being done hurt me more than his razor strap.     I was like 14, had lived with my grandparents for 7 or 8 years and grandpa had never laid  hand on me prior to this.    Got a lot of ass chewing, but no laying the leather on me wittle butt.

Grandma heard me screaming, grabbed the shotgun, and headed to the barn.  She told grandpa to stop or she would blow his head off.    Poor grandma, she didn't know how to load the gun and grandpa knew that.   So I got a few more swats and then told to go to the house.

Grandma came up with me, shortly after she hollered at grandpa supper was ready.   We always held hands as grandpa said grace/prayer.    He said Amen, be seated.  I stood there, he told me to sit, I told him I thought I'd rather stand if he didn't care.         I don't really recall him of ever giving me another whipping after that.

[Stanley Steamer]

My Daddy wouldn't let my Brother or I have a .22 rifle......good call because the BB guns they bought us one Christmas were used to shoot our cousin's in the butt!!...I think we were around 8-10 yrs old?...our folks took the bb guns away and hid them in the attic.......a few years later, we were playing up there and found the bb guns again....they let us have them back with a stern warning not to shoot any

1. Windows ....

2.Birds...........

3.People........

The first thing we did was go to the end of our gravel driveway and we proceeded to shoot all the windows out of my maternal Grannie's old house place....no one was living there because it was going to be torn down......That was the maddest I'd ever seen Daddy....he never even asked us to cut our own "hickory switch"...it was the worst whipping he ever gave us(although needed and deserved!.. )......he even took the windows out of our kitchen to replace the ones we'd destroyed(he and my Grandma didn't get along too well).......

By the time I was 15-16, they let me have them back.....no more breaking windows, but we did kill rats at one of our Uncle's old house by baiting them with cheese(Mama didn't authorize that... )......and by that time I was a good shot with the BB gun and used it to kill squirrels for my Aunt/Uncle and Grandma.....I once waited over an hour in a pouring rain to kill a squirrel I knew would be coming back to sit on a particular limb to eat an acorn.....I shot him right between the eyes from 20 ft away.... ....

the bb gun actually used pellets too and if you pumped it up hard enough, it came close to a .22's power.....all my Cousins had 410 shotguns and .22's....no "real" guns for me until I was old enough to have my own....I did buy a Marlin .22 rifle with an 18? shot capacity for plinking...

a funny story about the squirrels....after my Grandma died, there wasn't anyone left who wanted to eat them anymore.....I had killed one, and skinned it but left the head(minus eyes) and the legs on it....and gave it to my Mother thinking she'd cut it up before she cooked it for me......WRONG!!!...I went to clean up.......she'd just tossed it into a pot of boiling water..... .......when she told me my supper was ready, I looked in the pot and there that squirrel was curled up in a ball just like I'd given it to her......WTH???........ ........when she wasn't looking, I tossed it into the woods behind the house.......

Here's the link to the BB gun I had.....

http://www.airgunwarehouseinc.com/py-339.html

[X Ring]

when she told me my supper was ready, I looked in the pot and there that squirrel was curled up in a ball just like I'd given it to her......WTH???

 

Marty

[solo1]

I never owned a bb gun. Dad gave me a model 59 Winchester when I was ten.  I hunted by myself when I was 12.

Dad started me hunting.  I had many good experiences, bow hunting in Michigan and the Black Hills,  a 7mm Remington magnum rifle for mule deer in Wyoming, squirrel and deer hunting hunting in Indiana, fox hunt ( a cluster----fill in the blanks)
I finished hunting with a 42 yard shot downing an eight point, in Indiana, using my Ruger Super Blackhawk with open sights in .44 magnum.  The handload was pushing a 200 grain jhp at 1500 fps.  Almost instant kill.

 
I always will be grateful for my dad introducing me to hunting.
Unfortunately,  Dad died many years ago but before he did, I took him hunting for squirrel one last time. It took him 30 minutes to travel down the 1/4 mile lane back to the woods.  He wouldn't accept any help.  It was a bad day to remember.

The other day I tried to pull my Browning Nomad compound back to full draw, couldn't do it, oh well.
It would be nice to sell the whole kit and kaboodle, bow, Easton arrows, etc, but they're outdated now.

[Mr.BubblesVRCCDS0008]

I still have my dads 22 and 16 guage that he bought in the early 30s. The 22  I believe is a Remington targetmaster, single shot and the 16 guage breakover was built by the Diamonds Arms Co. out of St. Louis Missouri. I hope to refinish the shotgun someday and past them on to my son and daughter.

[bigguy]

Love this thread. Brings back a lot of good memories. Dad finally settled on a Browning semi-auto, open sight, for squirrels. He favored .22 long. (Not long rifle.) Usually head shot.
For coons, he favored a bolt action, single shot, with a scope. (I don't remember the make. Probably Springfield.)
Using a scope with a headlight presents problems, but he developed the technique of wearing the headlight off set on his head, and holding his head still with both eyes open as he brought the rifle up to his eye. A lot of people assured me you couldn't use a scope at night. There were a lot of dead coons that say you can.

[bscrive]

Wayne - I was gonna make a comment about "You couldn't do that now!" and in many ways you couldn't (Especially as a child riding his bike with a rifle) but, a few years ago I'd gone to a gun show planning to get a handgun, so I rode my Valk. Fell into a great deal on an AR15 that I couldn't walk away from, so... Rode my Valk the 30 miles or so from downtown Dallas to my home in the suburbs with my new AR15 slung across my back... No problems at all, although I did get a few funny looks!

Holy Crap!!  If you did that up here they would call in the SWAT team and lock you up.