What was your first airgun?

[shepp1]

A BSA Buccaneer, that was one ugly M F'er! It made the HW100 TH look like a Prosport in comparison.
I remember feeling a bit gutted because I wanted just a basic small, normal looking gun with a wooden stock.
Well it spent it's life under my fathers bed and I only was given the chance to shoot it about twice, last I heard it was given away to a cousin.
I think my hunger for airguns now has been driven by that early unquenched desire.

[Plinkerton]

A Webley Eclipse MK-1.

Hated it.

Everthing rattled and the finish ranged from poorly blued barrel and underlever to nasty black 'paint' alloy cylinder. The underlever release was a giant lump of over-engineered dead-weight and the amount of time it took just to load and fire the thing was.......let's just say I didn't get on with it.

Sold it for a HW-80K which I still have today.

[Grayling]

My first air gun was a Milbro Model 23 junior air rifle that I found in 1971 believe it or not hidden in the roofless shell of an incendiary bombed house at the end of our street. Happily I still have this tiny old rifle. Thanks to info gleaned from esteemed members on here I was able to put the vintage to June 1964, which is stamped on the butt.

Sadly this info shattered my childhood illusions of the wartime owner of said air gun and ruined house it was found in standing on his doorstep defiantly shooting his rifle at the German bombers overhead as their ordanance rained down on our neigbourhood 30 years previous during the May blitz in 1941, well I was only 10 at the time .

[Binners]

My first air gun was a Milbro Model 23 junior air rifle that I found in 1971 believe it or not hidden in the roofless shell of an incendiary bombed house at the end of our street. Happily I still have this tiny old rifle. Thanks to info gleaned from esteemed members on here I was able to put the vintage to June 1964, which is stamped on the butt.

Sadly this info shattered my childhood illusions of the wartime owner of said air gun and ruined house it was found in standing on his doorstep defiantly shooting his rifle at the German bombers overhead as their ordanance rained down on our neigbourhood 30 years previous during the May blitz in 1941, well I was only 10 at the time .

I bet that house still has no roof, or lead anyway

[Grayling]

I bet that house still has no roof, or lead anyway

Hehehe very funny , sadly they've all gone now, demolished and new houses built. As a little boy I remember many such ruined house shells in our area from Luftwaffe incendiary or HE bombs (all the lead gone of course ). Sadly there are none left anywhere in Liverpool now, all signs of the May blitz are gone now apart from a few bomb craters in the forest near West Derby village or the mass burial graves in West Derby and other local cemertries.

I still smile to myself when I recall my imagination running wild as a little boy when I first found this little air rifle of some fearless wartime scouse householder errrrrrrrrrrrrr ''blazing away '' at German bombers flying at 20,000 ft with this tiny Milbro air rifle that barely pushes 6ftlbs while his home burned around him. And yes I still believed in Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy back then too .

[Crustybeat]

Brema 27 .177 on my 11th birthday. I had to haul manure all morning with my Dad before he took me to the local gunsmith to buy it.

It was the best birthday present I ever received and I couldn't sleep that week, I was so exited.

I remember the copy of Airgun World we bought before choosing the gun, I read it obsessively until it was worn thin.

Even though the Brema was a junior rifle it was a little big for me at 11 and I remember giving myself a fat lip whilst cocking it.

Happy days indeed.

[Mattatack]

webley vulcan mk1 .177 my dad had to convince my mum that it was ok for me to shoot it as it wasnt very powerful and so to demonstrate he took one shot at an old biscuit tin 25 yards only to discover it had punched clean hole right through.i eventually traded it in for my old 35 export

[micky]

Mine was a Diana 16 brought from a catalogue for xmas in the early 1960s you could in them days

[Karlos.]

Diana SP 50

[monty57]

My first airgun was a Diana 'pop out' Gat pistol, can't remember the number but it was the one that was meant to look like a Colt .45.
Then at about age 14 I progressed to a Diana G80 Air rifle, which was a gigantic thing that really thudded when you fired it. Tin cans in the back yard didn't stand a chance!

BSA meteor in .22 in 1969 that shot at around 8ftlbs still got it , and its still at 8ftlbs would love to spend the time shooting rabbits with it at sub 12ftlbs but don't want to alter from original incase it goes over. been intouch with BSA they couldn't advise me as to what spring or alterations to make because of legal requirements being met.

[Clanchief]

My first gun that led to all this trouble was an Airsporter,Used to use it when I visited the pigeon loft with my dad where he had several hundred racing doos,it was used to massacre the sparrows who stole the pigeon food in those days. After a year or two I got to take it home as he had bought my brother a Vulcan,this was all back in around 1981.The Airsporter has the prefix GI or GL not to sure, still got it after nearly 30 years,could do with a service,piston seal,spring and a new plastic windage screw for the rearsight and it will be as good as new(had to make a metal one as had a fall chasing a squirrel.) It was my cousin who went to Oz and left it,been in our family for forty or more years. Would love one of those little 4X25 scopes that were made out of bean cans to put on it again, any one remember those first scopes ? Then I got a Kassnar 4x32scope,never see those anymore since the 80's eh ?

Chiefy

[WilkieWebley]

A second hand little .177 Slavia and I loved it. Cobbled together a sling and thought I was one of the chaps on Daktari

Embarising I know but hey I was just a kid

All the best, Roy

[airgunner87]

Airarms s400 cracking rifle

[windygap]

was an Early vintage of about 1954 or 55 going by UJ's fine Sheridan book. I was about 8- 10 years old, parents wouldn't spend the money for a new one and I was a wee bit too young they said , so they thought.

At the time kid of about 16 had this 1955 ish Bluestreak, he bought it several year earlier from a 21 yr old fellow who bought it new , so I was the THIRD owner . I bought it in secret with out the parents knowing.

I paid about 10.00 I believe it was, pretty much wiped my piggybank out. It was already well worn. There was NO WHERE to hid it in the house. So I wrapped it in a pillowcase and buried it in the woods beside a rockwall in back of my parents estate. There it lived though rain , snow , and flood. A testiment to the quality of a SHeridan , NO need to build 50 models of an inferior gun . They got it right the first time.

I walked home from school , I would uncover the Sheridan and disappear off into the woods , untill I head the dinner bell clang , at which timeI would return it to its hiding place.

I shot BB's out of my Sheridan ... I couldn't afford REAL 5mm PELLETS and couldn't very well ask the parents , so I begged BB's off other local kids and I even shot a few tiny pebbles !! .

This lasted about two years at which point my mother bought me a Crosman rife, not knowing I had a bluestreak already. I acted appreciative , but it was nothing in comparsion to the Hold down Bluestreak. I could kill a sack of squirrels on a sat. morning with that Sheridan.

Kept the gun till I was married and sold it to one of my best mates. He STILL has this gun and its in really poor condtion looks wise, but he killed a squirrel last year with it !!!

[scotttomo]

Webley Tempest, still got it, still works, still bags of fun to shoot