My favorite sixth-grader found the new Daisy Buck 105 to his liking.
I pursue firearms like a weasel stalks a hot dog. The hunt imbues me with a certain singularity of purpose. I meticulously plan my conquest and then pursue it like a hellhound until I’ve made it mine. However, during a recent trek through Walmart I experienced some serendipitous spontaneity.
With the horsepower of 11,484 stores, Walmart has the clout to keep prices low. It was this more than anything that first caught my eye. There nestled amongst the stove fuel, life jackets, archery supplies, and deer lure was a bare-bones Daisy BB gun for a mere $17.96. Just glancing at it brought back remarkable visceral memories.
In The Beginning
I grew up in the Mississippi Delta, the son of a college football star and a beauty queen, and we were well acquainted with the outdoors. Weekends were spent in a modest travel trailer kept parked on the river side of the levee. Hunting, fishing and scampering about terrorizing the countryside were my standard weekend fare.
At age seven, I formally announced I wished to buy a gun. There was a lever-action Daisy repeater on the wall at the local Otasco for $7 calling my name. I held out little hope for success.
Much to my amazement, my folks acquiesced. Mom seemed reticent, but dad was forever the bad influence. He even offered to pay half, but $3.50 was a veritable king’s ransom back then.
I gutted my piggybank and tore the house apart, searching for loose change. At the terminus of my quest, I beheld exactly $3.50, mostly in pennies. I secured my fortune in a brown paper sack, planning to strike out for Otasco the following day with my dad.
We arose early and got to the hardware store when it opened. In my exuberance, however, I lost my footing somewhere near the power tools and fumbled my paper sack. The bag exploded and pennies rolled everywhere from Clarksdale, Miss., to Budapest, Hungary. My dreams dashed, I descended into a fit of less-than-manly sobs.
Ah, dads. It was just one of those priceless moments. He hefted me to my feet with his granite-like grip and smiled.
“Find what you can,” he said. “I’ll take care of the rest.”
At that moment, I learned a great deal about the fine art of parenting well.
What started out as a 5-shot 12-meter group eventually became a 50-shot
12-meter group. It’s tough to show restraint when ammo costs $3 for 1,500 rounds.
This Guy’s First Gat
The gun was all cold blue steel with a plastic woodgrain stock. In point of fact, the weapon was actually painted blue. It ultimately launched untold thousands of BBs. Along the way, I enjoyed some extraordinary feats of marksmanship. You do something long enough and amazing things inevitably happen. That’s the inimitable power of random.
I once killed a bumblebee in flight. I also dropped a sparrow on the wing with a single shot from the hip. We’ll not discuss how many times I attempted those things and failed. I used the little gun to launch a few venomous snakes to their eternal damnation and ventilated enough disused beverage cans to populate a proper WWII-era scrap drive. I shot the gun until it just wouldn’t shoot anymore and then retired it to its place of honor on the wall. The little blue Daisy BB gun sparked a career that has led all the way up to this very moment.
The modern Daisy Buck 105 on top is the obvious heir apparent to the storied
original Will bought for $7 back in 1973. Adjusted for inflation the current version
is half the cost of the ’70s-era gun.
Today’s Generation
The modern iteration is delightfully accurate. The trajectory it describes becomes parabolic out beyond about 30 meters, but that’s half the fun. My chronograph averaged 273 fps. Shooting off the back porch, I can arc BBs into stumps out in the lake all day long once I get the elevation right. Bracketing distant targets is more akin to adjusting artillery than basic rifle marksmanship.
I have dumped some obscene amounts of money on guns that required special papers or were wielded in places most remarkable. I have also dropped a 20-spot, taking my kids out for burgers. Trust me, even as a graduate-level gun nerd $18 at Walmart for the ultimate backyard plinking machine is money quite well spent.