Daisy Model 25 Memories

An add similar to this got my attention!

My first gun was a hard earned Daisy Model 25 BB gun. I can't remember if it cost $8, or if I was 8 years old; I think both. Probably the summer of 1955 and I would be 9 in November.

Me at age 8

I begged for the Daisy, Dad finally caved and said I could have it. If I cleaned out his 30 foot cattle trailer to earn it. I'll never forget that! A huge, nasty, job, and especially for an 8 year old kid.

I was neat and clean and liked to "keep my ducks in a row" as a young boy. I'm pretty sure Dad thought I'd not do the job and he wouldn't need to buy the gun. After a couple of hours work I was also thinking I'd never finish the job. But I kept working and thinking about that magnificent Daisy and what we could do together. It took most of two miserable days. I learned the value of a dollar. That gun, IT COST A LOT!

The Daisy Model 25 looked like a pump BB gun. I read somewhere that it was actually more popular for a few years than the better known lever action Daisy Red Rider. I personally learned that it would shoot harder. Mine model had rotating open and peep sights. With the peep I became fairly deadly within the guns very limited range. For a few years I felt like I was a step ahead of my cousins who had Daisy Red Riders.

Some of the shooting, I don't recommend:

• I learned that by standing directly under a high-line wire I only had to concentrate on left to right gun movement (windage); I could hit the wire about half the time. Not a great idea, but it made a cool sound when the BB hit the wire. PING!
• Jimmy (my cousin) borrowed my gun one day for some pay-back. He and his older brother Ronny both had Daisy Red Riders. Ronny had done something to make his shoot a little "harder". Ronny had also learned to stay just far enough away to hurt Jimmy, but not get hurt in their BB gun battles. When Jimmy borrowed my Model 25; it was Ronny who ended up dancing, yelling, and running for cover.
• One day, bored, and not in one of my smartest moments, I decided to shoot at my grandmother's concrete steps at short range. The BB came almost straight back and hit me in the forehead just above the eye. (Yea! You know what they say about BB guns and eyes.) It hurt, got my attention, and I learned something. 
• On another day a trick shooter came to our school. (Can you even imagine that happening today!) After seeing him strike a match using a twenty-two rifle, I spent the rest of that day after school trying to do it with a BB. I stuck a kitchen match between the boards at one end of my grandmother's old picnic table and rested the gun across the other end only about two feet from the match. After using most of a small pack of BB's and half a box of mom's kitchen matches; I finally did it!  

I was taught by the whole family not to shoot at songbirds, bottles, windows... I hunted almost every day. The Daisy and I were greatly feared by pest birds, lizards, snakes, frogs, insects... in the area.  I missed or didn't have enough gun for most of the shots, but it worked often enough to be great fun.

It was a simple, but very special, time. The gun was my constant companion until my twelfth summer. That summer I worked in the hay fields for an uncle and earned enough to buy a Browning twenty-two. The new gun was certainly an advancement, a step-up, but I'm not sure anything is better than being a young boy, free to roam with his imagination and his Daisy.

My impression of the "New" or reintroduced Daisy Model 25:
First I'll say that I'm better about passing up on things I don't really need today. But I "caved-in" and bought one of the new Model 25s for my two year old grandson. :-)

Don't count this as a review, only my first impressions, I've shot less than 100 BB's through the gun. Most important to me, this new gun felt very familiar in my hands, even  after being absent for more than half a century:

• Yes! It's made in China. 
• No safety on the original, but this new one has a simple trigger block, cross bolt safety. 
• The magazine tube has a different male screw-in adapter (I think it's easier to screw in.)
• Something which seems backwards to me: The new one has a wooden stock. Plastic was not that common in 1955, but I believe my old gun had a plastic stock.

I set up a Campbell Soup can (classic) at about twenty steps. I could hit it easily. The gun shoots harder than I remembered; it put solid dents in the can's thick metal. That hard shooting could be from "dieseling" there was some obvious factory oil and a little smoke when fired.

The trigger is numb, but better/lighter than I remembered, and the gun much easier to cock.

I'm not sure if this should be attributed to small changes to the gun, or more likely big changes in the shooter. I did pinch my hand when cocking it once. I smiled, thinking, maybe neither the gun nor I have changed too much.