villagelights
New member
It was an old Remington 341, boogered up with a Weaver side mount and a K3. That little gun taught me a lot.
It has a great system for raising the cartridge into position and sliding it forward into the chamber. That elevator looked like it was designed by a munitions engineer for handling heavy shells aboard a great battle-ship. But it delivered shorts, longs, and long rifles to the chamber without making a mark on the soft lead.
The side mount allowed the line of sight to maintain a consistent, constant parallel with the bullet's flight. Wherever I held, the bullet would strike 3/4" right of the crosshairs. Handy, predictable, very useful. The 1" crosshairs did not obscure the target.
The old K3 was correctable for parallax by sliding my face back along the stock until it vignetted.
The old gun taught me how to get the most out of a crappy trigger many years before I ever felt a good one.
For many years it was my one gun. With one dog as my witness; many squirrels could attest to the old saw about the boy with one gun. It burned an awful lot of Remington "Target" standard velocity ammo when I could get the stuff. Other kids had plainer or fancier guns; but mine would shoot. So I bought ammo with my earnings, instead of other guns. There was something about those times I could afford two bricks a week that just seemed to make it shoot better.
It was all the gun though, not me. The really good shooters wrote stories in American Rifleman, Sports Afield, and Field & Stream. Sometimes I could buy those magazines second-hand for a dime. Otherwise, every cent I could cage went down that barrel of that old gun.
It stayed with me through college, through girlfriends, through cars, motorcycles, jobs, through success and failure. It was more faithful and honest than many of the people I have known. It always represented to me a personal best. With that same faithful, honest dog as my unimpeachable witness, it fired a single 5-shot group that I eventually learned not to talk about.
Half a century later, it is within reach as I type this. I wish another kid could learn from it those lessons of restraint, respect, control; to experience the keen, intense observations of the hunt, the confidence, the wonder, and the years of exploration and discovery that shooting it initiated for me. The certain knowledge that all our words and actions bear consequences; that once a word or a bullet is released, you can never call it back.
But no, Diane Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Chucky Schumer, and hundreds of 'wiser' men than me will keep our youth "safe" from learning those lessons. Maybe I'm all wet. Maybe our high-priced specialists in childhood education can teach a distant biology, a canned botany and consequences of "inappropriate behavior" far better than a kid can learn from a dog, a patch of woodland, some orchards, and one of those awful guns. Sorry; whatever I start turns into something like this. Corey Ford, Russell Annabel, Rudyard Kipling, J.M.Pyne, Chas Dickins, Minutes of The Lower Forty, The Road to Tinkhamtown; Other folks have said it better. Exit, Laughing. Old men ramble too much. I'll shut up.
It has a great system for raising the cartridge into position and sliding it forward into the chamber. That elevator looked like it was designed by a munitions engineer for handling heavy shells aboard a great battle-ship. But it delivered shorts, longs, and long rifles to the chamber without making a mark on the soft lead.
The side mount allowed the line of sight to maintain a consistent, constant parallel with the bullet's flight. Wherever I held, the bullet would strike 3/4" right of the crosshairs. Handy, predictable, very useful. The 1" crosshairs did not obscure the target.
The old K3 was correctable for parallax by sliding my face back along the stock until it vignetted.
The old gun taught me how to get the most out of a crappy trigger many years before I ever felt a good one.
For many years it was my one gun. With one dog as my witness; many squirrels could attest to the old saw about the boy with one gun. It burned an awful lot of Remington "Target" standard velocity ammo when I could get the stuff. Other kids had plainer or fancier guns; but mine would shoot. So I bought ammo with my earnings, instead of other guns. There was something about those times I could afford two bricks a week that just seemed to make it shoot better.
It was all the gun though, not me. The really good shooters wrote stories in American Rifleman, Sports Afield, and Field & Stream. Sometimes I could buy those magazines second-hand for a dime. Otherwise, every cent I could cage went down that barrel of that old gun.
It stayed with me through college, through girlfriends, through cars, motorcycles, jobs, through success and failure. It was more faithful and honest than many of the people I have known. It always represented to me a personal best. With that same faithful, honest dog as my unimpeachable witness, it fired a single 5-shot group that I eventually learned not to talk about.
Half a century later, it is within reach as I type this. I wish another kid could learn from it those lessons of restraint, respect, control; to experience the keen, intense observations of the hunt, the confidence, the wonder, and the years of exploration and discovery that shooting it initiated for me. The certain knowledge that all our words and actions bear consequences; that once a word or a bullet is released, you can never call it back.
But no, Diane Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Chucky Schumer, and hundreds of 'wiser' men than me will keep our youth "safe" from learning those lessons. Maybe I'm all wet. Maybe our high-priced specialists in childhood education can teach a distant biology, a canned botany and consequences of "inappropriate behavior" far better than a kid can learn from a dog, a patch of woodland, some orchards, and one of those awful guns. Sorry; whatever I start turns into something like this. Corey Ford, Russell Annabel, Rudyard Kipling, J.M.Pyne, Chas Dickins, Minutes of The Lower Forty, The Road to Tinkhamtown; Other folks have said it better. Exit, Laughing. Old men ramble too much. I'll shut up.