These are a few of my favourite things...

  I was born into "gun people" - a lot of my fondest childhood memories involve shooting or hunting. Many a glorious hour was spent in the company of my father and the hunters in our family. My wife would like for me to make it VERY clear that we were food hunters - if we shot it, we ate it.

  One of my earliest shooting memories was the first time I ever fired a scoped rifle - it was a .22 Hornet owned by one of my dad's best friends. They forgot to tell me that I needed a little distance between the objective and my eye - and although a .22 Hornet doesn't have a LOT of recoil, it's considerable for a five-year-old kid. I was the envy of the all the boys on the playground that following Monday; what with the shiner, the crescent-moon cut on my eyelid, and the lurid tale of their genesis.




  When the family would go hunting, almost everyone would carry a sidearm - just in case. A little coup de grâce, rattlesnake, whatever. You never knew. Some of the guys would go all out, with large-frame automatics, but my dad always carried his trusty Ruger Single Six. The old model, without the transfer bar. He had a leather belt and holster for it, and tended to leave it behind the seat in his pickup, rolled up in the belt like you see in Westerns. 

Astute readers will note that the holster is left-handed. One of many things I got from my father

  I love this pistol. It's probably the first gun I ever shot. I have an affinity for this piece, and am glad to be its current owner. One of my best trick shots happened with this pistol, when I was about 19. I was out squirrel hunting with some buddies of mine and right by where we'd made camp, this big fat squirrel chattered at us from the top of a pine tree. I drew, cocked and aimed in one smooth motion. I pulled the trigger and the squirrel fell dead as a stone - shot in the neck. He'd been about 30 yards away and I nailed him with a single, well-placed shot from an offhand position. I won't say it was skill, I'm pretty sure I couldn't do it again if I tried a thousand times. It was still pretty badass.

  The other contender for first gun I ever shot is my Remington Nylon 66. The first mass-produced rifle without a wooden stock, this inexpensive little gem was a big part of many outings for me. Dad purchased it new when he was just of age and he passed it along to me a few years ago after he moved to Massachusetts (along with the Single Six pictured above, and the rest of the heirloom armory). 

One of the best guns I've ever handled. That piece missing from the stock IS NOT MY FAULT

  This gun's a good 25 years older than I am and still drives tacks. The first time I had it out on Range Day after I brought it home, I got to impress the Raven with my ability to hit a bottlecap at 50 yards, then 60, 75... I flipped and bounced that bottlecap out to about 100 yards before I ran out of ammo in the magazine. I'm thinking about putting a scope on it, a little 2-3x job, but I'm not sure. I like it with the iron sights just fine.

  It was my mainstay squirrel gun when we'd go (squirrel season was a big deal for us because it JUST HAPPENED to be excellent time to scout for elk). We'd drive around on the Forest Service roads, glassing for elk and making notes. When we'd happen upon a squirrel, it was my job to jump out of the truck and chase it up a tree. I'd tear after them, plastic fantastic rifle in hand, eager to show the guys that I could belong with them, to earn my place in the hunting party. Sometimes, the squirrels would run up the nearest tree and that would be that. Other times... they'd run. And run. And run. I think my longest pursuit was somewhere north of a quarter mile across a thinly wooded lava field. By the time that squirrel treed, I was so out of breath that I couldn't shoot - it was all I could do to not vomit form the exertion. 

  I have a number of firearms, but these two are amongst my very favourite - they have a deep personal meaning to me and one or the other is involved in almost all of my happy outdoor memories from when I was a kid. I'm thrilled to bits that I've been given these guns - I really do feel like I've earned my place in the hunting party.