shooting in Arkansas

Frank Fusco

Member
Messages
12,782
Location
Mountain Home, Arkansas
This is our annual week with the grands.
Yesterday I took the boys fishing on the White River. Had fun and caught a mess of trout.
Today they got safety and shooting lessons. Their other grandpa bought them youth .22 rifles last year but they had never used. I gave a safety and sighting lecture then we went out to my makeshift shooting range. Learning to hold a rifle properly was unfamiliar and awkward to them at first.
After about ten rounds each both were grouping well in the black. They challenged each other to a competition. So safety, technique and fun were learned by both. Grandpa had fun also.
 

Attachments

  • shooting 1 small.jpg
    shooting 1 small.jpg
    140.8 KB · Views: 63
  • shooting 2 small.jpg
    shooting 2 small.jpg
    140.7 KB · Views: 59
  • shooting 3 small.jpg
    shooting 3 small.jpg
    132.5 KB · Views: 58
Frank, that's great! One of my fondest memories from my youth was when Grandpa and Dad (finally!) took me to Grandpas's farm and let me shoot the bolt action 22. That was 35 years ago and I still remember it quite vividly.



I still have that rifle, and taught my nephews to shoot with it a few years ago.


I hope my son has an interest when he gets a bit older. Now, all he cares about is eating and baseball (what else is there when you're 8?)
 
Those kids must have 2 pretty darn good Grandpas I'd say :thumb: :thumb:

Never really went shooting with my Grandpa, but I do have fond memories of learning to shoot and hunt with my Dad and uncles at an early age...

You are building some memories to last a lifetime.
 
Wow wish i had had a Grandpa like you.:thumb: Trout fishing one day and shooting the next, whats more to want and Grandpa has a shop to play in.

Three strikes for me there Frank. You number 1:thumb: as Grandpas go.:)
 
Looks like a fun time.

I love shooting with my kids.

How times have changed. My dad tells the story how he and his high school friends back in the mid 1930's used to bring their .22s to school. At lunch they would walk to the edge of town, 4-5 blocks away and shoot them during their lunch break.

It's good to see young kids interested in shooting.
 
Looks like a fun time.

I love shooting with my kids.

How times have changed. My dad tells the story how he and his high school friends back in the mid 1930's used to bring their .22s to school. At lunch they would walk to the edge of town, 4-5 blocks away and shoot them during their lunch break.

It's good to see young kids interested in shooting.

I don't go back that far. But in the 1940s we brought our pocket knives to school and played mumbly-peg in the playground. Today, that would bring SWAT, CNN and swarms of 'counselors' to help us with our problems.
 
Great post Frank.

I've been taking my 9 year old out back and letting him shoot my Dad's old single shot 22 that he bought when he was 16. It brings back memories of me and dad doing the same thing. I hear myself saying some of the same things Dad used to tell me.

On another note

When I first started teaching it wasn't uncommon at all to have one of the kids ask me to hold the 22, 12 gauge, 30-06 shell or what ever they had been hunting with the day before and forgotten to take out of their jacket pocket. I'd put it in my desk drawer and tell them to get it after school. Now they'd boot them out for such craziness.:dunno: If I needed a box open all I had to do was ask who had a pocket knife and I could choose from 10 or 12.
 
not sure if my post made it first time.

I mentioned I still have the chipmunk rifle from Oregon Arms I bought for my son when he was around 7 or 8.
Keeping it figuring maybe Ill make it to see a grandson or granddaughter.
Dont know if either of the parents will let them shoot though.
 

Attachments

  • bed 355 (Medium).jpg
    bed 355 (Medium).jpg
    55.9 KB · Views: 16
Wow, I think that is absolutely great. Keep the tradition going on.

Your G-kids will absolutely remember that as much as I remember my G-dad taking me fishing.

I ended up learning shooting/hunting on my own...but so grateful for the experiences (funny, I have my G-dads deer hunting rifle that he had to feed his family on, back then).
 
Good on ya Frank for taking the boys shooting. I started shooting BB guns pretty young, and was shooting .22 by the time I was their age...probably about as old as the older of the two when I first started shooting 30-30 and 30-06. (I preferred the .22, for sure.) My dad was the person who got me started, but I went on a number of hunting trips with my granddad. (Never saw anything to shoot at, though.)

I don't go back that far. But in the 1940s we brought our pocket knives to school and played mumbly-peg in the playground. Today, that would bring SWAT, CNN and swarms of 'counselors' to help us with our problems.

I carried a 4" Buck Folding Hunter on my belt through most of high school in the '70s. Usually had a pocket knife, too. It wasn't too uncommon for pickup trucks in the high school parking lot to have guns on the rack in back window, and this was in a middle class neighborhood in Albuquerque. Like you said, nowadays, that'd be a trip to the slammer.
 
Wow wish i had had a Grandpa like you.:thumb: Trout fishing one day and shooting the next, whats more to want and Grandpa has a shop to play in.

Three strikes for me there Frank. You number 1:thumb: as Grandpas go.:)

Tonight we are going to stock car races. Tomorrow we will go to Imax in Branson, MO and see the 'Australia' film.
My son and his family are going to Australia for nearly a year on a sabbatical. After that they will make many stops around the world before coming back home. We will probably see them only one more time before they leave.

Edit: Forgot to mention: Yesterday we toured the Ranger Boat factory. Boat building is a major industry for our part of the country. Very interesting tour. Great boats if you can afford them.
 
Boy this post has brought back a few memories for me.

Unsupervised....:rofl::rofl: ....after my parents refused to buy me a pelet gun i took what was a very expensive (at the time) Xmas present (Scale Electric Racing car set with all the extras and cars with real lights imagine the cost) and swopped it at the local swop shop for a Pelet gun and soccer ball.

My peer group at the time all had them and we would undertake the most dangerous excercises in my friends garage.

We had one guy stand on his dads mechanical workbench while the rest of us each assumed a variety of roles. One had a 2 lb ball pene hammer in hand, another a 6 inch round nail and another a spring from the tappets of an engine.

The procedure was, after removing the air rifle part from its butt, to press the rear down on the bench. The hammer and nail guys would knock the pin out that held the spring retaining cap in and the guy on the bench would then allow the whole thing to part. Once apart the tappet spring was placed inside followed by the actual spring.

Then the fun and games began trying to get the whole assembly back together. That steel cap would fly off in different directions like a unguided missile. How we all left intact was a tribute to our fitness and alertness and lady luck.

Then came the huge test firing. The aim was to get these guns to fire a lead pelet through a heavy gauge garbage bin and go through both sides.

We persevered until we got it right with a variety of mods.

Then the next guys gun got worked on till the whole crew had souped up rifles.

Now unfortunately we did not have any critters like racoons or rabbits or even chippies to shoot.

So we would go to the Gold mine dumps (yeah full of toxic cyanide waste thats what they used in them days) and we would shoot doves and wash them off after plucking (in the toxic waste water) and then BBQ on a make shift fire.

That was living. We never shot what we could not eat and we ate all that we shot. Even the robins.

Can you just imagine this today. :rofl::rofl::rofl:

We did not get taught marksmanship by Grandpa or Dad cause they were not around they were working. But we all survived with our eyes intact and we taught ourselves gun safety the hard way through avoiding many near misses we learnt them things are dangerous.:)
 
Cant even imagine how us miscreants ever made it through our childhood!

I'm sure nowadays we'd all be sent for counseling and put on some sort of medications... :rofl:
 
Top