When I was growing up, I didn't have a clue as to what this gun was or how desirable they would eventually become.  It seems that these days, people are looking for the Model 61 and are willing to pay (what seems to me) an astoundingly high price for them.  It was to me, back then, just "the .22."  We have two of them in our family.

My dad's Model 61 is what I learned to shoot with.  After learning marksmanship with a Daisy BB gun, Dad one day stepped me up to the .22 without me having any idea he was going to do it.  One cool October day he took me out to work on his deer blinds for the upcoming season, and he told me to take the .22 along.

Our deer blinds were never anything extravagant.  We used found materials:  tree limbs piled in a strategic spot that we could sit behind, or a piece of plywood nailed across a couple of branches.  Most of our blind work involved clearing odd limbs that might obscure our view or send a bullet twanging off in the wrong direction.  We didn't have a second rifle that I could hunt with myself yet, but he would take me with him so I could watch and learn.

This particular day we got to the place where he wanted to do some blind work, and he just said, "Why don't you go see if you can shoot some armadillos."

Understand that back then, the armadillo population around here was a serious problem.  They were everywhere, like gigantic armored rats.  They dug holes everywhere, and if a cow happened to step in one of those holes just wrong, well, you could have a cow with a broken leg.  Armadillos will eat just about anything, and they would also dig into the barns and eat our livestock feed:  corn, milo, and range cubes.  They would tear into hay bales and leave a huge mess.  Shooting armadillos was, to us, nothing more significant than exterminating rats.  The armadillos that lived out in the brush probably wouldn't have been much threat to our feed stores, but we didn't really make that distinction.

We don't seem to have a lot of armadillos around here anymore.  The general consensus is the lack of armadillos is due to the fire ant invasion.  Fire ants will get anything organic on the ground, and a lot of stuff not on the ground.  Baby anythings--armadillos, dogs, cats, newborn calves, goats, pigs, snakes--all are fair game for fire ants.

So anyway, I shot a few that day.  Later I really sharpened up my marksmanship by shooting turtles in the tank (or pond, to non-Texans).  Hitting a turtle head from 30 or 40 yards with a .22 is not easy.  I don't think I ever actually hit many of them, but the "aim small, miss small" concept that I learned from trying to hit turtles later overlapped into other things.  The old Model 61, loaded with CCI shotshells, was also my primary rat gun during my adventures in rat exterminating in our barns and animal pens.  By that time I had my own 10/22, but the shotshells wouldn't cycle in a semi-auto, so the old 61 was the obvious choice.

Dad still has his Model 61.  The other one belonged to my grandfather, and it is now part of my own collection.

Because so many of the blogs I read are Blogsp*t blogs.  Lots of little red exclamation marks on Bloglines for the past two days or so.  For some reason Blogsp*t's newsfeeds have crashed.

I guess if I want a shot at appearing in Cowboy Blob's next production, I'll have to post a picture of myself.


Just kidding.  Although I do have a pipe quite similar to that.  By the way, I think that pipe is an anachronism in that movie.

Here you go...


I didn't have a pipe on me at the time.  And before someone goes calling me an idiot, that's not a real gun.  It's a plastic prop.  This photo has its share of anachronisms, too.

This photo is several years old.

When it's aimed at gun owners:

In a recent article, More Guns, More Problems, the author considers getting a concealed carry permit in her new home state, and consults some “anti-gunners” to help her decide.

This idea is just wrong, said Joshua Horwitz, the executive director for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. Horwitz was quick to point out that Naveed Afzal Haq, the man who shot up a Jewish community center in Seattle last month, had a concealed carry permit.

“I think the idea that these people [legal concealed carriers] don’t do any damage is wrong,” said Horwitz. “More guns equal less crime is just false.”

Again, anti-gun “experts” make broad claims with no supporting data. But something darker lurks behind Horwitz’s words. Change one word in his comment and we have a neo-Nazi: “I think the idea that Jewish people don’t do any damage is wrong.” How quickly would the Anti-Defamation League initiate a–completely justified–campaign to demand an apology from Mr. Horwitz? But with gun owners, it’s okay to smear with a broad brush.

He goes on to show evidence that Haq did not, in fact, have any kind of concealed carry or gun permit, contrary to what the MSM has been repeating since it happened.