"How I became a hired gun"

One of the best gun stories of all time.

http://dailycaller.com/2012/05/11/how-i-became-a-hired-gun/

If only those days were still with us.

stay safe.

Brings back memories but not in New York, in Virginia. My first "gun' was also a BB gun; a Daisy Eagle with plastic blond furniture. I bought it from a friend for $5 (a LOT of money for an 8 year old back then) or did I trade something with him? Not sure about that one. Anyway, the plastic part of the stock that entered the top rear of the receiver and was secured with a single screw was broken but the gun still worked and there was always tape at hand.

I spend many hours with that gun in the woods, expending perhaps thousands of copper coated BB's at all manner of things. The clear plastic BB packs were 5 cents and the tubular BB containers were a quarter at the local drug store (yes, that's where we bought our supply). Add a little 3-In-One oil and you were good to go for a day's worth of fun and saving the world from monsters and evil BG's.

Then one day the local police (I grew up in Falls Church) saw me in the "desert" (a rather large open graded "sandy field" that was being cleared for a duck pin bowling alley) with my BB gun and confiscated it. My older brother had to go the the police department to pick it up. My first run-in with the police and they take my gun. I was scared and heart broken... and a lot more careful after that. The woods became my shooting gallery once again.

Ah yes, the days of innocent youth, woods and fields, and BB's guns.

Interesting tale. Not terribly unlike my own "1st", a Red Ryder.
And, like the author, I was "hired" early-on, to dispatch various pests - mice, crow, etc. by neighbors. Often got a quarter for every crow I took out at a neighbor's corn field..Was good training, I felt. Became quiet a good shot,fairly quickly.

Back before the dinosaurs, when I was young and spending the summer with relatives, the State of Indiana offered a bounty of five cents for every crow head turned in. An initial investment of fifty cents in a box of .22LR could keep a youth shooting for the entire summer, along with funding ten-cent sodapops and putting some money away for going into town. And when you were the one putting meat on the table* (just where did you think the expression "eating crow" came from? the breasts are not bad - not great but not bad) you got moved from the kids' table to eating with the grownups.

IIRC I spent my most of my fortune on, in order of purchase, some pipe tobacco for my uncle, some (probably atrocious) smelly water for my aunt, and a bag of candy. What remained was put in a sock to be showed to my parents as proof that I could so earn enough money to support myself!

stay safe.

*The occassionaly fish was welcomed, but for some reason Bass Lake was not the home of fish willing to swallow just any hook dropped into the water. Thus, there was no guarantee of a meal at the end of every fishing expedition.

j4l said:

Interesting tale. Not terribly unlike my own "1st", a Red Ryder.
And, like the author, I was "hired" early-on, to dispatch various pests - mice, crow, etc. by neighbors. Often got a quarter for every crow I took out at a neighbor's corn field..Was good training, I felt. Became quiet a good shot,fairly quickly.

Click to expand...

Hitting a crow with a Red Ryder and bringing it down is something to "crow" about. Now if it was the Benjamin "Hot Shot", I could understand. I had one of those in the mid 60's and let me tell you, that was one powerful BB gun.

SouthernBoy said:

Hitting a crow with a Red Ryder and bringing it down is something to "crow" about. Now if it was the Benjamin "Hot Shot", I could understand. I had one of those in the mid 60's and let me tell you, that was one powerful BB gun.

Click to expand...

Well, I wasnt popping em in-flight, like some kind of skeet shoot, lol. Tried that early-on, and gave up- way too little accuracy for that. But when they perch on a fence-post, or corn stalk...And it sometimes took more than one shot, for sure.

Dangit though..this story,has got me itching for a RR again, just for giggles..

SouthernBoy said:

Brings back memories but not in New York, in Virginia. My first "gun' was also a BB gun; a Daisy Eagle with plastic blond furniture. I bought it from a friend for $5 (a LOT of money for an 8 year old back then) or did I trade something with him? Not sure about that one. Anyway, the plastic part of the stock that entered the top rear of the receiver and was secured with a single screw was broken but the gun still worked and there was always tape at hand.

I spend many hours with that gun in the woods, expending perhaps thousands of copper coated BB's at all manner of things. The clear plastic BB packs were 5 cents and the tubular BB containers were a quarter at the local drug store (yes, that's where we bought our supply). Add a little 3-In-One oil and you were good to go for a day's worth of fun and saving the world from monsters and evil BG's.

Then one day the local police (I grew up in Falls Church) saw me in the "desert" (a rather large open graded "sandy field" that was being cleared for a duck pin bowling alley) with my BB gun and confiscated it. My older brother had to go the the police department to pick it up. My first run-in with the police and they take my gun. I was scared and heart broken... and a lot more careful after that. The woods became my shooting gallery once again.

Ah yes, the days of innocent youth, woods and fields, and BB's guns.

Click to expand...

sounds like you had a dasiy 1105. not sure about how old you are but I have one in my colection. i have about 10 "classic" dasisys. I looked at them and the discription matchs the one I just restored. great little bb gun. only reason I wasnt thinking red ryder is because they mostly had wooden stocks, but also the same single bolt that holds the stock. now if 5$ was alot back then, then you would have brought the red ryders new (iv got an original news paper clipping for red ryder saying they were $2.95 and the lightning loaders were 2.50) non the less there great bb guns I found my 1105 in indiana on a road trip I decided to stop stetch my legs, found a rummage sale and grabed it

newbie said:

sounds like you had a dasiy 1105. not sure about how old you are but I have one in my colection. i have about 10 "classic" dasisys. I looked at them and the discription matchs the one I just restored. great little bb gun. only reason I wasnt thinking red ryder is because they mostly had wooden stocks, but also the same single bolt that holds the stock. now if 5$ was alot back then, then you would have brought the red ryders new (iv got an original news paper clipping for red ryder saying they were $2.95 and the lightning loaders were 2.50) non the less there great bb guns I found my 1105 in indiana on a road trip I decided to stop stetch my legs, found a rummage sale and grabed it

Click to expand...

It looked like this one as I recall;

http://www.gunauction.com/search/displayitem.cfm?itemnum=10032963

The only price I really remember was for Daisy "pop" guns which was $2.95. When we were little, we couldn't cock those guns as you normally would with a lever action. So we put the stock on the plastic outside of one of our legs and drew the lever up to cock the gun. This eventually weakened the stock and received point of attachment until the gun started to fall apart. Then we convinced our parents to buy another one.

As for the Benjamin Hot Shot I mentioned, take a look at this link and page down until you see the old ad for this gun. The price, $16.95, is what I paid for mine and my brother also bought one. The ad is true. This gun was powerful. I once sent a BB through seven beer cans and in those days, beer cans were tin, not aluminum. My father-in-law also bought one and killed a skunk with it. Not good, his back yard stunk for days.

http://www.network54.com/Forum/79537/thread/1210102285/Benjamin+3030+Hot+Shot

ugh I wish I still had my model 98 a guy offered me $160 for it, now im not dumb of course everythimg has a price. so I took it, and iv missed it since. I want another one for my colection.

now about that "hot shot" pure beauty I would love to have one and I have came across one once, but the price just was not right. also it may look out of place on my wall with all the daisys. but they are nice looking. I find that everything from before my time is much much better then stuff from my time.

now picture this im only 22 , everytime I brought home a classic bb gun my girlfriend just calls it junk. until I sold my 58 red ryder for $200. that thing sure was pretty. iv got another 58 that im 100% sure will never fire, rust has taken it over but still a must have bb gun if you collect. also as for them beer cans your talking about them things were pretty thick my uncle has a wall of them. I cant picture my old model 98 going threw 2 of them. that being said if you had youra newer i think it would. mine when I got it was poor shape. simple outside restoration only. but still fired, some of the old bb guns are works of art.

some old bb guns pre 70s had copper barrels. my 1105 was the first full restoration I did and I found that out, its copper with steel wrapped around it kind of pinched on. found that to be neat that they took the extra time back then and the better types of mettle to make it. iv got a bb gun that instead of painting I polished just for the sake of people being able to zshow people how well things were made.

sorry for the rambleing bb guns is where everyone starts. I just never stoped.

Yep, started on BB guns too. I had one till I went into the Corp, couldn't take it with me.

I got one of the plastic-stocked equivalents to a Red Ryder, the Christmas that I was 8. The following year, my brother was 8, I was 9, and we both got 94s.

This was in the Congo (Kinshasa side). One night, brother and I had been fed early and sent to the room to play, because my parents were having a formal dinner for coworkers, bosses, and bigwigs. We were hanging out in the room, playing, and my mother appeared in the doorway, looking mad. Uh-oh.

"[3fgburner], come out here. And bring your BB gun."

Forth came I, the Great White hunter in jammies, with BB gun. My mother pointed at the chandelier.

"Get that THING off of there!"

I took careful aim, making sure I had an angle of fire that wouldn't get a light bulb. A slow and steady trigger squeeze, and a quickly-deceased gecko flew of the chandelier, and plopped on the floor on the other side of the dining table. I picked it up, and asked why Mom was mad as we went to throw it away. Seems that she'd just brought our big china tureen, full of soup for the first course. Just as she lifted the lid, to begin serving, the gecko had crapped in the tureen. Scratch one gecko.

Love it!

I owned a Crossman 760 from age 8 through adulthood. We often took it into the woods across the street from my house, shooting at lots of things.

If we needed to kill a rattlesnake, twenty pumps and three BB's did a pretty fair job of it.