As it turned out, the money I received for my 13th b-day was exactly enough to get me a shiny new Lakefield Mossberg .22 repeater through the S.I.R. mail order catalogue folks out in Winnipeg. And, those were the days when a kid could put money in an envelope and in due time, someone would mail you a rifle. On Saturdays, you could go unattended to the Co-Op store and get those little yellow slider boxes of .22 ammo all by yourself. Oh, it was a golden age!
I spent that whole summer laying on the ground sniping gophers, on a hillside on our farm that was too steep to cultivate. Farmers in that day loathed the Richardsons Ground Squirrel, and I knew I was doing a good and useful thing. The rifle, however, turned out to be junk. It would never feed more than two or three rounds without jamming, but I was on a budget anyway so I single loaded shorts, which were great for gophers.
The utmost-safety-at-any-cost types might disagree, but I feel it helped me noticeably grow in my sense of responsibility to get that first firearm, and I had already been through years of training with my pellet gun anyway. Nothing bad ever happened, and I've gone on to expose many others to responsible enjoyment of the shooting hobby.
I spent that whole summer laying on the ground sniping gophers, on a hillside on our farm that was too steep to cultivate. Farmers in that day loathed the Richardsons Ground Squirrel, and I knew I was doing a good and useful thing. The rifle, however, turned out to be junk. It would never feed more than two or three rounds without jamming, but I was on a budget anyway so I single loaded shorts, which were great for gophers.
The utmost-safety-at-any-cost types might disagree, but I feel it helped me noticeably grow in my sense of responsibility to get that first firearm, and I had already been through years of training with my pellet gun anyway. Nothing bad ever happened, and I've gone on to expose many others to responsible enjoyment of the shooting hobby.
