I got this idea after reading a few BB gun stories in another post.  I am going to make this in to a small book and give it to my Mom for Xmas.

In honor of the movie, "A Christmas Story", and my Father who is now passed away and to prove to my Mother that there are more out there like my Brother and I, please post your best BB gun stories.

I think the best stories usually involve some combination of:

A loaded BB gun
Gift giving
Personal injury
Getting caught
Getting in trouble
A great trick shot
The neighbors
Innocent bystanders
The police

Most of our stories include ALL of the above.  He never really said it, but I know my Dad loved us because he never killed us.

Lets see some stories here.  Best story wins a 20 round Colt mag.  I will pay for shipping.  You can post more than once if you have multiple stories to tell.

YES, pellet guns count too.

Whn I was about 12-13, my best friend and I were jacking around with the Red Ryder. We decided it would be a cool thing to shoot pill bugs that had rolled up into a defensive ball. After several shots, we determined there was enough ballistic accuracy to hit a decent sized target at 10-20 yards.

Then we get the bright idea to shoot the pill bugs at each other (these were the days before paintball, so we had to improvise), but we wanted to test it first to make sure there wouldn't be any serious injury.

Being the brave one of the bunch (he was the instigator, I was the brave one who always got injured), I pulled up my tshirt to let him go at me with a point blank blast. Needless to say, it was quite painful. The chitenous shell of the pill bug tore a hole through my skin, leaving a part trail splattered all over. Nothing like picking bug guts and legs out of a puncture wound.

Of course, it got infected and I had to make up some fib for my mom that I will someday go to hell for doing.

I still have a scar.

When I was 12, I had a Daisy model 25.(The one that looks like a pump action shotgun)

One day I found a Garand clip of M2 ball, during the "town trash day"..Of course, I taped a round to the end of the Daisy.. There was a tree that was maybe five feet outside my bedroom window, and the squirrels used to run up and down it.. The Daisy would sting em em, but not much else. I basically stuck the Daisy, with the cartridge taped to it out the window, and waited.. It was'nt too long a wait.

Jesus that was loud. The case split, and I had some powder burns on my left hand..I have no idea if the slug killed the squirrel, or if the blast did..

Many many years later I had a chance to attend a ballistics confrence in Yuma where I got to meet Martin Fackler. A bunch of people were telling stories, and I brought this one up.. There was a lot of disbelief, and discussion as to what would have happened til Dr. Fackler said "Yes, I've done nearly the same thing, except I believe I used a Daisy Red Rider, and a .30-30.."


Meplat-

Oh Man!  I am just getting over bronchitis, laughing turns to caughing then choking!  This is great stuff.

UPDATE:  I will put up one 20 round Colt mag as a prize for 1st place.  I suppose I could set up a new post with a link to this post, asking people to read and then vote?  I will figure it out later.

Quoted: Whn I was about 12-13, my best friend and I were jacking around with the Red Ryder. We decided it would be a cool thing to shoot pill bugs that had rolled up into a defensive ball. After several shots, we determined there was enough ballistic accuracy to hit a decent sized target at 10-20 yards. Then we get the bright idea to shoot the pill bugs at each other (these were the days before paintball, so we had to improvise), but we wanted to test it first to make sure there wouldn't be any serious injury. Being the brave one of the bunch (he was the instigator, I was the brave one who always got injured), I pulled up my tshirt to let him go at me with a point blank blast. Needless to say, it was quite painful. The chitenous shell of the pill bug tore a hole through my skin, leaving a part trail splattered all over. Nothing like picking bug guts and legs out of a puncture wound. Of course, it got infected and I had to make up some fib for my mom that I will someday go to hell for doing. I still have a scar.

I used to do that too, but we call them roly-polys, it was also fun to shoot strike anywhere matches out of BB guns so when they hit somthing they would spark, I also used to shoot wood skewers, like you would make a cabob with out of my BB gun, they would stick right in to trees.

The BB gun I had when I was a kid was a crossman, it was pump and Co2 powered you could switch back and forth, I had a redfield 4x scope on it.  Anyway I used to go hunting with my uncle and I was too little to hunt so I would just "hunt" with my BB gun.  One day we were standing around at our camp when my cousin said... "look theres a chickin!"  (it was actually a grouse) it was only about 30 feet away, so we both took aim with our BB guns and shot at the same time, we both hit it but it just stood there, so we shot it again, this time it started running so we chased it, we were reloading and pumping our BB guns while we were running stopping briefly to take shots.

This grouse was half running half flying, I shot it at least 30 times and so did my cousin, we chased it for about an hour, probibly about 2 miles we were finnaly too exhausted to chase it anymore and it got away, we in the mean time had gottin ourselfs lost, after about another 2 hours we made it back to camp.

I was able to kill somthing that trip though, I shot a squirrel from about 50 feet away with my BB gun, and then my uncle made me eat it, YUCK!

that was the last squirrel I ever shot.

When I was a kid we had horses. They used to rub and push on the fence and knock it down. My job was to fix it. After a few months of this I got sick and tired of fixing fence. I hatched the idea that every time I saw one pushing on the fence, I'd shoot it in the ass with my bb gun. Sounded good at the time.
First time I did it the horse jumped up, came crashing down on the fence totally destroying it. They the damn thing took off down the paved road. I was about 11 years old, chasing a huge Quarter horse down the street, bb gun in one hand, lead rope in the other. A scared horse can run pretty fast, lemme tell ya.
I finally got the lead rope around his neck and led him home. As I walked up the drive...to my horror, were the other three horses walking up the road! They had found the hole and took advantage of it!  I spent the rest of the afternoon rounding up horses and fixing fence.
Well, it sounded like a good idea at the time...

Me and my younger brother were bored one day (back when I was about 12).  We found out that if you take out air/bb gun (you have to pump it a few times per shot) that if you hit a rock it would just about vaporize.  

Well we were having a grand time until we heard a CRUNCH....CRASH.....  I looked up and realized my mistake.  I had failed to realize that I was shooting direclty into my parents parked cars and I was only a matter of time until I hit one.  

Well the car itself was fine, however dad was mighty pissed about that 100 + dollar repair bill on the cars window.  I swear we were shooting away from the trees into the forest and not at the parked cars.  That bb did a 180 came back and hit the dodge I SWEAR!!!  

Consequently I am much more carefull with a real firearm today.

One December afternoon, my brother and I were out in the backyard messin' around with our Daisy lever-action repeater (he still has it).  IIRC he was 11 and I was 14.  After a while, I got bored shooting milk cartons so I said, "Hey, shoot me in back.  I want to see what that feels like."  I was wearing a heavy sweater and a school "letterman" jacket over that so I figured my armor class was sufficient to avoid injury.

He stepped back about 10 feet and squeezed off a round.  THWACK.  I felt a brief sting between my shoulder blades...no biggie.

My brother gets all excited and says "Me next, me next!"  I loan him my coat, which was a good 5 sizes too big (he was a real runt back then), then step back to the spot he shot from.

He says, "NO!  You go all the way back to the house!  I don't want you so close."  I shrugged my shoulders and complied.

As I started to raise the rifle, I realized there'd be some "bullet drop" as I was now about 15 yards away, so I told him not to get scared, but I'd have to aim a bit over his head to make sure the BB hit him in the right spot.  "OH NO YOU DON'T!", he shouted, "You aim right between my shoulders, just like I did!  You're not gonna shoot me in the head!"  

Like I said, he was an excitable youngster.

I tried to explain, but he would have none of it, so I aimed squarely between his shoulders and let one fly.

THWWIPP  Caught him in the back of the leg, knee-high...and he was wearing thin polyester pants.  He grabs his leg and starts hopping - then falls over because he's bent over and grabbing one leg, and that's a damn difficult stance to hop in.

I was also on the ground - laughing my ass off.

I'd still be out there today, laughin' hard and loud, if he hadn't started running for the house yelling "MOOOOOMMM!! Steve shot me!!!!"

Little squealer...

When I was about (how old are you when you are in 3rd grade?) all of our family was over to our house to celebrate Thanksgiving.  Towards the evening, the dogs started raising hell so my father and I went out to see what was going on.

It was a skunk with a whole litter of babies in our barn.  We went back to the house to get a shotgun and my bb gun.  My grandfather (in his late 70's at the time and half blind) insisted on going out with us as he hadn't been to a "good skunk killin' in along time".
We all ventured back to the barn and my father started slowly moving some bales out of the way so he could see how many there were and get a good shot.  My grandfather and I were standing right behind him keeping watch, I with my bb gun and he with the shotgun, as he did all this.  

The instant the skunks got uncovered enough to see them all, I couldn't resist and shot.  Before anyone knew what was happening that momma skunk (and I think a few of the babies) started pissing all over the place.  My father took the brunt of it, but that skunk spray was so thick it just hung in the air.  My dad, was trying to back up over us and my grandfather couldn't see well enough to get outa the way...we all ended up in a big pile about 10ft away with that momma skunk still going to town.  

Needless to say, buy the time we had them all killed we were soaked in skunk spray.  We stood outside the barn for awhile after that deciding on what to do and ended up walking back toward the house (and all the guests).  We got to the back door and my mother and 3 or 4 old women came to see what smelled.  For the rest of that night and a few days later my father, me, and my grandfather got to "camp out" in an old bunkhouse until our smell went away some.  

It has become the family joke now, and we no longer get to have Thanksgiving dinner at my parents house even though I know better now.  Kinda funny, don't remember getting whipped over that one but neither one of them has let me hunt skunks with them since...  

My BB gun stories are pretty boring, but I did take my younger cousin and his friend squirrel hunting with .22's years ago. The "friend" ended up shooting my cousin in the butt. Oh well, sorry for hijacking the BB gun thread. Carry on.

My most memorable moment with a bb gun was a trick(extreamly lucky)shot while hunting birds on my dad's farm at the age of about 14.  While walking back to the house, we started sneaking up on a bird in the middle of the road.  We kept getting closer and closer, but he didn't fly. At about 20yds the bird took flight.  It was just instinct(lots of practice with a shotgun), but I brought the Daisy 880 with scope to my shoulder and fired as the bird got about five feet off the ground.  The bird dropped dead, almost as fast as my friends mouth dropped to the ground in disbelief.  No one believes me to this day, except him.  

Ahh the memories of the old red ryder. Mom was a big anti but dad came from a firearm family. Well one christmas, I was about 7, my favorite uncle gave me my 1st BB gun. I still remember the look on moms face. Well of course I assured her I would NEVER shoot anything but cans and targets. YA RIGHT. My friend and I single handedly wiped out the entire bird population that winter. When hunting got scarce we'd hide in the neighbors bushes next to their picture window. There was a bird feeder on the front of the bushes. It was easy pickins. Well after many times of getting chased away from the picture window, we decided to hide under a pine tree in front of the bushes. Yep you guessed it the picture window "WAS" behind the bushes. I'm not sure how many times the window was hit before it crashed down that day. Man we ran like hell. Oh ya then there was the pot luck shot. The neighbor kid and I beat the hell out of each other on a regular basis for a lot of years growing up. We had just had a fight about something and he was 20yrds away or so and i liftet my Red Ryder up one handed and puffed out a shot. It caught him right behind the ear in the cartilige. Needless to say it was the last time he argued with me. He still has the little round indentation scar from it today. Sorry John. Ahhh no I'm not you deserved it.

lmao.  some funny stories guys.  i didnt get into much trouble with my bb gun.  the one day i was in my old backyard.  it was terraced(sp?)  there were some steps that went up to where our above ground pool was.  one fall day a friend and myself had some targets and stuff set up on the lower part of my yard.  we had our bb guns and i had one of those kids compound target bows.  it was real small and didnt have much pull.  well... one of my arrows went high.  it just grazed the top of the hill and we heard a thump.  we went running up to see water squirting out of the pool.  the arrow had just enough force to put a hole in the metal and tear the liner.  my dad was so pissed off.  i mentioned before it was fall at the time.  he made me go into that freezing water and put a patch on the liner.  that sucked!  think i got grounded for awhile for that one 2.  

My little bro and I were playing around with my 770 BB gun. Meanwhile, my Dad came outside and told us to quit playing, and remove all the Japanese Beetles from the grapevine leaves..

This was, of course, no fun. Being the industrious and inventive 10 and 8 year olds that we were, we came up with a plan:

A japanese beetle fits into the end of a 770 quite nicely. So, we had the beetles mostly cleaned off the leaves and in a jar. We would then pull the bolt open PART WAY to recock the trigger, pump up the 770, barrel-end-load a beetle, and blast them into the side of the house.

Anyone familiar w/ a 770 knows that if you pull the bolt open too far, you load a bb from the side resivoir. Well, when it was MY turn to blast, I pulled the bolt open too far (Inadvertantly loading a bb), pumped the puppy up about 7 pumps, loaded up a beetle, and picked a poor target...



...The side hull of my father's brand-new Grumman canoe. Needless to say, the beetle (With a BB embedded in it's sphincter) cut right through the aluminum canoe. Fortunately, it was high enough above the waterline to not allow a .177 stream of water to flow in.


...Man, I don't know HOW my buttocks EVER turned back into a flesh color from THAT one!


...And yes, I did get the BB gun back eventually.


...Lesson learned:Make sure of your target, don't shoot at anything you don't want to puncture, and always verify your ammo!!!!

My brother and I used to shoot our BB guns out our 2nd floor bedroom windows at birds and squirrles in the backyard.  Quite often, birds would sit on the phone lines in the back yard, and squirrels would routinely use the phone lines to get around.

One day, the temperature dropped into single digits.  I recall a layer of snow covered the ground and it was too cold to play outside for any length of time, so we decided to do some shooting.  We took up our position in my brother's bedroom, and surveyed the backyard.  We took turns shooting for awhile, and I got frustrated and bored and gave up and went downstairs to play with my G.I. Joe's.  My brother kept shooting.    

Approximately thirty minutes later, I was downstairs playing and my mother was on the telephone in the kitchen, talking to one of her friends and looking out the window overlooking the backyard.  In the middle of her phone conversation, I heard her say, "Oh, my dear!  I just saw a squirrel fall of the phone line.  The poor thing must have frozen to death."  

I didn't think anything of it until my brother came down and said, "I got one!!!"  Then he described how a squirrel had stopped on the phone line and he shot it.  I then realized that this was the same squirrel my mother was talking about.

  When my stepson was finally old enough to get a BB gun. He would watch everything I did with my weapons(cleaning etc.) and put his BB gun right next to my 30/30 next to the door.
  One morning during hunting season(Montana)I was running late and picked up his BB gun by mistake. When I got to the woods it was still dark and I slung the rifle over my shoulder like I usually do. Then I started my stalk. I was checking several watering holes and came upon a nice moose. Not a trophy but definitely worth taking.
   I get within about 30yds and raise my weapon to take the shot. As you can imagine my heart sank when I realized I was about to shoot at this bull with a G..D... BB gun. I pictured my wife and stepson grinning at each over breakfast thinking about how stupid I must feel right about now. Well that just pissed me off even more!
   So I pumped it a few more times than I was supposed to and saw that the bull had his ass end towards me. He bent over to take a big dring and when he did....Blammo!!! right in the nuts!!!  The bull made a strange high pitched sound and fell like a sack of potatoes in to the little pond. I started pumping again and loading another BB up. I waited for movement but there was absolutely nothing moving. After 10 minutes I carefully made my way up to the bull to find that he had drowned in the pond. His head totally submerged in the water. Obviously my shot to the family jewels paralyzed him just long enough to let him drown.
   Imagine the surprise on my wife and stepsons face when I pulled up in the yard with a pickup truck load of fresh moose meat!!!

Quoted:   When my stepson was finally old enough to get a BB gun. He would watch everything I did with my weapons(cleaning etc.) and put his BB gun right next to my 30/30 next to the door.   One morning during hunting season(Montana)I was running late and picked up his BB gun by mistake. When I got to the woods it was still dark and I slung the rifle over my shoulder like I usually do. Then I started my stalk. I was checking several watering holes and came upon a nice moose. Not a trophy but definitely worth taking.    I get within about 30yds and raise my weapon to take the shot. As you can imagine my heart sank when I realized I was about to shoot at this bull with a G..D... BB gun. I pictured my wife and stepson grinning at each over breakfast thinking about how stupid I must feel right about now. Well that just pissed me off even more!    So I pumped it a few more times than I was supposed to and saw that the bull had his ass end towards me. He bent over to take a big dring and when he did....Blammo!!! right in the nuts!!!  The bull made a strange high pitched sound and fell like a sack of potatoes in to the little pond. I started pumping again and loading another BB up. I waited for movement but there was absolutely nothing moving. After 10 minutes I carefully made my way up to the bull to find that he had drowned in the pond. His head totally submerged in the water. Obviously my shot to the family jewels paralyzed him just long enough to let him drown.    Imagine the surprise on my wife and stepsons face when I pulled up in the yard with a pickup truck load of fresh moose meat!!!

Unless you can produce a credible witness, I call BS...Cute story though

Oh, the adventures !

I pulled a Ralpie on a squirrel..WAIT  after this season of the Sopranos I better clarify this!

I mean Ralphie from the popular Xmas movie where they taunt the boy with, "You'll shoot your eye out!"

I was tracking squirrels in the bacyard when one stopped directly above me on the power line.  I raised my Daisy Cub lever action and shot him in the gut.  Watched the BB fall back down and hit me in the face.  Damn!  That was close...  squirrel ran off.

Later with same BB gun I decided prone shooting was fun but I saw the need for a bi-pod.  

Didnt have one handy so I cocked the rifles lever action and instead of folding the handle back in I stuck it in the ground.  

Kewl! I could swivel the weapon good!  I pulled the trigger and the lever slapped shut smashing the end of my middle finger I still have a scar in the meaty part of that finger.

After that rifle I moved up to the Crossman pump pistol.  The one that you could buy the plastic stock for to make a carbine.  Single shot, pump.  

My friend and I would take turns pumping it up to 50 and it would shoot a BB through one side of a trash can and leave a big dent on the other side.

I used that weapon successfully in many neighborhood BB gun wars.  Once I had to pick a BB out of my friends shoulder.  Hurt like hell but he was more afraid of his father...

You did mention stories with the police ??

Once there was a large track of woods near the expressway not too far from my house.  We yousta camp in those all the time.  We built fires in a pit so they could not be seen by the passing cars on the expressway.

Decided to take some new friends camping there and they wanted to see the place first.  We would park a small lot way at the end of the a HiSchool football field.  

One of the friends was scared of snakes so he brought his Crossman pump rifle.  

We walked from the car past a couple houses that are near the xpressway to a hole in the fence.  After dropping into a drainage ditch and walking through a tunnel that travels under 6 lanes of xpressway we popped out into deepest darkest.  WOODS !  It was are own tropical jungle.  I took them around everywhere and we ended up on the far side of the woods near Nonconnah Creek.

The other friend was drinking orange juice from a carton.  We he was finished we threw it in the creek and shot at it several times as it floated off.

WHOOP< WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP.  A police helicopter banked over the woods and flew down the creek.  We are shocked.  I told the guys someone prolly just robbed a gas station or shop and ran from the cops into these woods.

We needed to shag out NOW !

The coppers' chopper was scanning the woods with the BIG light and we were running and diving for cover.  As we neared the xpressway I aw a second chopper hovering back and forth over the xpressway.

I had the BB rifle when we emerged from the dranage ditch.  At this time it was dusk and everything was silohetted.  There had been a kid with a toy gun just recently shot by a officer here so I tossed the rifle and walked toward the officers that were scanning the bushes nearby with hands on their pistols and flashlights drawn.

When the saw me they asked where my friends were when I looked over my shoulder no one was there...  I yelled for them to come out ( they were still hiding in the woods lose by )

Then they asked where the RIFLE was.  I said, RIFLE?  You mean the BB gun ?

I helped them look for it in the tall weeds.  I spotted it first and said here it is !  When I bent over to pick it up they snatched me back as another offier stomped down on the rifle ripping it from my grip.

One of the officers picked it up and said, Sorry, sir, the kid is right its a BB gun.  The officer in charge said, damn! under his breath.

Seems that the lady that lived in the last house by the ditch called the cops after she saw three grown men enter the woods with a high power rifle and then she heard 2 loud reports.

This was the same time of the hiway shootings in CA.  

As my friends and I escorted from the woods we were surrounded by a ring of officers and cop cars were EVERYWHERE, lights flashing.

Civilians were standing on front porches and grouped on the sidewalks staring at us as a helicopter hovered overhead with the big light on us and grass blowing everywhere.

I looked at the two friends and said, "Shouldnt we be holding our hands up ?"

One of the officers laughed and another told me to shut up.  

Oh, the adventures

PS:  Never use a loaded pump BB pistol with the wrong size screw in the trigger guard as a hammer to break dirt clods.

I was holding the barrel and smashing dirt clods with the grip and it went off and hit me in the groin !  I was so scared I had blown my dick off !!!

Just a pea sized rasberry... WHEW !

Blackeye's story is the BEST!  I vote him the winner even though it's not my call!

I don't care if it's a tall tale or pure truth. I laughed so hard my sides are sore, and that's good enough for me!

Yes indeed, shot placement beats EVERY other factor!



My BB gun stories aren't half as exciting.  And they're not really BB gun stories anyway.  Do pellet gun stories count?

If so,  my father let me use his Benjamin 'Franklin' model pump pellet pistol.  Its accuracy was remarkable.  I got to the point where I could consistently shoot fired .22LR shells off the edge of a picnic table at fifty feet fron a standing one hand position.  I literally wore that fine pellet pistol out and I guess it's long gone.  I mean, I wore EVERYTHING out. Even the pump system's pivot pins wore through. I replaced them with pieces of nails (Hey, I was a kid, OK?) and eventually the piston and its bore wore to the point where it just couldn't hold air anymore.

I can't imagine how many thousand rounds I put through it, but it's probably better than 25,000 as I'm SURE I bought at least 50 boxes of pellets for it myself, not counting ones that were given to me.    

So I killed that fine pellet pistol, but did so honorably, by wearing it slap out.

I shot a few birds with it, and discovered that
I didn't really want to kill songbirds. Especially doves.   I'd hunt ducks, pheasants,
and maybe even chickens, but the doves are safe from me.   It wasn't a good feeling to kill one off a power line with an ALMOST clean head shot and watch it die a horrible death in my hands, missing half an eye and with its brain exposed.
I later RAISED doves and have saved the lives of several, so I think I've made amends.  It really did bother me.

I also discovered that squirrels can be hard to kill with a pellet gun, but your boot heel will usually finish them off if you stomp hard enough.
And yes, I'll kill squirrels.  Bushy tailed rats.


And I would LOVE to find another nice, clean condition Benjamin 'Franklin' model pellet pistol, just in case you encounter one.  

CJ

This is the greatist thing to ever affect air rifle shooters.  I just found out that a small primer fits well in the barrel of a 177 cal air rifle.  It is like have a 50 cal marking round but it is only an air rifle.  it is great.  
Ok I have anther story I was in JROTC rifle team.  And a friend of mine start yelling sperm of steel sperm of steel and acts like he is jerking his rifle off and he shoots his load a bust a light out in the school room we where in.  It was funny as hell when it happened.

In 1972, I had a toy rifle that looked like a Daisy Red Ryder. It made a big "WOOF" when it fired.

My cousin Andy brought his Daisy to our farm when he came over for a big July 4th picnic.

<slow motion>

1 - My sister Carolyn (a clone of Angelica from the 'RugRats')picks up the Daisy (thinking it was mine)

2 - She whirls around and points it at my face.

3 - Everybody (Aunts, Grandma, Uncles, Dad, Andy) is screaming and waving at Carolyn "NO!"  "DON'T SHOOT!"

4 - She laughs and squeezes the trigger...

5 - I am shot in the neck... ouch.  I go down like a sack of potatos. (I was 5... what a HAM)

<end slow motion>

6 - Tweezers and a children's aspirin solve my problem... Carolyn cries for hours and has nightmares for years.

7 - I am forever the "Little Darling" and favored by all...

8 - Carolyn is teased for the next thirty years and never fired any firearm since...

9 - I spent 10 years working for Uncle and have never been shot again.





edited because I can't type...

Cool thread!!  I've been a gun buff since birth, so naturally a lot of my earlier adventures involved airguns. Here are a few...

1.  The Marines put on a mock invasion for Memorial Day when I was 8.  I didn't get to go, but a friend who did came back with the COOLEST souvenir:  four M60 blanks, complete with links.  That prompted visions of belt-fed machineguns, but the best part was, one was LIVE.  Even at the tender age of 8, I knew what that undented primer meant!  Well, after a couple of weeks he traded them to me...  I resisted temptation for a long time -- maybe as much as three days -- before succumbing to the siren song of that undented primer. But, how to set it off??  I knew it would be best to be some distance away from it... ah, HA!  The Daisy M1894 BB gun that was my constant companion!  

Engrossed with my experiment, I set the blank on the edge of a hardwood chair in my bedroom, stepped across the room, chambered a BB, squinted across the sights, and fired.  DINK!  Damn, I hit the rim! Locked and loaded another BB, careful squeeze, and... DINK!  RATS!  Another rim shot!  Third time was the charm.  As my mom quietly sipped coffee in the kitchen, I drew a fine bead on the primer, and... BLAM!!! A geyser of hot coffee splattered against the ceiling as my mom's piercing shriek echoed through the cavernous halls of Casa Feamster, but I could barely hear it over the ringing in my ears. A thin wisp of gunsmoke curled lazily from the mouth of the shell...  and then mercifully, my memory fades as to what came next. Somehow, I lived through it, though, leading to:

2.  My 1894 having been worn out by incessant shooting, I graduated to a Crossman Powermaster 770.  As Mugzilla can attest, the magnetic tip on the bolt which sucks a BB out of the preban several-hundred round magazine can be both a blessing and a curse.  Wonderful for quick reloads in the game fields, it is a harsh and unforgiving task-master when treated carelessly.  Well, there I was, dry-firing on our 19" B&W TV (that's what everyone had in those days).  All was going well -- a few pumps of the lever for noise, carefully withdraw the bolt only a little way to cock the action, and I got a nice "POP!" when the trigger was squeezed.  Fred Flintstone was on... and as a particularly tempting dinosaur ran across the screen, it became incredibly urgent to nail him before he got to cover.  

The rifle was already pumped, so I whipped the bolt back and forth, led him just so, and... SHAZAAAACK!!! I NAILED the TV screen!  AAAAIIIIEEEEEE!!!  Have you ever sat in sick horror, realizing for the first time ever that no matter how much you want to, you CAN NOT call a projectile back once it's been launched??  Or, no matter whether every cell in your body wills it, you can NOT heal the screen of a television set once it gets that nasty, quarter-sized divot in it??   I stood transfixed in stark terror as it flickered, teasingly sputtered back to life ("oh, please work, TV, please work -- maybe Dad won't notice the hole in the screen") and then relentlessly... irrevocably...  it went black.

Black as the grim, gunless future that no doubt awaited me.  In an instant, life as I knew it was over.  I was dead meat.  There was no getting out of this one.  No hiding the damage or denying how it happened.  I was aghast. (Amazingly, through a fortunate quirk of my Dad thinking we spent too much time watching TV, and remembering his OWN BB gun follies, I got off with only 1 month of no BB gun and no TV for a while.   WHEW!!)

3.  My other great passion, beyond airguns, was fireworks.  Ahhh, the joys of a summer's afternoon spent tinkering in the garage, creating new and improved pyrotechnics...  (Warning:  DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME!)  I was devouring every issue of Guns and Ammo I could get my hands on, and was now fully conversant with the two main schools of stopping power:  Keith's big slow bullet, vs. O'Connor's light, fast bullet.

But these worthies were missing something: the little-known third school,   Feamster's EXPLODING bullet.  Or, to be more precise, airgun pellet, since that's what I had to work with. Crossman .22 wadcutter pellets of the mid-1970's era were the ne' plus ultra.  They had a yawning, cavernous maw of a rear opening, which carried a most impressive payload of the fine, silver flash powder from Black Cat firecrackers.  My technique, again NOT recommended, was to take the white part of the heads of strikes-anywhere kitchen matches, and pack that into the opening in the rear of the pellet to serve as a detonator.  Using the blunt end of a kitchen match, I compacted enough of the phosphorous into the pellet over the flash powder to seal the powder in.  (Voice of experience: don't get too frisky with the packing operation as the powder can and WILL go off, putting a couple of nice little blisters on your thumb and forefinger...)  

Inserting the pellet into the breech backwards, this ultra-destructive warhead makes about a 1.5" diameter flash and satisfying "POP!" when striking a brick wall.  Or, when fired into a paperback book, it penetrates a bit before detonating, scorching the edges of the permanent wound track -- mute testimony to the awesome technology being hatched in the garage when nobody else was home.  (Mea culpa:  At the time, I didn't think to measure the temporary stretch cavity...)  

But best of all was shooting the giant tree roaches that scuttled across the garage floor from time to time.  These repulsive beasties, about 1.5" long and gleaming brownish-black, shatter into 3-4 goodsized fragments when hit with a carefully-placed exploding Crossman.  I wasn't sure whether this was due to the explosive payload or the pellet hitting the cement floor immediately under them, but the effect was most impressive!  (My mom, by the way, would have no part of my mounting the heads of my trophies on a plaque over the fireplace.  Women... sheesh!)

4.  At about the same time, I learned that a Daisy Powerline 880's plastic false muzzle had obviously been engineered to accept a Black Cat firecracker.  It was a perfect fit!!  With this discovery, a new capability was added to my burgeoning arsenal:  rifle-grenades!!  YES!

The trick was to insert the Black Cat into the false muzzle, pump the rifle (without a BB loaded), light the fuze, aim and fire.  I soon learned that pumping the rifle more than about 3 strokes would blow out the fuse, but that was ok -- even 3 pumps was sufficient to send the firecracker arcing about 20 yards out, to give an ear-splitting air-burst on detonation.  Well, one evening, being by now a safety-conscious lad, I determined that I couldn't get in much trouble if I went down to the bayou out back of my parent's house and launched firecrackers out over the water.  That way, I was away from the house and there was no risk of fire... who could object?  

I stood by the 6-foot privacy fence separating my parent's yard from that of our next-door neighbor, a crusty old full-bird Colonel who was legendary for his irascible temperament.  The Colonel had an above-ground pool behind his house, and not giving it a second thought, I began launching Black Cats out over the bayou, getting really superb air-bursts over the water, replete with bright flashes and lots of racket.  Unbeknownst to me, however, the Colonel interpreted this as someone in a boat shooting at his above-ground pool!!  Soon I heard a stentorian bellow from his back door.  EEEEKKK!!  Suddenly recalling the stories I'd heard of him shooting out the windshield of someone's boat for making a wake in the channel, I discovered urgent business elsewhere... I don't think he ever figured out what was happening.  (Lord knows, I made it my business to keep that one quiet!)  

Well, that's all for now.  By the way: are there going to be model rocketry and fireworks threads too?  

John

Well Ill tell you my BB Gun story.Funny thing is it just happened a few years ago when I was in my late 20s.My buddies family bought a old milk plant out and a group of us spent alot of nights in there working on cleaning it out.We all had day jobs and spent our nights cleaning it out and prowling around the old place.The milk plant was 2 stories and had a basement with passages to other buildings on the lot.There was allways alot of Beer involved and allways something going on.We all had BB/Pelet Guns to shoot Rats and just cause Havic in general.Well one night as the Beer was taking control and we were about to go home we decided to have a BB Gun fight.We shut out all the lights and split into teams.One team was going to search out the other and see who could stand it the longest.My team headid to the Basement and set up a Ambush.Well I took the first position and was going to wait for them to come down the stairs,fire on there patrol and head back to the group.I found a good spot,Pumped the old crossman up about 20 times and poured about 10 BBS down the barrel.Now I had an Assualt shotgun.Now mind you we are in the Basement its dark as all get out and we are all drunk as Hell.Now I hear them comming and lay my Combat BB Shotgun across the pallets Im behind and wait for them to open the Door to from the stairs.When it opens I let them have it and head back to base camp with em on my tail.It turned into quiet the skimish.I had forgot how much a BB Gun actually hurt even with all the Beer we had in us it stung and welted good.After it was all done and we headed home my buddy asked who had shot into the stairwell.I told him I had and he told me I had shot him in the mouth.We just laughed about it and kept driving.Well when we got to the farm he went into the bathroom and after awhile came out and showed me his tooth.Seemed as I had shot him in his upper lip and broke a big jagged chunk off his tooth.I offered to pay the Dentist bill but he declined saying he would go to the Dentist.Anyway his upper lip had swelled about as big as a marble from where the BB had hit him.Well after several days the swelling hadnt gone down in his upper lip and he decided it was time for some home surgery to releave some pressure and pain in his lip.When he cut the welt open a bright and shiney BB come flying out.From what we can gather the BB had inbeded itself in his lip and took acouple of days to work to the top.That was the last BB gun fight I was ever in.I ended up doing a 50/50 split to get my buddies tooth fixed.My half ended up being 350.00.Like I said this happened when we were in our late 20s.Can you imagine what we were like when we were young and dumb????

Model rocketry...OK!

I was witness to this:

At the local high school (when I was attending) some years back, they had a model rocketry club that would fire their rockets after school on some Thursdays.

Just a scant three miles from the school (or slightly less) is an active Air Force Base with a pararescue squadron flying Jolly Green Giant helicopters routinely.

One fine Thursday afternoon, the model rocket club is doing their usual fine job of successfully launching nine out of ten rockets and recovering eight out of nine.

A student's turn comes up and he prepares to fire his big D-engined V2 model rocket.  Of course, it would HAVE to be one of the larger rockets, wouldn't it?  

He fires it, but neglected to conduct a proper pre-flight safety check as he failed to notice a large, noisy, green United States Air Force CH-53 "Jolly Green Giant" helicopter entering the launch zone at a not very great altitude.

The rocket flies up and impacts the rotor blades of the helicopter, just in front of the pilot's windscreen.

Ever seen a Jolly Green Giants SKID to a stop in midair?

This one did!

And out of the right side cockpit window (pilot's side) out pops a flightsuited arm with a green and grey Nomex glove, with the middle finger (and no other) firmly extended in our general direction, and shaken with great enthusiasm!

The pilot then resumed his mission, probably grumbling about the paperwork he'd probably have to file regarding a rocket attack on his chopper.

Needless to say, there wasn't much point in trying to recover what was left of the rocket as there wasn't really very much left.  It was hardly worth calling confetti.

CJ

Ok, here you go!


When I was 13 years old my buddy Chuck and I were playing Army in the woods close to an interstate and we noticed a state trooper had someon pulled over.  I tried to talk Chuck into pretending he had me at gunpoint in front of the trooper, but he wouldn't do it.  I ended up rubbing some mud on my face and sneaking up toward the cop and the woman he was questioning (out of the car).  I had my bb pistol at arms length pointed at both of them and she yelled "He's got a gun!"  The trooper turned around and drew his gun at the same time, fired 2 shots at me.  The second one missed but the first one caught me in left arm and rode the bone up to my shoulder and destroyed my rotor cuff before exiting.  I went down fast and was picked up by the EMTs after about 10 minutes.  As you can see I lived through it.  Pretty freaky.
You never said anything about the stories having to be true!

Ok, I've got two.

My parents live out in the middle of nowhere.  Their house has several large windows (they're actually sliding glass door replacement panels).  They used to have some sort of red bird (not a cardinal) that likes to try and brain itself on the windows.  You'd head THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP, then a break of a few minutes, then back to THUMP THUMP THUMP.  All day long, from dawn to dark, from when he arrived in the spring until he left in the fall or several years.  Obviously this was very annoying.  One day, I decided to use my BB gun to try and scare him off.  I knew better than to shoot near the house, because if I damaged anything dad would kill me.  So I tried pumping up the BB gun and dryfireing.  No luck.  I didn't really want to kill the bird (I figured if he was beating what little brains he had on a window all day he had enough problems), so I decided to wait until he landed somewhere and shoot near him.  I loaded up a pellet, and waited.  He landed on a small dead branch in a dogwood tree about 100' away.  I took aim on the branch a couple of inches away from him, knowing that I've never hit it and hoping that the pellet going by would scare him.  I pulled the trigger, and THWACK!  The branch shook, and the bird flew off...for about 20 minutes.  I gave up.

The second one, me and a friend had been out squirrel hunting.  We were walking back to his house to warm up, and I was carrying his shotgun while he was playing with my Crossman CO2 pistol.  The pistol was the one that looks like a revolver.  We were walking along the edge of a field, almost out to the road, when my friend took a shot out into the weeds.  The pellet must have gone close enough to one of his neighbor's cats that was hiding in the weeds to spook it.  The cat took off across the road.  I said "Wouldn't it be funny if..." ERRRRRRRRRRRMMMMMM   WHACK!!!!  Someone in a Chevette came along and hit the cat.  We walked out onto the road, staring in shock and disbelief at the dead cat, and the pieces of the front air dam of the Chevette spread over the road.  The guy that hit the cat had stopped.  Now, imagine that you've just hit someone's cat.  You've stopped, and you see two guys, one with a camo jumpsuit and a shotgun, the other with obvious hunting clothes and a large revolver, come walking toward you looking totally stunned.  Think of the look you'd have on your face...that was the look this guy had when he saw us.  He said "uh....sorry about your cat."  My friend said "that's ok, it wasn't ours!"

Hick h.gif

When I was twelve I was in the back yard shooting my multiple pump BB gun one day at cans.  I had pumped it up about twelve time when I set it down and went into the barn to get something, probably more Coke cans to shoot at from the recycling bucket.  I had climbed up onto the rail of on of the horse stall when I heard the sound of the more pumping.  My brother, fourteen, had picked the gun up off the porch and started pumping it up more.  I had this feeling he was aiming it at the wall of the barn.  The barn was about eighty feet long with a single layer tin wall, un-insulated.  I yelled out, "I'm in here and that will go through the wall."  At that time I heard the crack of him firing, the "p-ting" sound of the BB going through the wall, and felt the slap of the BB hitting me in the side of the face.  I reached up and felt the right side of my jaw, after I had gotten up off the ground.  I had jerked back when it hit me, and wound up falling off the six foot high rail.  I had blood all over my hand and face and I was starting to swell up fast.  I went into the house to clean up and started to ice it down.  About an hour later I realized the large puffy spot had a small hard spot in the middle.  We went to the ER to get an x-ray and see if my tooth was cracked.  No cracked tooth, but one zinc plated BB left about an inch in and down from the entry wound.  They had used a radioactive marker arrow to show the entry wound.  I asked if they were just going to cut it out.  They were going to cut it out.  They said it could not be cut out without taking a chance on cutting a bundle of facial nerves in the same area.  Eighteen years later I still sit with one zinc plated BB permanently in my face.  When I go to a new dentist it is a contest to see who can guess what it is on the x-ray.  If someone can think of a way to post an x-ray I will.  You can now send me my magazine.

Many years ago, my family picked cotton after school and work. Across the street from our home was probably 200 sections of cotton field. I was so proud of my "duffle bag cotton sack" and red rider bb gun that I took them every day to the field. It was a life saver, taking many sparrows,lizards and at least one rattlesnake.
I had to follow my little sister down the row to police up missed bolls, This is troublesome, because she gets to pick the prime stuff and I get the scrub, plus she was very slow. You get paid by the pound and speed is important. One actually crawls for miles to harvest this cotton. One day, trying to make time, I decided to expedite my sister. Can you imagine this butt,in front you,slowing you down,on purpose, swinging back and forth,back and forth,back and POW. Sis thinks she is snake bit, momma knows she is, dad knows exactly what happened. Pop grabs my ryder and every two rows pumps a shot into my butt for the half mile to the house. Besides the stings, all I thought about was,"how am I going to find all those bbs", because, in those days, you had to be a reloader.

Blackeye's story is the best,I'm still laughing as I type,
Here's one.Back in the early 70s,when I'd gathered enough pop bottles for refunds of .5c apiece, to buy a tube of bbs(remember those?) Anyway,
My father and his brother were rebuilding a  PT-19 trainer,outside of the hanger were the planes wings,You see where this is going...10 yrs old,200 b.b.s & my trusty redrider,I aimed for the "stars" on those wings,I must of shot each one 25 times,and there were four of em,Needless to say when Dad discovered the damage and while inspecting,found B.B.s rolling around inside,It did'nt take long for him to figure out it was me.Mad is an understatement,Hell if it were not for mom,I'd been put up for adoption or sold for labor.And that was only my dads idea,His brother who did most of the skin work on the plane,wanted to cripple me.I can still hear him screaming"C'on let me have him,I'm gonna break that f#@*% finger off his F#@kn hand,you little $hit,C'm Here !!
My younger sister still has that RedRider at her home in AZ.

Quoted: Whn I was about 12-13, my best friend and I were jacking around with the Red Ryder. We decided it would be a cool thing to shoot pill bugs that had rolled up into a defensive ball. After several shots, we determined there was enough ballistic accuracy to hit a decent sized target at 10-20 yards. Then we get the bright idea to shoot the pill bugs at each other (these were the days before paintball, so we had to improvise), but we wanted to test it first to make sure there wouldn't be any serious injury. Being the brave one of the bunch (he was the instigator, I was the brave one who always got injured), I pulled up my tshirt to let him go at me with a point blank blast. Needless to say, it was quite painful. The chitenous shell of the pill bug tore a hole through my skin, leaving a part trail splattered all over. Nothing like picking bug guts and legs out of a puncture wound. Of course, it got infected and I had to make up some fib for my mom that I will someday go to hell for doing. I still have a scar.

I couldn't have been more than 4 or 5 years old when I was out with my dad shooting the new Daisy BB gun he had just bought me. I'm not sure what model the thing even was, just that it was very short and weak.....a lever action, cowboy style repeater.

I shot that thing for what must have been an eternity. I killed soda cans and Dixie cups all day and had become a somewhat proficient marksman.

Needless to say I became a bit bored with shooting cans, so I started looking for alternative targets. About that time I hear the low rumble of a high flying jet. I looked up and could just barely make out the silver reflection of what was probably a sky high airliner, bomber or transport. I said "hey dad, watch me shoot this jet"! I took careful aim and squeezed off my shot. A few seconds after firing the jet started producing a vapor trail. But I didn't understand at the time that the air at that height is cold and thus the exhaust from a hot jet engine produces such vapor. I instead thought that my shot had connected and that I had damaged the plane! LOL

Well my dad knew what I was thinking and decided to have a little fun with me! He said "now see there what you did! You have shot down an airliner!" This added to my panic and as I watched the plane cross the sky it appeared it was losing altitude (when it was rather just crossing the horizon and slowly disappearing)! At this point I was probably close to crapping my pants!

He let this go on for a few minutes and before I got too excited he set me down and explained what had happened. He used that as an opportunity to teach me to never point a gun at or shoot at anything I didn't have intention to shoot. He also explained that although I hadn't just destroyed a jet and killed 500 people, that careless use of any firearm could lead to tragedy. Needless to say I never had any further firearm related mishaps since that day!

You asked for my best:

“Farm Boys”

After school was out, I jumped at the opportunity to stay with my grandmother and long left farm family.  My grandfather was still in the sanatorium and the “Wadell Place” no more.  My family lived in a small farm house in western Ohio.  The ground was flat and the house surrounded by fields.  I can’t begin to tell you how glad I was to be with Steve again.  We were inseparable and spent hour after hour in play. I would spend the whole summer with Steve.   For the most part, it was calm summer filled with lazy days and trips to the creek.  Occasionally, we would go the windmill down the road and swim in the tank.  Towards the end of summer things started to change.

About a half mile down the road was a large maple three with wide limbs that sprouted in every direction.  It provided good shade and was ideal for a tree house.  We loaded the American Flyer with building supplies and built a tree house.  It took days and many trips with the wagon, but when finished, it was outstanding.  We used one of my grandmother’s old corrsets as a hamock and planks for floors.  We had a table actually a wooden box and separate sleeping areas.  It was a fort by no means for why would we need it.  After all we were in the middle of no where and hadn’t seen another kid all summer.  Of course, we were wrong.  One day while lounging in the tree house we noticed a group of  six kids walking down the road.  “Where could they have come from.” Steve added without really expecting a reply.  Me being a little gun shy replied.  “This looks like trouble to me boy.”  Without saying a word to each other, we held perfectly still and didn’t make a sound.  Maybe they wouldn’t notice us.  Just as they got in front of us the biggest boy a cruddy looking freakle faced kid pointed up at us.  “That’s a nice tree house you two runts have.”  We didn’t reply.  “What ya say boys?  Want ourselves a tree house?”  “Yea, yea.” They all replied.  Then without any warning they stooped and picked up stones and starting throwing them at us.  I caught a rock between the eyes and fell to the ground.  They pelted me as I was falling and continued to pelt me on the ground.  Steve lept from the tree, pulled me to my feet, and we ran to the house.  We were devastated to say the least.  It wasn’t so much we lost our tree house, but had been shamed into running away.  


Steve being more indoctrinated with my grandfathers philosophy wanted to kill them.  “I’ll get the shotgun and send those heathens to hell.” He said.
 
“But Steve, they’ll put you in jail forever or worse the electric chair.”

“A man has the right to defend his property.”

“Ah?  That tree ain’t on our property.”

“Don’t matter none.  That is our tree house.”

I knew Steve never lied nor kidded about such things and was worried to say the least.  I wanted no part of a killing.  I was starting to really worry when I got an Idea.  I told Steve about the Flatwoods wars and the race wars.

“It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve fought a war outnumbered by bigger bulleys.” I said with fake confidence.  “We don’t have to kill em just declare war on them and make em pay and make em pay good.”
Steve ran into the house leaving me a little bewildered in the front yard.  He soon returned with an sack of stuff.  “They want a war.  Well by God, we will give them one they won’t forget.”   With that Steve started pulling stuff from the bag.  He had two GI Joe plastic army helmets, a pair of GI Joe walkie talkies, his Daisy Red Ryder BB gun, and his Crossman  45 BB pistol.  “Here you are a better rifle shot then me and I’m a better pistol shot.  You take the Red Ryder.”  We were both proficient with the guns, but I think Steve favored the pistol since it was newer.  We donned our helmets, took a walkie talkie each and headed for the road.  “Wait a minute.  They will see us coming and run off.  They’ll come back with their stuff and then we will be outnumbered and out gunned.” I said.  Steve was a bit impressed.  “You have done this before ain’t ya?  Well, you’re the pro.  What do we do?  We can’t just let em get away with this.” Steve interjected.  I thought a minute and then replied.  “This won’t be easy.  We will have to crawl down the ditch line real quiet like so they don’t see us coming.  Since you have the pistol you take the ditch closest to the tree and I will take the far side.  When we get in range we will open up and not stop till they run away.”  Steve turned on his radio. “I’ll be Alpha I and you be Bravo II.”  Steve added.  I was really starting to like this.

We crossed the road and lowered ourselves into the ditches.  We couldn’t see each other so we stayed in touch by walkie talkie.  “Alpha I.  What is your position?”  “This Alpha I, I’m under the second tree.”  “Bravo I, what’s your position?”  “This is Brovo I, I’m between the second and third three.”  It must have taken us a hour to get into position, but the radio made the time go fast.  “Brovo I, I’m in position.  I can’t get any closer without being seen.”  “Alpha I, I need a little more time.  I want to get directly across from the tree.”  Being on the near side of the road Steve positioned himself a bit up road from the tree while I moved directly across from the tree.  Our enemy didn’t have a clue what was coming.  My heart pounded and time to stand still as we listened to them laughing and bragging about ousting us from the tree house.  Then one of them said the wrong thing.  “You see me hit that little curly headed one in the back.  He cried all the way home.”  “Fire, fire, fire.” I heard Steve yell over the radio and from across the road.  We opened up.
I quickly aimed at the biggest one first and nailed him square in the chest.  He let out a yelp and fell like a rock.  I cocked and fired again.  This time he screamed and began to run down the road.  I figured if the biggest ran the others would follow so I nailed him in the butt.  He grabbed his butt with both hands and jumped a good foot from the ground.  He landed feet a peddling for traction.  Confident he wouldn’t turn around,  I turned my attention back to the tree.  Steve had already gotten two more of the boys to the ground.  I heard the Crossman ping again and another fell to the ground.  I aimed at one of those remaining in the tree and dropped him with a well placed shot to the head.  The boys didn’t know where it was coming from so panic set in.  They screamed like the devil was upon them as they ran down the center of the road.  When they saw their leader already a hundred yards ahead of them their screams intensified.  Steve lept from his hiding place and centered himself in the road.  Legs wide he took careful aim as he pelted one of the boys square in the back.  I jumped up sreaming and rushed to Steve’s side.  I let loose with another shot and caught one of the boys in the back.  We whooped and hollered as we shot them time and time again.  They screamed and waved their arms wildly as they ran for their lives.  When they were finally out of range, we stopped.  

True story and if any you guys out there was one of those shot, I'm sorry but you asked for it.

The shot I wish I'd made:

When I was 13 my parents bought me a Daisy 880 air rifle, which I proceeded to shoot the bejeezus out of.  My older brother wasn't much into shooting, but he'd plink occasionally.  We lived in a wooded area, and woodpeckers were a nuisance both in noise and in damage when they pecked on the house.  One afternoon, a woodpecker was hammering away on a tree in the back yard when my brother decided to "terminate with extreme prejudice" - using my rifle.

He grabbed my rifle and pumped it up the full ten times, then chambered a BB, with me standing (and protesting) behind him.  He opened the sliding glass door just enough to let him put the barrel out, and waited.

For some reason, the woodpecker flew down to the ground and was rooting around.  My brother took careful aim for what seemed like an hour, then touched off the shot.  At the sound of the shot, the woodpecker leaped into the air, wings outstretched, then fell over backwards and didn't move.

When we examined the ex-woodpecker, we discovered that the BB had entered its open mouth and exited through the back of his skull.  It had leaped up and caught the BB!  If Wayne had held ON the bird, that leap would have saved it.

The range was about 30 yards.  Pure blind luck.

Wow, good stuff.  Thanks for the posts so far.  Keep them coming.  It is always reassuring to find that there are plenty of people nuts enough to fit in to my family!

I have an idea for the "art" for the cover.   An ex-ray with a BB.  A moose (or moose nuts).  A single round from a Garand.

I need a good title now.

The BB Gun Diaries
as told by AR15.com members

BB Gun Love

BB Gun Taken Away
presented by Steven Spielberg

About 5 or 6 years ago, when I was around 20, some friends and I decided that it would be fun to go out and have a bb gun war like we did when we were younger. The only rule we had was that you couldn't aim at the head. You could pump as many times as you wanted, but no headshots, for obvious reasons.

There was 5 of us and we divided up into two teams. It was me and Blaine against the other three. Since we were outnumbered we got to go hide and the other guys were going to hunt us down.

We ran out to a place where we knew we would get the drop on them. There was an old rock road that wound through the woods and at one point it crossed the creek that we always went to. There was a huge cement pipe that routed the creek underneath the road that was about 6" tall when standing on the inside.

We knew that they would probably head down the creek and that we would be well protected inside the pipe, as well as hidden since one end was blocked off with dirt, trees and other debris.

We waited for about 10 minutes then we heard the other guys talking while they were walking down the road. Then they turned off just a we had planned and had their backs directly to us. As we waited for them to get in the kill zone, one of them looked down at us, but we were well hidden in the shadows and he didn't see anything.

Just as we were getting ready to open fire another guy turned around and saw us and fired a quick shot off the hip. As they all scurried to find some cover, Blaine started yelling, "I got shot in the eye!" I thought he was just goofing off since it was the very first shot fired and the odds of getting shot in the eye are very slim, until I turned around and he was on his knees behind me holding his eye.

Apparently the sound was muffled because bb's started hitting me in the back and bouncing around in the pipe from the other guys still shooting. I yelled for them to stop because Blaine had just got shot in the eye. They all came running over.

We helped him out and sat him down on the road and attempted to assess the damage. When he took his hand off his eye, with his eye still closed, you could easily see the round outline of the bb stuck in his eye bulging out his eyelid. As well as blood all around his eye and on his hands. At this point everyone uttered in unison, "Oh shit."

We told him not to move his eye or blink or touch it and we helped him back to civilization as quickly as possible. We all thought for sure his eye was gone, though we didn't tell him that. All we told him was that we couldn't see anything for the blood. His eye was also obviously swollen at this point.

Once back to my other friends house Blaine sat down on the couch to rest for a minute. We got him something to drink and was getting ready to take him to the hospital and he was wiping the blood off his face with a rag when he said, "Hey, I can still see! I can't open my eye very well, but I can still see."

We all gathered around to see what his eye looked like and we noticed that the bb was actually inside the middle of his eyelid but his eyeball was just fine.

The BB had hit him just below the inside part of his eyebrow at the very top of his nose. It had penetrated the skin and apparently bounced off his skull and was stuck inside his eyelid. The BB had never even touched his eye. As we all breathed a sigh of relief that he wasn't blinded he said, "Somebody's gotta get this thing out!" So me and a buddy pushed the BB through his eyelid towards the hole and then popped it out like a zit.

He ended up with a sore eyelid and a black eye, but other than that he was just fine.

The next week we all bought paintball guns.

I was 5 years old in 1961 when my cousin and I both got a Daisy BB gun, my uncle owned a gas station & back then that was when they had light bulbs completely around the station, roof level that flashed. Well, needless to say we thought they were the best targets any kid could ask for and they made such a great popping noise when shot, so we began to shoot until we had killed every bulb. In fact there was a couple hundred bulbs and in fact we got our ass whipped a couple hundred belt whacks between the two of us or at least it seemed to be that many. I never ever shot any bulbs ever again even though they were so pretty when they flashed and just begged to be shot, but I resisted the temptation. I loved the skin on my ass more than shooting the bulbs.

How I became a neighborhood shooting ledgend...

I was about about ten years old.  I was in the woods next to my house with three friends, shooting BB guns and sling shots. I had my NRA commerative daisy that mygrandfather had bought. he'd passed away 5 years befoore, and my grandmother had given it to me that past christmas.
Anyway, we were shooting and as is bound to happen with boys, we got to fighting and fussing. 10 year old insults were exchanged and we went our own ways...  my friend Ken and I towards my house, and John and Jess  through the woods to the street.  As they left not only did they yell more insults, but started firing rocks at us with the slingshot.
I raised the the gun to my shoulder, to make like I was going to shoot...  to try and make them stop.  At that , Jess did the worst thing he could have...   he raised up his right hand and gave me "the finger" and yelled "Go 'head, you couldn't hit me if you tried!" My 10 year old pride had been challanged.. I raised up the gn, gave it some windage and fired.. making the greatest hit in shooting history. :)  "SProink!"   That little BB went up, sailed some 120 feet through the woods, finding it's mark, landing smack dab on the fingernail of that up raised middle finger.
Jess yellped and took off running home.
Oh course when I got home, Jess's mom had already called my mom...  uh oh. I had to go outside and wait. Wait for dad to come home and tell him what I did. That felt like forever.  Dad was mad. Dad was upset. Dad was let down. I let him down.  He didn't  spank me or anything, he did much worse. He forbid me to touch a gun of any type, real , BB or toy for almost six months. That hurt.
I learned my lesson..  and so did everyone else. Nobody ever dared me to shoot them again. :)

Well, some of these posts bring back memories... I grew up on the bayou in Louisiana: gaters, snakes, skeeters, and lots and lots of fish, crawdads, sugar cane, and other assorted goodies to catch/eat. This type of surrounding is ideal for the young boy with a bb gun, such as myself. I learned many a lessons, and had many good times there... but none that are on the "best" list, only a prelude.

When we moved up north, and into a "big city" (pop. 1500 in LA, now to a city of almost 100,000), I was much more restricted on what I was "supposed" to do with my bb gun (and later my few more bb/pelet guns). These are some of the fun incidents this "big city boy" had after being used to the freedom of the "wild".

1) My first tough lesson... Brandon, a friend of mine, and I both had our bb guns... this was locust (cidadia?) season "up north" and we found one of the dispecable bugs clinging about eye level (to an 8 year old) to the bark on a tree. Well, he cocks his bb gun, and from perhaps 2 feet away (at an angle) proceeds to terminate its existance.

Unfortunately, I was at the wrong angle and the bb, and likely bug parts, hit me square in the bridge of my nose... I ran back home thinking I was gonna die and told my friends mom that "I'd been shot" as I'm holding my nose. She looked at me, and pulled my hand off my nose to find bug parts, and a bump... and calmed me down. I learned my FIRST good lesson about ricochets that day.

2) My friend Brett and I are out shooting his bb gun at his parent's home out in the rural area of town. We have some good glass coke bottles that we proceed to shoot up. After we finish, the only large chunk of glass left over is the round base of one of the bottles.

Well, Brett gets the great idea that he's gonna stand right over it and shoot down and break it... Oh, it broke all right, but the bb went under his eyelid and was lodged up inside his eye. I located the bump, and helped him push it back out, and it dropped to the ground. He had a hard time seeing out of that eye that day, but later seemed to fully recover. Lesson #2.

3) Junior High, oh the joys... teenage stupidity with yet more friends with bb guns. We decide to have a bb gun war, and make rules that nobody can shoot within 20 feet, and other such nonsense that nobody really pays attention to. Someone managed to shoot a guy on the other team (don't recall his name) at a VERY close range with a pump bb gun directly in the nose. He wasn't too happy and complained the rest of that day that it hurt.

The following week of school, I come across this guy, and his nose is all swolen and red. Nobody yet had put 2 and 2 together... we just started mercilessly teasing him and calling him "rudolph" and other mean things, thinking he just had a huge zit. Well, tuesday or wednesday, he came back, with a less inflamed nose and has in his possession one copper bb that he managed to pop out of that "zit". Ugh, needless to say, it was both fascinating and disgusting at the same time.

4) I cant tell most of the other stories that a friend and I got into when we were in Jr high, and probably early high school, cause they're beyond stupid and could have really gotten us in a LOT of trouble... but one (somewhat) bb related story that is cleared for public exposure:

A friend of mine, David and I were out in the woods with our typical arsenal: BB rifle, Co2 pelet pistol, etc. It's late fall/early winter, and all the leaves are dead and dried, and strewn about the ground for the winter.

Well, we get a nice little fire going, for who knows what reason... and are sticking around our "camp" area goofing off. One of us (not sure who) gets the bright idea that we should try to toss a full Co2 cartridge into the fire cause we had heard that it would "pop".

Well, both of us liked this concept, and proceeded to stoke the fire up to a decent level. Once everything was good and toasty, I pitched the Co2 cartridge into the fire and jumped behind a nearby tree, peeking my head around to see the result.

Well, it took a little while. I had been expecting an instant pop out of the thing... after a while (probably less than a minute, but it seemed like a LOOOOONG time), KABOOOOM!!!

Us 2, being the fools we were, had basically created the ultimate recipie for a forest fire... when the Co2 cartridge exploded, burning twigs, leaves and such whent every which way... landing in other piles of leaves.

It wasn't long before there were a bunch of little fires starting up all around us. But fortunately our "camp" was not more than 10 or 15 feet from a creek, so we proceeded to stomp out what we could and splash water on some of the bigger stuff...

Man, there's just so many more... especially if you add in home made explosives, or attempts at it.

I just have to be very greatful that I'm alive and completely well after all the dumb stuff I did when I was a kid. I have to attribute it to God and (probably) ovretime prayer on my parent's part.

Well here's mine.

My little brother had just recieved a new BB gun for his 8th birthday so we decided to try it out. This consisted of a pyramid of about 12 mountain dew cans stacked on a picnic table bench. Well, needless to say he had gotten one of those lookalike BB guns that looked like a Mini-14 with a sliding wire stock and detachable mag to hold extra ammo. Range, about 10 feet. Pumps, why 10 of course. Mountain dew can, knocked off of the top. So in my haste and not to be outdone, I grab the rifle for my shot , pump it up 10 times and decide, well I will shoot at the bottom of the pyramid and knock out a bunch of cans.Well, my aim was good, except the BB ricocheted into my little brothers left testicle leaving him in the fetal position and crying like a little girl. After about five minutes of me trying to get him to shut up so mom wouldn't hear him he gets back up, red faced , and very pissed( I have no idea why?). He grabs the rifle and with snot still running out of his nose and bottom lip shaking, proceeds to tell me he is going to shoot me in the nuts, and then tell mom. This cannot happen! Little brother proceeds to chase me around to the front of the house pumping the BB gun the whole way. I then run in the front door, which is solid glass , kinda like a storm door. I then begin to do the nana nana boo boo you can't shoot me dance, and he looses a round. The shattering of the glass creates a silence that I have not experienced again to this day. Uh oh, here comes mom!
needless to say my brother had all the skin removed from his hind end with extreme force. Me I got his new BB gun because he was not responsible enough.

One Christmas in the early 60's I got a pump BB gun. I put two BB's in it before going outside. It wouldn't fire and dad had to check it. I was holding to it with my right thumb over the barrel when it fired.
Emergency Room to get it out Christmas morning.
They asked what happened. Mom says I told them that my Dad shot me. Can you imagine the look on his face? My fault, totally.
Learned my lesson young.

Can I have my mag now?
MM419

# One morning I had a lever action (pump) daisy bb gun with a scope, my mom had a bird feeder that was by the kitchen windo(My mom is a bird lover) well I stay home sick from school one day and I had though the my mom left the house, I look out of my window and I see the birds in the bird bath and on the feeder. I grab my bb gun open my window (2nd story) and I put the scope on them and I start sniping the birds I took 5 or 6 out before I my mom goes running out side, it turns out that her and her friend where sitting at the kit table haveing lunch and chating while watching the birds, see figured out what happened pretty quickly, needless to say I had my gun taken from me for awhile and my father who brought the gun for me got in almost as much trouble as I did.

Story number 2 my mom had a pet chicken, me and my friend are out in the yard and we seen a phesant in the tree so we grab my BB guns ( My grand father brought me a new one) and we take aim and unload on this thing but to our surpise when it fell we relized that it was jack my moms chicken, once again the guns where taken away.

Story #3 my cousin just had gotten a new pistol (bb pistol) we talked our parents into letting use stay home by ourselves while they ran to the store, well lets just say when they came back 15 min later, we had to go right back out because my cousin who said the famous line it is not loaded shot himself in the thigh. once again the bb gun was taken away but this time it was not mine.

We used to where goggles and go run around and play war in the woods, the rules where simple always where your goggles, never pump the gun more then twice and don't shoot if you are to close,no one ever realy got hurt and now that I look at it I relize how stupid it was, and men when some one thought they would be funny and pump it up a a few more time it would hurt and then you would get mad and pump yours up a few more times and shoot him back and then you ended up either going home or throwing the guns and fighting.

Well it was back in the mid seventies; I was under ten I would say, and would shoot my "lever action" Daisy bb gun in the basement into a cardboard box and paper backstop on top of my dad's workbench.

The range was short, even though we had a full basement.  The problem was, about fifteen feet in front of the target, there was a toilet.  The toilet was there, out in the open, no stall or sink or anything, because the toilet on the first floor and it's plumbing was directly above this one.  The drain pipes from the first floor toilet got in the way of any long range shooting, although you could try and shoot between the pipes from a longer range.

Well one day I went to shoot at the longer range.  There were two entrances to this room in the basement.  I took the entrance that put me furthest away from the target with the toilet and pipes between me and the target, which I had set up earlier.

I fired my first shot.  Immediately my sister jumps up from the toilet, (I don't remember if I saw her at the last minute as I pulled the trigger or not), but she was there and it startled her and me.  I couldn't see her.  

Anyway, she goes out of the room screaming and crying and yes telling on me to my dad, who happened to have fallen asleep while watching tv in the other room.

Well, waking my dad up from a sleep is not the smartest thing to do.  He gets a little upset.  My sister explained that I had been unsafe with the bb gun.  He immediately runs into the room where I was shooting and grabs my Daisy by the barrel and with one swing, wraps it around the toilet drain pipe!  

The Daisy was almost broke in half, one end dangling from the other.  He was mad, my sister was (justifiably) mad, and I was mad at myself.
He sent me to my room and I caught hell for slamming my door so hard into the wall, it left and imprint of the door handle in the drywall.

I learn a valuable lesson that day.  Check what's between you and the target and don't mess around where safety is concerned.

After getting my bb gun back (i shot the back window out of the usps truck) i went to my friends house to do some shootin. he got some of his dads .22 long rifles and we were sticking them bullet first into a crack in a stump and shooting the base with the bb gun to fire the .22. it was now his turn. he fired the bb gun. he dropped the bb gun and screamed. he grabbed his face. i about shit myself. he lifted his hand away from his face and the .22 case was buried in his cheek under his right eye. it went in bullet end first just like a little cookie cutter. he pulled the case out and removed a perfect cylinder of his cheek. i grabbed the bb gun and ran like hell for home. i just got that gun back. about ten years later i joined the marine corps.    

In high school a close group of buddies and I were spending time at a lake.  One of our friends decided to meet us, but he brought a "new guy" with him.  The new guy turned out to be somewhat offensive to the group, and he paid dearly.  At one point during the day, new guy was standing by the lake chucking rocks into the water.  A couple of buddies were hiding in the bushes taking shots at him with their BB guns.  Every once and a while he would turn around and bitch at us, telling us to stop chucking rocks at him.  The gig was up when my buddy barried a BB in his neck.  He dug it out and proceeded to tell us what bastards we were.  Needless to say, he didn't join us for our next outing.

Freshman year at college.  My first roommate had some buddies stay over for the weekend.  One of them brings one of those cheapie crossman bb/dart guns for some reason.  They are shooting darts in the room all day... Night time comes around, drinking has commenced, and by idiot roommate grabs the gun, cocks it, puts it in his mouth and pulls the trigger.  Thing is, apparently someone had loaded BB's back into it in the meantime, and now he has a BB lodged into the back of his throat.  You can just see the tip of the BB poking out of his flesh.  I spent the next hour with tweezers and various other poking implements trying to get it out, as he didn't want to go to the doctor's as his parents would find out.  I wasn't able to get it out, so he ended up going anyway, and making up some bizarre story to tell them.

Thing is, he apparently changed his story between when he was discussing it with me and actually telling his parents.  They came to visit a month or so later and mentioned the incident.  I started to relay his original made up story - which wasn't the one he ended up telling them...

Rocko