For me, it all started at the ripe old age of six! I am now going on 60, so it sort of dates me a bit. But when I was six years old, my dad on a road hunting trip in the mountains let me shoot his Rock Island 1903. Yes, he had it sporterized the year before I was born, but it was a big, heavy impressive rifle to me. For some reason, while in the car, I kept asking dad how much it kicked? Heck, I did not even know at the time what "kick" was. So dad pulled over in a safe spot, which there were quite a few of them in those days, and we all got out of the car.

Dad set up an old two gallon oil can that he found at the dump about fifty feet away and loaded a single round and told me to shoot the can. I could barely holdl the rifle up, let alone shoot it. But I did manage to fire that round off and I did land on my butt with dad catching the rifle. I was forever hooked on shooting and was impressed with what became known as recoil. I was the only kid in the neighborhood who would play army with the other kids and simulate recoil when I fired my "gun" at the enemy. My "gun" consisted of a broom handle and some cut up 2X4's for a stock.

Then for several years, the shooting bit lay dormant with me. Then in the early 1960's, I started to take notice of all those greasy old rifles stuck in the barrels that were stuck out on the sidewalk every morning in front of the hardware stores and the Sears, Roebuck and Company catalog store. You had to be nuts to even handle one of those greasy things.

But a friend of mine saved up his allowance and bought one. It turned out to be an 1891 Argentine Mauser in 7.65 mm caliber. He managed to get all the grease and crap cleaned off it by using gasoline syphoned out of his dad's car! After getting it all cleaned up and nice looking, we started the search for ammo for it. Ammo simply could not be found locally for the 7.65 cartridge. But heck, one of dad's .30-06 cartridges looked pretty close, but when trying to load it, it would not fit! So we pleaded with the Pastime Sports Shop owner to PLEASE order us a box of ammo for the rifle, so Stan could shoot it. The store owner did order one box of ammo, and it turned out to be NORMA ammunition and it had a price tag of $19.95 on it for 20 rounds!

This was in the early 1960's, my friends. I think Stan only paid that much for the entire rifle, complete with enough grease to lube his dad's car wheel bearings. But by then, there were four of us kids interested in shooting the rifle that Stan had, so we all chipped in a few dollars and a month later, we had enough to buy that box of ammo. After we had the ammo for the rifle, it was time to shoot it. One of the older kids had a driver's license and borrowed his dad's car one Saturday morning and picked us others up for a short trip up into the mountains. We found a spot to shoot, which was in an old clear cut and we divvied up the ammo by the amount of what each person contributed to the cost of the box of 20rounds.

We soon found that the rifle shot pretty good. Stan went and took an old two gallon oil can (we always carried "grocery store non-detergent oil in the cars back then) up on a stump at a paced off distance of 400 yards. I could hardly see the can at that range, but when it was Stan's time to shoot, he raised the rear sight to what appeared to be the 400 yard, meter, or whatever position and took careful aim, propping the barrel over the car roof. We could not tell where the bullets hit, but after one of the guys volunteered to fetch the can, he brought it back with a fresh bullet hole in the middle!

Needless to say, the hook was set on milsurps for me. The Gun Control Act of 1968 came along and ruined things for me for a long time, so I simply stagnated for a quarter of a century. Then about the mid 1990's, my nephew who mom and I raised was showing some interest in hunting and shooting. He found this place called Big 5 and they sold old military rifles. Almost overnight, the old flame was rekindled in my. It took a couple years before I found a nice mint 1891 Argentine, but in the meanwhile, I was buying up whatever they had at Big 5, including Mosin-Nagant 91-30's and such. Then I discovered gun shows, and that was back when gun shows were nice and lots of fun. Well, the rest of the story concerning me is now history. I hope I don't get censured for such a long wordy post, but folks, that is the way it was with me.
Curt