What got you into airguns ?

[Geezer]

When I was about 10, my dad got me a Webley Typhoon (youth Hurricane) for my birthday.

I had not wanted a gun. But I took to it like a duck to water and it started a life-long interest. Many more guns of all kinds followed. Comps, stalking, pests, collecting…

Oddly, my father was not a shooter. But my mother’s father (who died when I was very young) was, and his father and grandfather were respectively, a military armourer and a BSA gunsmith. Maybe it’s in the DNA?

[T 20]

In 1968 my dad had a MK2 Airsporter complete with NS 4X20 scope that he kept leaning up the wall in the cowshed to shoot pigeons off the roof of the old barn opposite the cowshed.
The bluing had long gone off the Airsporter's action, the butt was showing signs of rot from being on a wet floor and the whole gun had specs of dried cow shit all over it --- nice.
When my dad wasn't looking I used to Nick his Airsporter and go shooting with it even though as an eight year old I could only just cock it --- happy days.
That's what started my attachment to Airguns.

Fast forward to right now --- the wall where the Airsporter stood is about 60 feet from where I sit, and the old barn is now my home, and yes I still have my dad's Airsporter.




All the best Mick

[zephyr]

Perhaps a bizarre route. My Grandad died when I was seven, to ease the lose my sister and I were allowed a present. For reasons I can’t remember, or understand (no one I knew shot), I chose a gat gun. I had all sorts of restrictions put on me using it and the thing didn’t “group”, more like it randomly sprayed the darts I had.

[Mr.Fixit-Norm]

From the age of 9 I’d had my own allotments with my grandfather, it so happened that back in 1973 we were getting a lot of problems with coypu coming onto the allotments at night and destroying winter cabbages and other plants. The coypu control people gave as 3 big live traps but said we’d have to deal with any we caught and suggested drowning them in a water butt ( = old oil drum ).

We caught quite a few and having tried to put the trap in the butt upside down and drown them it wasn’t very pleasant, I also tried a big sharpened stick pushing it through the back of the neck while they were in the trap. This was violent and also not very pleasant either so my dad suggested I get an air rifle. I’d saved up a bit of money and went to Tilneys Gunshop in Beccles where we lived and bought a second hand 0.22 BSA Airsporter, complete with a plastic 4 x 20 Seagull brand scope

I found that if I put the barrel just inside the cage and aimed at the back of the head it finished them off very effectively. I must have sorted about a dozen like that !
The rest as they say is history

Norm

[VALE BOY]

Great that you still have your Dad’s old Airsporter, Mick.

When I was 5 my Nana used to take me down on the bus from Glasgow into rural Ayrshire where her younger sister, my Aunt Ida lived on a smallholding right in the middle of the village of Tarbolton (famous for it’s connections with the Poet, Robert Burns).
She had 3 sons who’d done National Service, in their early to mid-20s and were really keen shooters, so rabbits, pigeons and ducks were frequently served up for dinner. They had a designated gun room which had all kinds of stuff including centre-fire and rim-fire rifles and various kinds of shotguns 12 bore and 410s. I think there were revolvers as well like the Webley Service .44 and a few airguns including Webley Service Mk2s and Mk3 underlever and BSA’s as well. It was like an armoury!

As I thrived on televised westerns at the time and had my own cowboy cap gun, visiting Aunt Ida was a joy although obviously I never got the chance to fire any as I was so young…But the machinery and the smell of the oil and wood got me hooked, although I wasn’t allowed my first airgun till I left school at 16.
Like many others of our time, I loved it when the Fairground Shows visited with their airgun galleries with old Dianas and BSA Cadets with dubious barrels and sights, but it was still a thrill to get the chance tae win a coconut!

I got a Diana G2 pop-out, when I started my first job as a Bank Clerk, which I used to carry in my briefcase and used for target practice during my lunch-break, trying! to shoot tin cans on the ledge of the wall at the back of the Bank of Scotland on the High Street in Dumbarton, just 20 yards away down alley where folk would walk past behind me to get to the car park.
My bank colleagues would sometimes come out and have a go as well as the occasional passer-by who showed an interest.
Can you imagine doing that nowadays in the prevailing PC Woke culture??!..Jeecy Peeps there would be a SWAT Team and a helicopter round in a shot!… if you pardon the pun and they certainly widnae be wanting to have a go!

I sold the G2 to help fund the purchase of an ex-catalogue Relum Tornado underlever which was an absolute beast especially when we deliberately stuck a squirt of 3 in 1 down the loading turret and it went off like a Blunderbus!!.. I replaced the Relum with a brand new Haenel 302 in .177 which was incredibly accurate as I’ve related in previous posts on different threads and I’ve still got a couple of them, Relum and Haenel, although not the original ones, for old times sake.

[TonyL]

From about age nine I would go into the fields with my dad and his side-by-side and I'd carry the rabbits and pigeons home for him. So was interested in shooting from then.

The rest is a bit of a blur.......I can't quite remember if it was seeing airguns in the shop where dad bought his cartridges from that winked at me, having a go at fairgrounds or seeing some of the lads on the canal bank shooting rats (and all manner of other targets!) that got me smitten?

Once at senior school, two of my friends' had airguns - one a BSA Merlin and the other a Relum Telly Junior. I'd go round and have a go with them. The bug grew into an obsession but it still took a year or two of nagging to net my first.......a Relum 822 bought for a fiver from the neighbour's daughter who used to fish with us.

The rest is history and full of BOINGS!

[1963cockney]

I think in my case it was an age thing. As a "saucepan" we started with cap guns and toy shotguns that fired corks all of about 2 feet ahead of you.

It was a major step up when Airfix started selling the Tommy Gun and FN Rifle with plastic bullets you had to load yourself.

1st Air Rifle (Webley Jaguar) was bought for a fiver (from a friend during a very boring science lesson in Middle School). I had to keep it at his house as there was no way dad would have let me have one. Mum I could get around however, so I got her to casually mention that a friends dad was teaching me to shoot (absolute "porky"), but she would be happier if I was supervised at home. Dad took the bait and that's how the rifle got home.

My 1st new Air rifle was a BSA Super Meteor bought from Walton Tackle Shop (bizarrely in Addlestone High Street and not Walton) which had thousands of pellets put through it. As we grew up, all the toys we didn't want were obliterated at the bottom of the garden with the S.Meteor - Airfix planes were regularly hit with "ack-ack" and we had a fair few firing squads involving old Action Men.

Then the Airgun took a back seat to Motorbikes / Cars / Girls.

Fast forward to my 30s, now with a wife and cats. The cats regularly bought home presents, many of which were not dead but on their last legs. Decided an Air Rifle would be easiest way to despatch something, so my interest was re-kindled.

So in summary what got me into Airguns appears to have been Double Science on a Tuesday afternoon ....

[gunshop]

I started off shooting Daisy BB rifles at school, I was being bullied badly and my then Form tutor had something to do with the Daisy BB association of Britain if i remember right.

A group of us started to shoot of a dinner time in the school hall, surrounded by the other pupils eating lunch, (you wouldn't get away with this now in a council run school) and the interest grew from there. His plan worked and I was away from the bullies of a dinner time, I learnt how to discipline my self and not get anxious.

Fast forward a year or two, he put me in touch with Bilbrook Air Rifle club and I started to shoot Bell Target & 10m Paper, this was until I discovered girls, beer and cars.......

A chance job in a pub where the landlord shot restarted my interest in shooting and I went down the shotgun route, before being volunteered for helping BASC at shows, then that lead to me joining the gun trade specialising in rifles and shotguns, and now nearly 18 years later I run the shop at John Knibbs where I have had to learn a lot about air rifles.

I wish I could thank Mr Evans my form tutor, without him I wouldn't be where I am now and I wouldn't have served on BASC council, met so many wonderful people and above all be doing a job I love.

[Antoni]

Dad had a few awards from when he was about 16 before the war.

He always encouraged me to have a go on the travelling fair's air rifle range. I still use what's left of the six little 'spirit glasses' with the unicorn image on them won at the fair.

A little later I paid a chunk of my pocket money and was handed a self loading .22 rimfire rifle at a fair. It was not LR so not exactly mega-powerful - but it was a fire-arm.

Does that still happen? I believe there were grandfather rights for fairground operators long after tighter rules came in. He didn't know me from Adam well under 16 years of age took the coins and handed me a rifle! No instruction. Just "off yer go".

I collected spent .22 cases from the grass and made them into bangers. Add the red match-heads scraped off the matches (a very dodgy procedure!) then carefully crimp the ends. Extremely loud crack when hit with a pit spanner or a large stone. My classmates were impressed. My ears were ringining for a day or two afterward.

First gun was a gat. It was crap

.

[NewPaul]

I’m a late starter to airguns, albeit, I did buy a Webley Tempest in 1978 when I was 18 but I knew nothing about sight adjustment and hold etc. so as a result, couldn’t hit anything smaller than the shed door so kinda gave up.
In 2015 at the age of 55, living in London/Harrow and backing onto a park, we were pretty much infested with squirrels, some of whom decided to make our loft a home. They shat everywhere and chewed up cardboard storage boxes etc, I would get up in the middle of the night standing on the bed, banging the ceiling to try and stop the scratching and running about.
They would be in the garden pretty much all day and very bold and un-phased by human presence due to neighbours and park goers feeding ‘the cute little things’.
So, I bought a BB gun thinking that would do the trick and scare them off. Nah, no chance, I’d ping their arse at 10yds and they’d just look at me as if to say “try harder”. So, I did, I started googling airguns and did the “which is the best air rifle”. I was directed to The BBS on many occasion and after a lot of reading, decided (for me) I would get a HW77.
Off I went to Woodys of Wembley (where I bought the Tempest some 37 years previous).
I practiced shooting in the 20yd garden having learnt a lot from tinternet about hold sensitivity, scope adjustment etc.
Wasn’t long before I shot my first squirrel which I must be honest was quite a scary thing at the time. But, I was hooked with the whole airgun experience by then.
Bought the 77 in July 2015, joined BBS in the August and attended my first Boinger Bash in September.
Eight years on, I now own the airguns below this post, have removed hundreds of squirrels, rats, rabbits and other pests from permissions I’ve gained but most of all, I’ve met the most amiable, honest, like-minded group of people I’d ever wish to meet, a good number of whom will be life-long friends for sure.

[Mach 1.5]

My Dad brought a BSA Super Meteor from a guy from his work in 1978 for £15 with a case. I spent many hours plinking with it. My cousin then sold me his Webley Vulcan MK1 in .22 cal for £40 back in 1980 so the BSA had to go. Then some German guy introduced this thing called an HW80 and my Airgun World, pardon the pun, changed for ever. 1983 and £72 from Trapshot of Lye. Two strangers behind the counter said, we can tune that for you..yes of course you can!!! was my reply. They did tune my 80, chopped the barrel and fitted a silencer and I became good friends with those strangers. Thanks Ivan and Dave for my dad for some wonderful memories. Mach 1.5

[Anothermiss]

My old man had a meteor S which I would sneak out with when he was down the pit. Armed with a tin of eley wasp, I'd walk the local fields, dreaming I'd one day see a rabbit. My dad twigged quite quickly and told my uncles, who were lucky enough to have a few really good permissions. The old man (quite rightly) told me that shooting live quarry had big responsibility. To that end, I'd need more than the meteor S to go with them. I'd just left school and started a job. I saved up and bought a HW85K and I was knocking rabbits and rats over every weekend. As things progressed, I dreamed of a pcp and wanted a rapid. I sold the 85k to fund one but ended up with a 707 instead which was OK but I'd gone in early on the 707 cos it was cheaper. I regretted it so that went and before I knew it, I was too far down the airgun rabbit hole........

[Strimmer]

Dad was a useless poacher, rarely did he put anything on the table, but having guns around the house was something I lived with. Fast forward to about 10years old he stops wanting to kill anything, and me being young wanted to slot anything I could, so after years of nagging mum (they had divorced by this time) i got a gat gun at about 13 for crimbo. It's all she could afford. Couldn't hit a barn door, but the bug had bitten. Needing a bit of accuracy I managed to get a daisy BB pump up shotgun looking thing. It was shite, but I probably put 40000 BBS through that from those daisy BB canisters (think they were 450 in each?). The crimbo came and I got (and still crave another) a smk b45-3 in 22. My mate got one as well, and with a scope I started to thin the local magpie population, it was so ridiculously accurate, I remember shooting targets at 20 yards and having the same hole (smk 4x28 on top as well). That hadn't happened before. That all went south when I found a shotgun cart, and seeing these birds flying over head thought it would be a sound idea to tape said shotgun cart to the end of the barrel and see if I could down one. That's all dad's old shotgun did right?.... Guess I'm kind of lucky to be here, with eyes no less, but the cast front sight assembly wasn't so. From then I turned into a bsa fan boy, had about 6 odd airsporters, super sports, meteors, later in life cadets, ultras and now a superten last week. Had a few German offerings on the way, but I'll honestly say that picking up a cheap rubbish plinker from the 90s still floats my boat 30 years later

[micky2]

My son when he asked for a airgun as the lad next door had got one. which rekindled my interest in them from when l was a kid. it has cost me £1'000s in putting my collection together since.

[steve B]

Given an old Lincoln Jeffrey's as a 9 Yr old on the farm. Hooked forever!