Quote Originally Posted by TonyL View Post
My very earliest memories are a little hazy.

My mum and dad live next to the canal and we were out there fishing from about 7 years old. By about the age of 10 I'd also be shooting rats down the canal with home made catapults and I was my dad's "rabbit carrier".

Now, one or two of the older lads that we met down the canal had airguns. I think the Webley Premier was the one that stood out most. And I started getting interested in airguns. But they were to allude me until I was about 11......At secondary school, I had a couple of mates and their dads had land. One of my mates had a BSA Merlin and the other a Relum Jelly (Telly?) Junior. I was a little apprehensive at first and that little Relum seemed to be quite harsh and I think I can remember it rattling my cheek!

But the bug had been well and truly bitten. I kept bugging my parents for one and the answer was a big, fat "no". All the grown ups I tried to speak to looked at me with a very bemused expression when I tried to explain that an airgun that was a gun that used air to fire projectiles as opposed to a power tool.

I eventually got my first one aged 12 or 13.....a Relum 822 which my dad haggled a lass who used to fish with us down to a fiver. It was a nasty, low powered, inaccurate little thing, but it satiated my thirst a little until I finally, at age 14, I think, bought a new Super Meteor.

And, around that time, Airgun World was released, bringing new found knowledge and enlightenment and my World changed forever.

Happy Days Tony.


My Father took me hunting with him when I was tiny (3-4 years old) and I shot my first rabbit with him holding the rifle (some low mag scoped spring rifle, probably catalogue purchsed) whilst I looked through the scope and pulled the trigger-I asked my Mum about this fairly recently and she told me she was furious when she found out he was letting me shoot.


I had to wait a lot longer for my "own" rifle-as the youngest of all the male cousins, I was the last one to take possession of a well used, by several cousins ( but beautifully stocked) little Diana break barrel. It was my birthday present aged 11-I bloody loved that rifle and became a very good hunter with it-I had to learn real fieldcraft to be able to get within range.
Like our Tony, I graduated to a Meteor Super, then onto an ASI Magnum, later an HW35. These were followed by an HW80- and HW77 purchased from our beloved forum sponsor (those were the days!).
Fast forward 5 years and I treated myself to my first pre-charge-a second hand Titan Manitou in .22 and wow. Just wow-the boundaries and possibilities were pushed.
Many years and probably close to 100 rifles later, I can honestly say that nothing comes close to that very first little Diana rifle.

Great thread chaps-keep it up.