Glancing thru all the different threads I laughed to myself. Remembering when I was a teen and would get up at the crack of dawn and grab my favorite hand me down .22 rifle, a pocket full of shells and stuff a can of cola in my pocket along with a handful of hard candy and out the door I went. Getting in trouble when I got home because I had missed dinner.
Now decades later I wont even look at the mountains without strapping 20 lbs of gear to my back and filling my pockets with every gadget I can get my hands on! Then thinking to myself "Do I really want to carry the extra weight of the .22 rifle... Funny how priorities change.

As a kid I had a slingshot, a scout knife, and a cheap canteen. Sometimes I would stea...er...borrow one of the dads cheap lighters.

That was it for gear and rarely did I feel I was lacking anything.

No .22? Are you nutso???

Actually, in my case, it was not a can of coke, it was a WWII GI canteen full of water. In the summertime the canteen was filled halfway and frozen the night before...

Slingshots rule! I had a wrist rocket as a kid, actually I still have it. I used to launch rocks for my dog (her name was Blitz) to fetch, she loved it, She would start barking if I paused for even a minute. I actually became pretty good using it, thinking of a folding one for my go bag.

Your mememories got me to thinking, too. I got a .22 single shot bolt action rifle when I was 11 years old but my parents did not want me going into the woods with it alone. Really my outdoors adventures began when I was about 9. Like OBG, I was only armed with a homemade slingshot and a pocketful of personally selected pebbles for shot. My uncle had given me his WWII canteen with the canvas carrier and slung from the original pistol belt. That canteen allowed me to stay all day in the woods and I grew to really love that thing. Back then, and in the area I was from, an old Prince Albert tobacco tin was carried in my back blue jeans pocket. In the can was a piece of bark or shingle with a hand fishing rig wrapped around it, small cork and all. Some strike anywhere kitchen matches and a Barlow knife were also stashed in the tin. I enjoyed finding a pristine, clear fishing hole in the middle of nowhere and trying my luck.

I remember when we visited the family farm as a kid. Grabbing a .22 revolver loaded with ratshot and stuffing it in my back pocket. And then actually hoping to run into one of those rattlesnakes we were supposed to be avoiding! Ratshot to the head would take them out - barely - if you got close enough. Meaning two feet or so past their striking distance, which is what made the whole deal exciting.

These days, I'd be carrying constricting bands, suction cups, anti-venom, whistles and signal mirrors, a cellphone, gps, etc. The local hospital would have been put on alert before I ventured out. I'd replace my UnderArmor with the slightly heavier medieval knight's armor - a weight trade-off I'd now consider appropriate.

Ha! Yeah, back when our parents would let us go off on our own for the weekend at 12-13 years old camping. Stuff some tarps, wool blankets, Boy Scout knives and cans of spaghetti in our rucksacks, grab our BB guns, go off in the woods, build a big fire, and sleep out for a couple of nights. Can you picture that now?

Of course, that's back when you could ride a bicycle without a helmet and had to pay extra for seatbelts in your car.

Kevin B.

Could ride a bike without a helmet? Can you imagine the ridicule that would have been involved with wearing a helmet on a bicycle!?!? You would have been laughed out of town! lol.

My .22 and I used to spend hours and hours at an old abandoned dump on my grandparents property. They had a little over 700 acres and only about 25(ish) acres of it was "improved". Plenty of deer, turkey and even a couple of mountain lions in those parts.

I remember waking up one morning when my grandfather touched off his lever action .357 from the kitchen. No point in going outside to take a deer that year. He was in the middle of fixing breakfast when this nice buck walked up so he just slid the window open and shot from over the kitchen sink.

I remember as a kid getting decked out in fatigues grabbing my swiss army knife, an old WW II messenger bag and a lighter. In the bag was a canteen, U.S. Mess kit w/utensils and whatever surplus C-rats I had gotten the last time I was at the flea market. Sometimes we played war or cowbays and indians. Either way it boiled down to a day of hide and seek, swimming in one of the ponds or just running around like maniacs until dusk........
I miss those days

-Bill Liptak

Yeah,

You must've been reading my mind (sans the .22 though).

I was just thinking about how I would spend all day tromping around the woods with barely anything gear other than my pocket knife and curiosity.

Those fond memories then drift over to the time:

I was so thirsty and with what I know now was probably a dehydration headache and was tempted to drink what ever I could find (I won't go into details as you may be eating your breakfast at this time),

got caught out in a thunderstorm that was the advanced guard of a cold front and I ended up with a very cold, very wet hike back home,

Got lost and just lucked out on finding a logging road back to the highway,

Blundered into a nudist colony and all the girls were so excited to see a "mountain man".... (Oh, wait! That really didn't happen, that was a dream I had when I was 15.... never mind)

Our "20 pounds" of gear is the badge of our wisdom from hard learned experience (at least that's what I'm telling myself and it generally makes me feel better).

Happy trails.....

"...that was a dream I had when I was 15..."

Heck, I had that dream early this morning!!!

Both my mom and dad still shoot squirrels off the birdfeeder with subsonic .22's from their bedroom window. Their backstop is about 30 acres of thick woods.

-Blast

same here..single shot 22..my dads WW2 belt and canteen..
pack of paper matches..and my pride and joy Army pant copys.
OD green with Army pockets--we would call them cargo pockets
now..this was the 50's--i don't recall taking any kind of food
or even a knife..but survival was not the watchword..it was
"playing in the woods"..

lol... well, i grew up in the burbs, so no gun. and no forest. and no lake. and no going off by myself. and no hunting from my front porch. Helmets weren't mandatory, but seat belts were.

on the plus side, my dad was smart enough to start me camping at 6, and I was pretty gung-ho through high school about it. Now, I just wish I had a weekend off to go somewhere!

Really cool thread.
If you are a Blade forums member the Traditional knives subforum frequently has a thread of this nature. That is why I like visiting that subforum.

For me it was a mix of running around in the woods on both a rural and urban scale. I grew up on Long Island back when it was still mostly farms. But in a span of 10 years a lot of subdivision went on.
We would use the random patches of woods and streams as our personal highways to our friends houses and to and from school.

We used these woods for campouts and fort building as well as our own precurser to mountain biking.

One unique thing about our neighborhood was something we called "sumps" these were storm drainage basins that were scattered throughout the neighborhoods to recharge the natural aquifer. These sumps were our personal fishing grounds; they usually had a combination of carp, bluegill/sunfish and LM bass.
Other sumps were mostly empty and we went "spelunking" in the large pipes that ran from the street drains to various sumps. Many sumps were linked together by the pipes.

On LI we had both fresh and salt water fishing, lots of creeks and scattered woods.

Usually we stole an old cookpot from the kitchen along with some strike anywhere matches, our fishing gear and our pocket knives. Mine was usually an SAK. We were not allowed real guns in my house but I usually shot my friends Crossmans and .22LR bolt actions on occaision.

Funny thing is I do not remember carrying a flashlight ever but we were usually supposed to be home when the street lights came on. In summer that could be as late as 10PM!! We had tons of unsupervised fun in those days.

I will bet that a lot of our mutual experiences in the woods as kids helped build a good foundation of skills.

"...single shot 22..."

Speaking of which, mine was also my dads first gun (I still have it), a Winchester Model 02, single shot, about 27 inches overall length, V notched rear sight that is so fine I can no longer see it. I had it for probably three or four years before I was allowed a BB gun. Go figure...

An enjoyable thread. Your collective experiences mirror my own in the mid-50s, with the talk of plinking with the .22, or a BB gun; a pocketknife as constant companion; exploring the woods from early morning 'til sundown (the only requirement being "be home before it gets dark"); toting a barebones version of "gear" and being quite satisfied with it (my "gear addiction" these days is a whole other conversation); all-day fishing at the pond; reading Boy's Life or the latest Hardy Boys book into the wee hours with a flashlight so as to avoid detection after the "lights out" command from my dad.

Coincidentally, my wife and I were having a related discussion recently ... that it seems today's kids don't (aren't allowed to?) have the same experiences, much to their detriment. Seems like most everyone we know with youngsters keep them on a short leash. Couldn't decide if we're out of the loop and not seeing the whole picture, or if it's a sign of the changed world we live in.

Whatever the case, I'm grateful for my own childhood experiences. They seem to have gotten me pointed in the right direction.

After thought: my .22 was a Harrington & Richardson bolt action; as I type, it sits tucked away in a gun case in the closet, looking nearly as good as the day I got it

I used to ride my bicycle out to my cousin's farms and play all day long. No rifles, but lots of fun. I never got into Hardy Boys, but I must have read every Tom Swift book about 20 times.

It sounds like my life as a kid was similar to the rest of you fellows, lots of camping, exploring, guns, knives and unsupervised fun .... I do miss those times (I hope that my kids don't do the same crazy, dangerous stuff I did)!

My children got so tired of their older relatives and I talking about how tough we had it in the "Good Old Days" that my middle daughter wrote a school speech on it titled, "A Kids Life, Past, Present and Future". It was a very funny 5 minute speech and she won when she presented it in the local school competition (proud father moment).

I find that I am able to still have some of that healthy fun by working with our local outdoor youth group, being around my kids and their friends makes me forget about the aches, pains and responsibility of middle age.

Mike

(Spent the day on the snowmobile so I am off to find some Advil, never had this problem when I was a teenager).

Like most of you I grew up with my dad's model 38 aka the "magic 22". A single shot that seemed to hit anything you aimed at. We rode our bikes and played along the Brazos river in central Texas. My dad was the local Scoutmaster and had trained us to be very woods wise. Usually only carrying a scout or Barlow knife, kitchen matches and candy. We usually drank from a spring that dumped into the river. This is also where we kept our fishing gear(willow or cane poles with line, cork and hook). Nothing like cooking fish over a fire at the "hideout" as it was known by only about 35 of the jr. high and high school class.
Thanks for a quick trip down memory lane!
kmat
P.S. Now I am only out on selected weekends when Blast can come out and play. Now...how can I get Ms Merriwether to let Blast come out and play?

Yes, most of today's kids have been gypped and don't even know it.

Even where I grew up in deserty southern California there were kinda-sorta 'wild' places within our reach, mainly the flood control channel (unpaved in those days) and overgrown vacant lots.

The very few kids that I know that have real fun outdoors are the ones whose parents aren't trying to protect them from everything, all the time.

Sue

I grew up in 'the forgotten borough' of NYC....hence...no guns. Stores didn't even have BB guns....but where I lived did have some 'wild' areas to it.....woods that I spent more than my fair share of time in....knife (and sometimes an ax too) many a fort was built. Pretty decent ones too. They would end up getting demolished by the stupid HS kids who thought they were tough.....they're probably now in jail or have been. No hunting for me though....no one in my family did it and I never had any exposure to it.....closest I came was taking a woodchuck (one shot) at 33 feet with a S&W 38 snub nose (Chief's Special) with a 2 inch barrel(yes I had a great instructor who taught me well)....after it had been buried for 14 hours, my 'friend' had said that she didn't know how I would have felt if she made it for dinner....she said she had a nice recipe for woodchuck....I'd have like to try it....I think....I do miss those days.....when my wife and I left the area over 10 years ago...most had been paved over for 'developments'....'improvements' is what we think they called it......still don't know what they thought needed improving.....it was great as it was...........

Well, I got my day hike pack down to 8 lbs without water...so that's something.

Teacher

Late 60's, early 70's, my "boy Scout" canteen, mess kit, Scout knapsack, SA matches, a old c-cell flashlight, fishing pole and a small tin box of tackle, boy scout whittlers knife, and a Crossman "760" BB/Pellet gun, old army blanket and tarp were my usual summer gear items.

I'd be out in the Pines and hardwoods behind my grandmothers house having a blast. It was a grand day when I got a 6" barreled Crossman .22 6 shot CO2 Pellet Pistol. My pistol and 760 brought down many a small critter, and helped provide a number of nice camping meals. The small creek had a few brook trout that fell victim to the old bamboo pole.

We set up a permanent camp with a leaky tarp lean to, but we felt we were living in a castle.


Oh, to be young again.

Grew up in the burbs of a very small UK town. 5mile hike east I'm in the centre of said town. 5miles west I'd in the middle of rural farmland. We had woods and streams or the canal. As a kid I felt I'd got the best of all worlds. Ok we didn't have guns or slingslots of any kind. Thought when we throw stones my "gang" and I generally hit what we were aiming at.

We had our bikes and the freedom to take them were we wished. If I had a pound for every time my mother would say "be back before the street lights come on" I'd be quiet content right now. I can't imagine saying anything like that to my kids now.

We did some crazy stunts on those bikes, one of the saner stunts was trying to leap across a 12ft wide canal on a Grifter. Forerunner to a BMX by about ten years. As long as we came home, it was alright, if you came home in one piece even better.

Same for me...
Lead to a lifetime addition with Science Fiction.
But I must be younger... For me it was Tom Swift Jr.
I only got to read part of on Tom Swift(Tom Swift and his Giant Spotlight{Searchlight?}), but I have ALL of the Tom Swift Jr. books to this day.

Sadly, I was not 'into' camping when I was young... I would love to be able to talk to my grandfather and uncles now...
I would also like to talk to my other grandfather, but for other reasons... From what I understand, he was heavily involved in the Manhattan Project!