What "BB" gun for the Brister method?

[Snarlingiron]

Ok, I am figuring on retraining myself from the ground up usiing the "Brister method", from the book "Shotgunning, The Art and The Science" by Bob Brister. I need to get an air rifle. I know some of you use this technique, so my question is what air gun do you use? I shopped Academy today, and they have the Daisy "Red Rider" for real cheap, they have several Crossman models for a bit more, and they have the Remington Airmaster kit with scope, etc. doo dah, for $79.00, but this seems a waste, since I would be taking the scope off, as well as the fixed sights. I have an old Benjamin pump, that works, would that do? What do you guys suggest? I don't mind spending up to $100.00, but in this case less is definitely more.

Paging SM...what do you use?

I know retraining after 40+ years of "doing it wrong" is a challenge, but I am "In for a penny, in for a pound" as far as learning to do it right is concerned.

Suggestions please...

 

[sm]

Daisey Red Ryder has gotten and still get used a lot.

Main reasons:
Is it is smaller and for kids it "fits" them better with the small stock and is light. Safety means for littler kids they cannot cock it very well / if all by themselves, and this Safety is all explained to kids and responsible adults of kids.
Price.

With kids they really do pay attention and practice safety. Still a kid is a kid, so while it seems I/we are rebels on all this compared to some "teachings", we are actually instilling some neat stuff down the road.

Kids are on a "hot range" if you will. Adult is right there, each kid had an adult, to cock the gun. So "load 5" and 5 BBs are loaded. Gun is not cocked, adult and kid are on buddy system.

Now do a couple of mount gun to face drills with a <gasp> loaded gun...then the gun is cocked and we do various things, maybe one at a time they shoot 1, or all 5 BBs. These guns once fired, will not fire again until cocked. Kids do safety, and we watch fingers straight/ in trigger and muzzle.

Still the kid is on a "hot range" in a way if you will and they feel pretty darn good about being / having to be "that responsible".

Adults use these Red Ryders. I do not suggest CO2 unless someone has one, as some are more money, and some are too easy to get a second shot off.
Others are more powerful, and I do not want a lot of "recoil".

I am wanting really light guns, little recoil, and getting the basic foundation built. Simple guns and not wanting a lot of fps.

Oh, we do tweak the gun fit. Moleskin pads, and whatever to fit the gun the best we can. So most folks don't mind doing this with a Red Ryder .

Those little Nerf balls about ping-pong ball or gold ball sized and the tennis ball sized are great.
Ping pong are not always easy to find and they break, golf balls will ricohet a BB.

Nerf is good and so are balloons , and Vienna Sausage cans..crackers...

Tip: put a stick of beef jerky in you back pocket , it makes one a better shooter.

Wait, hold on I don't have my beef jerky in my pocket yet ...<stuff pocket> Ready! - mom

MoOM! You are embarssing me again...

Oh yeah, I understand why my mentors grinned as they did....*grin*

 

[owlhoot]

I hate to see Brister get credit for this method. Bob is just this generation's flag waver. Even Lucky McDaniels who was the major proponent of this school of shotgunning and popularized the teaching of it with the BB gun back in the 1930's borrowed most of the key ideas from earlier mentors. Lucky wrote a couple of books on the subject which have been out of print for over half a century. Brister has just brushed off Lucky's tools and techniques for today's shooters.

I was one of Lucky's students over fifty years ago. It is a fact that after a little instruction and practice I was able to hit with a BB gun small objects such as salt tablets tossed into the air. I even slew many a poor grasshopper, honey bee, June bug, and bumble bee on the wing. Yep, I was hell on wheels with that Red Ryder BB gun. Still am.

I also trained with Lucky using the shotgun, and the method works well enough to make one a better than average wing shot in the field. And the technique should work very well on sporting clays. It was less successful for me on trap and skeet simply because there is time to think. The success of the method really requires that you forget everything you have previously been taught, and make yourself rely on instinctive reactions rather than on any sort of thought process, especially one that includes using the sights.

Sometimes it is much more difficult to unlearn an old method than it is to learn a new one. For this reason Lucky always produced much greater results working with kids and women than he did with seasoned shooters.

But I wanted to talk about the BB gun. I was a grown man of considerable experience when I trained with Lucky. The BB gun didn't even remotely fit me. I was training with a tool that I would never ever use for any real purpose. When I tried, on my own, to transition my BB gun expertise to a real rifle, I couldn't make it work.

So unless your end objective is to impress the kids in your neighborhood with your ability to splatter scurrying ants with your Red Ryder, I would strongly suggest that you get a gun with a man sized stock. The closest thing available is probably Daisy's "Spittin Image 1894". It has been out of production for a good while but there were still a few guns available at the Daily website last time I looked. The Spittin Image isn't a great BB gun, but it will be better than one of the short stocked kiddie models.

Alternatively, you could cut a man size butt stock from a board and fit it to a Red Ryder with relatively little effort. You don't have to remove the iron sights on whatever you choose. We simply taped a length of wooden dowel rod from rear to front sight.

 

[sm]

owlhoot,

Re: Lucky McDaniels ,
First off, I really wish you would share more with us about McDaniels please.

No, Brister did not come up with this method. He just shared again, with pictures, in his works, this method, and a generation "attaches" this to him.

Brister shared how before him this method was used, just as he did aerial gunners learned with BB Guns, then Skeet , to assist them in shooting enemy planes.

There really is nothing new, it just gets re-discovered from time to time is all.

Heck I had persons tell me there is a neat Rock-n-Roll band they discovered, and I might like the music.
I gotta check this new discovery , they call themselves the Rolling Stones.
I can't wait until they discover The Beatles...I saw them on the Ed Sullivan show on the black and white TV.

Share about Lucky, I for one would get a real big kick out of it.

Heck I use .22 rifles with the sights busted off for assisting new students too...backstop requirements are more critical.

Truth is, less recoil from a .22 short than some BB Guns.

I learned shotguns with a .22 rifle. I was only age 5 when I shot my first shotgun, no BB guns my size, but some .22 rifles and shotguns were.

Later some BB guns my size were gotten...too late...I was off and running and ahead of others my age and size.

Handguns age 3, rifles at 4 and shotguns age 5.
How I was raised and started out...

 

[Snarlingiron]

I wasn't crediting Brister with discovering the method. His book is just where I first discovered it, and I know that others on this forum are also familiar with his work. Actually, I had heard of this in the past, but I had not seen a real outline of the technique until I read Brister's book.

I agree with you about the adult size stock, and I have been looking for just that. It is unfortunate, but the City of Fort Worth, along with most other municipalities have ordinances against discharging any type of BB gun, air rifle, etc. within the city limits. This severely limits my practice time. Maybe the garage...

I too have considerable shooting experinece, but when it comes to the shotgun, no one ever taught me any differently, so I have always sighted it like a rifle. I am trying to unlearn 40+ years of bad habits, and the BB gun seems like a good way to start.

 

[owlhoot]

SM, I wish you could have known Lucky. He was a hoot. During the late 20's and early 30's, Lucky worked for Daisy as an exhibition shooter, but when the depression hit there was no room for that kind of window dressing and Lucky went on the road selling BB guns for a living, which during the depression would have been a mighty tough market.

His approach was to stand outside the hardware store in anytown, USA, take his BB gun, toss marbles up in the air and blast them. Naturally, since there were no malls in those days and all shopping and business was conducted on main street, he would soon draw a sizable group of spectators. Then he would select two or three boys who were with their dads and ask them if they would like to be able to do that. Of course they would, and in a matter of a few minutes he would have them hitting small rubber balls, golf ball size. Then he would start them on marbles and they would hit enough of them to impress themselves and their dads. Then he would tell them they could get a BB gun just like the one they had been shooting inside the hardware store. So Lucky would go inside, leave a half dozen guns and take an order for as many as the owner would go for. Then he would be off to the next little burg. Lucky said he would generally hit a half dozen towns a day.

Later Lucky had some notable success as a tournament shooter, wrote a couple of slim books, and did instruction for a fee at gun clubs, which is when I first made his acquaintance.

His biggest show came during the earlier stages of Viet Nam. As always the military was a war behind in their training. However, a few old WWII South Pacific vets who were still around understood the problem our guys were having. They had been recently issued the M-16 and when they would get a glimpse of a target in the bush, the troops would hose down the area, but usually without a dead body to show for it. We weren't training our boys to fight a jungle war, a guerrilla war,

So Lucky sold the top brass on a program that was called "Quick Kill." I'm sure it used the very same teaching techniques that you are using. LRRP or "lurp" units as we called them were trained as well as other high need types to include some of the Special Forces people and a multitude of weapons instructors who were trained to take the message to the rank and file. Once again, a large number of remarkable shots with the BB gun were quickly produced, but the "Quick Kill" transition to the M-16 was simply inadequate to keep the program going. The instructors who could really work on the technique became extremely proficient with the M-16. But they burned up a lot of time, which the military didn't have, as well as copious quantities of ammunition. The concept was a hot ticket with the military for a little while and received a good deal of publicity.

I lost touch with Lucky after the 1960's. Then a mutual friend that I ran into said he had seen him and that he was having it rough. That was over 25 years ago. At the time I was running a LE Training Center, so I got on the phone and gave Lucky a call and hired him to come up for a week and train my firearms instructors in "Quick Kill". He was in or near his eighties then and not in the pink. That was the last time I ever saw him. Talked to him a few times on the phone there after but that's all. If ol' Lucky is still around somewhere, he'd be well over a 100 years old.

Lucky had a pair of 1st generation engraved SA Colts that I really coveted. But Lucky was no great shakes with a pistol. He could never find a way to make his technique work with a handgun.

Lucky was always ebullient, full of enthusiasm, and a fine teacher, a great hand with the shotgun, and a born huckster.

 

[Oldnamvet]

I remember the quick kill method very well. We trained for a few hours in the morning using BB guns and after chow we were hitting apples and oranges using the M-14. They would really vaporize on a center hit. One day and then that night we had night fire training. For those of us raised hunting in pheasant/quail country, it wasn't that tough to master. Just like snapping a quick shot at a bird in the brush. No time to think, just do it. REally different than the usual training of hitting that man-size silouette at 500 meters. Too bad no one makes a full size BB gun anymore. The training does work well -- especially when you dont have to unlearn anything first.

 

[waterhouse]

It isn't nearly as handy, since you need a safe place to shoot, but after spending a long time looking for a full sized BB gun that would work I ended up just taking the scope off of my CZ 425 American (so that it had no sights) and spending a few hours mounting the gun snap shooting with low velocity .22s.

 

[sm]

owlhoot,

Thank you sharing more about Lucky. It means a lot to me and others like me.

One of our best natural resources are our older members of society. They have so much of life they have experienced to pass forward. They are passing forward not only what they have experienced and observed, also what their mentors and elders passed onto them.

Today, quite sad, with gov't meddlin' and other factors, many folks are not being raised as folks once were. Too many restrictions on freedoms, and these restrictions shape societal views on what is freedom and being safe and secure.

Fewer and fewer hardware stores are built where one can step out back and let a kid shoot a Red Ryder or another BB Gun to see which one fits them, or they like. Heck even go out back and shoot a box while mom picks out paint, or grandpa gets supplies and the kid with an employee, or mom and dad gets to shoot while all that picking out and shopping is done.

Please share more about Lucky do a separate thread and share please.
Mentors and Elders told me and mine about him...I always wanted to meet him.

I'd still like to have some of his words on paper, just sentimental , traditional me.
I grew up with Ruark in Field & Stream, and all his works.
Brister I read all his works in Field & Stream, and of course read his book.

It was a total accident and surprise when I met Brister. I was assisting a single mom with a son with some shotgun problems.
A buddy of mine and his daughter had gone onto check into shooting, fees and all.
I was assisting this young man and heard a voice, and turned around and it was Brister!
My buddy and his daughter standing there with him and to say I was awed and humbled is an understatement.

Oh I have with some other known shooters and not just shotguns...
I shook hands with JFK when I was a kid, met Lorne Green and sat on his horse and other moments...

Brister, and there he was and he watched, offered assistance and everything to me, and that kid and single mom with a shotgun.
We were out of town, and that night a scramble to find his book.
Next day we met, Brister signed our books and I we shot with Brister.

Not nervous, no butterflies as I went onto the field. I recall that so well. So many times in serious shotgun use, I had, like most, my gut feeling like Rocky Marciano using it for a punching bag, until the first stage shot.

Not that day, I was relaxed, confident, and had a great time.

I just know Lucky was like that with those he shared with, he made them feel comfortable, relaxed and confident too.

Regards,

Steve