Christmas morning of 1961; I was 6 1/2 years old, and almost all the packages were unwrapped when my dad pointed out a long, flat package which had been overlooked by my sister & me. It had my name on it, and it was a Daisy pump BB gun. After breakfast, Dad took me into the back yard, put a pair of sunglasses on me, and began teaching me the fundamentals of marksmanship. Later graduated to a shotgun. At age 10, I went to summer camp at The Citadel (at that time, camp was run in a military fashion-white sidewall haircuts, uniforms, march in formation to and from everything, white-glvoe room inspections, etc.) It was there that I received my first formal instruction with a .22 rifle from an NRA certified instructor. I taught myself handgun shooting from reading and eventually doing. (Didn't get to shoot a handgun till I was 13, didn't shoot them with any regularity until I was 19.)
FWIW, I took trap shooting as an extra activity at The Citadel, and they stuck me with a Browning A5 12 ga. (At this time, my regular hunting gun was a Fox/Sterlingworth SxS 20 ga. with a shortened stock.) Even with that oversized monster, I shot 100%. It left a bruise which covered half my chest and my shoulder, but I wore it with pride. No one else shot 100%, even the 18 year olds.
My first real gun was an H&R Topper single shot 410 shotgun, the kind that folded completely in half; it had a recess in the forestock to allow for the trigger guard. It wasn't until years later that I realized that the 410 wasn't a beginner's gun, but rather an expert's gun.
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Shoot straight regards, Richard at The Shottist's Center
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