Pre Internet old Gun Guys

[Larryh128]

I still get a few select magazines because there is usually something in there that catches my attention. What I can tell you as a boy, I read them cover to cover and gleaned some extremely good information and some that was absolutely horrible. Anyone who writes an article about how to sight in your rifle at 25 yds & it will be good at ------ yds should be hung by their toes. It should be entitled "How to screw up 14 year olds so they can't hit a deer" Don't worry about checking it at 100, you'll be dead on. Must have been an animal activist.

 

[johara1]

I guess the big difference is we didn't have time, working and doing it, rather sitting here banging on a key board. We learned by trial and error but we did it, we lived it. Surplus 4831 was 50 cents a pound if you had your own container, Shot was 8.00 a hundred and i had a bolt gun that shot 20 shots with LC. match in 3/4" at 200 yds with a sling and a old Unertel scope and gas was 30 cents a gallon …….. with the internet we came a long way………. maybe thats why i can't see………. jim

 

[GNERGY]

I subscribed to American Rifleman, Guns & Ammo, Gun World magazines. I used catalogs from Esmans, Cabellas, Gander Mtn. and Herters to order equipment, usually called to order and paid the COD fee. I think it was $0.65 back then. Bought powder and primers from Skip who had a store on his back porch and you could call and he would have it by the end of the week.
We saw the first fiberglass stocked benchrest rifles painted all sorts of different colors and thought that was Cool. So we bought some liquid fiberglass boat repair epoxy resin and coated our 22 cal Marlin stocks and sanded them smooth and painted them. The colors we used were black, metallic green, metallic blue, white, purple and mine was white. We had the baddest 22's around.
My first rifle build was when I was 16yrs old working at Krogers packing bags for $2.15 hr after school. I bought a Mark X Mauser action brand new for $59.00 ( My Mom had to fill out the paper work of course ) I bought a McGowen pre chambered and threaded bull barrel in 25-06 for $35.00 out of the back of one of my gun magazines. ( This is when 25-06 was still a wildcat back in 1972 )I made the stock out of walnut glued together in wood shop class like the heavy varmint style and bought an Unertle 2 inch 24x scope from Esmans to put on it. Pete at Cleveland Custom Guns assembled the barrel and action for me and drilled the barrel for the front scope base. I bought once fired military 30-06 cases at the gun show and sized them down with my Forster bench rest dies and loaded 87gr Curry bullets and shot 1/4 inch groups at 100 yds with it. Back then we would go down to southern Ohio and shoot Ground hogs, my farthest kill was 450 paces it was a big fat female, those were the days. I still have that rifle and it still shoots good.
After that I built a 7mm-300 Wby to try and shoot a ground hog at 1000 yds but never got to do that. Still have this rifle too.
Sorry for going on but it just brought back some good old memories.
Tarey
Thanks for asking.

 

[bheadboy]

in the later 1940s I and my father purchased two 1917 Enfield's buried in kosmolene and wrapped in wax paper, shipped in the mail at the extreme cost of $17.00 each I think they were offered through NRA.

it took a week to get them clean enough to hold in your hand, much less to shoot. got some Gi 06 at a gun show, and went to the rock quarry - they shot well, and I used it for a number of years before "sporterizing it" milled off the ears, bot a bishop stock, cut the bbl down to get rid of the front sight, drilled and tapped for scope, Weaver 1.5-3x. reloaded with mil surplus powder and lyman tong tool.

about that time I bot a 2r Lovell on Win high wall with a pefiffer bbl 16 twist and loaded 50 gr Sisk pills. this was my entry into varmint hunting, after a number of crows, etc. took a 300+ pace bird across a corn field. ( legal then)
money came from working at a grocery store for tips, construction odd jobs, and selling eggs from our chickens.

bot yellow box Win 22 shorts for .10 a box at Kings hardware in Buckhead after going to the Saturday show which cost .15, and you got a movie and the weekly serials along with the cartoons and newsreels.

Bob

 

[dogdude]

Just spent an hour trying to retrieve my password for Icloud with someone with an accent I could not understand, sometimes I just hate the ''net''. dogdude

 

[Wjesswheel]

I grew up in the last town in the us with. A 3 digit phone number and you actually had to ask the operator to ring the number for you

 

[tome]

hung around the gun shop, listened and learned. hunted a lot with a shotgun, decided I could reload a lot cheaper. bought a lee loader in 12 ga, took it home and read the instructions. picked a load and bought the components. sat on the floor with a hammer and banged out reloads. later ( when I had a few spare dollars ) I bought a Lyman reloading book. read and learned. that was 54 years ago and I still read and learn, now with a computer. the read and learn has not changed, only how I access the knowledge.

 

[justpassinthru]

A friend of mine who who has been in to guns and benchrest as long as I've know him doesn't even have a computer but he never ceases to amaze me with the stuff he finds. He has a close network of friends plus hits the gunshows I guess.
Every time I think I have found something special and take it to show him, he always produces at least one of whatever I have, that is even nicer or rarer.

I called my buddy this morning to ask if he knew of a better price on a 8lb jug of N133 that I had found online at Powder Valley.
He said he didn't even know where ANY could be bought and wouldn't mind having one himself.
Score one for the computer 8)

 

[CaptainMal]

In the 50's it was Handloader and Guns and Ammo magazine. They were actually good and not like the rags today full of machine guns and G I Joe wanna be's.

Local gun shops were places to visit and chat. That's in contrast to the supermarkets I see called gun shops today.

Sportsman clubs served beer and you could chat and shoot and chat some more. Lots of information was shared there.

Herter's marketed huge catalogues of information and RCBS pushed their equipment with many small flyers, as did many others back then. I still have some 50's manuals and instruction books that make good reference books today.

You would spend more time on the bench and fooling with the guns than sitting on this here computer mostly passing time until your upcoming dirt nap.

 

[Chuckhunter]

I suspect that mostfolks who have been shooting since the late 70's or perhaps even longer, can do two things. One is write a book on the how to's of shooting accurately. Two, write an entire series of books on what not to do. I'm sure you can figure out why!

 

[vlcakc]

I suspect that mostfolks who have been shooting since the late 70's or perhaps even longer, can do two things. One is write a book on the how to's of shooting accurately. Two, write an entire series of books on what not to do. I'm sure you can figure out why!

Very true. I turned 79 this summer so I guess I qualify as an "Old Gun Guy", so I'll chime in. We learned "hands on".

One thing we DIDN'T have to do is sort through all the utter BS posted on the internet by the self-proclaimed experts these days to glean even a small amount of hard information. (Not that Accurate Shooter members do that sort of thing.) ) Vic

 

[BoydAllen]

When I started reloading, I did not have a mentor. It was with a 788 in .308 that I had picked up, hardly used, for a song, and after emptying some cheap military style cases by shooting the ammo that they were part of, I started loading with a Lee loader and a plastic hammer. From that point is was learn by doing, and reading everything that I could find, until I met a fellow at the range who had his entire benchrest rig with him. He took me under his wing, and explained a whole lot of things, and I read my first issues of Precision Shooting Magazine, which was pretty much exclusively about benchrest in those days. After that, I got Warren Page's book, and started going to benchrest matches as a spectator, where I was fascinated by the equipment. Sometime later, I got started doing some gun writing, and got my first real benchrest rifle, and actually shot some registered matches. All along the way it has been a continual learning process, that I continue to enjoy.

 

[K22]

I started reloading in the late 60's using a Lyman Reloading Manual and self taught myself. I sure made my share of mistakes, nothing serious, but it wasn't until I met a dedicated bench rest shooter that I began to learn how to load for precision shooting which for me meant long range varmint hunting. And thanks to sites like this I'm still learning.

While there is a lot of excellent instructional material now available to new reloaders, I would recommend, if possible, that a new reloader (rifle) connect with a bench rest shooter - these guys really know what they're doing. It will save you a lot of time and money in the long run.

The one thing new guys have these days is an wide choice of excellent bullets. For me, most of the old standby IMR Powders still work very well but the new bullets have taken my group reductions and terminal performance to a new level. Also, when I started reloading we didn't have component shortages, just money shortages.

PS - When I was in college we didn't even have calculators - we used slide rules - anyone out there know what a slide rule is?

 

[jwink]

Not only do I know what a slide rule is.... I still remember how to use it. (they actually taught us how to use it be fore the calculator era in school.)

 

[jonbearman]

I can remember in 10th grade my buddy brought a calculator to math class and he got caught with it by my teacher and he took it away and gave us a 45 minute dissertation on why calculators is the downfall for understanding mathematics.He got his calculator back and was told never ever to bring it into his class again or he would get a weeks suspension.

 

[Ghansen]

I had the shooters bible as my beginning reference book and every story I read involving hunting was inspiration and learning. I don't know what my teachers thought but I knew my ballistics much better than the periodic table. The guys at the range I went to were a mixed bag, but they always educated me on the disciplines involved to become a good shooter. Among them were shooting journo's and some gun store owners. Like learning to drive there are things you just don't think of, and apart from hunting hand loads I went into the precision shooting area and learned a 'thou can also make a big difference, ..your breathing.... your heart beat... a bead of sweat and the pressure you gently apply to the trigger. All that is in a book as well, but you need to learn it somewhere, online or on paper. Think Yoda and love what you do.

 

[VaniB]

In the old days I relied on a couple of books and what the instruction pamphlet in those green plastic die boxes had to say. I spent 25 years from about 1975 to the millenium buying RCBS dies and shooting 1" groups on my good days. With the advent of the internet, I spent 5 years reading and learning from what others had to say, and was shooting 1/2" groups much of the time, with 1" groups on my bad days.

I basically spent the old days doing the wrong methods over and over for 25 years.

 

[justpassinthru]

In the old days I relied on a couple of books and what the instruction pamphlet in those green plastic die boxes had to say. I spent 25 years from about 1975 to the millenium buying RCBS dies and shooting 1" groups on my good days. With the advent of the internet, I spent 5 years reading and learning from what others had to say, and was shooting 1/2" groups much of the time, with 1" groups on my bad days.

I basically spent the old days doing the wrong methods over and over for 25 years.

Same here for a long time, but I was fortunate enough to meet a benchrest shooter (already mentioned in a post above) and learned a lot from him long before Al Gore ever invented the internet.

 

[tome]

key to what " old timers " said was , I read the instructions ". these were a short course in getting it done. I think Lee products had the best. they told you how to use the products. gave pictorials. gave various loads stepped you thru the process. no bs, no hype.

 

[chkunz]

I am definitely one of the "old guys" you refer to. I graduated from engineering school in 1965 with a slide rule and a set of log tables and went to work on the Moon Rocket. There were no PCs and not even any hand held calculators even though Al Gore was working on the internet but he was so much ahead of his time. You young guys think you have the advantage with the internet today and you do. You have so much more information at the speed of light but you also have a big problem, there is an elephant in the living room. I will use this forum as an example; I am new to this forum and have read a lot of the posts over the past few days and I see a lot of information, opinions and BS. How does the new guy separate the geniuses from the idiots? Strive to separate opinions from facts backed up with data. Look up the old articles by Creighton Audette, Bill Davis, and E. H. Harrison. Audette wrote a great article on understanding the principles of probability and statistics. If someone gives an opinion without adequate data to make it meaningful ignore it and move on. Always ask, what do I know for sure.