I just posted a thread about powder aroma's......

now I am really going back in time and asking if you remember this, per the old timers........

This really gets your attention when you are firing into the wind or in the old days, if hunting in Canada or Alaska with Euro ammo.

These were the days when shotgun ammo was made with paper wads and after shooting...........
a fine mist of paper particles would float back at you, through the air.
My father brought back some ammo the guide gave him , to go out and shoot some ducks of geese with, for camp meat, while on a moose hunt.
Half of them would not fit into the SxS shot gun the guide gave him and it looked like New Years when he pulled the trigger.

Then came along Winchester Super-X ammo with their improved wad arould 1959 ?

I started shooting shotgun in the mid 90's. When I could get them, my favorite was Federal Paper! They were only reloadable about 3 or 4 times, and would burn through just above the brass! I still have my 1964 Superpose 12 gauge Lightning, that is 30" and F/F. When "Spreader" came out with their little card to open the pattern up to about Mod, I was in heaven! That gun and ammo combo was unreal on crossing clays about 45 yards out!

But yes, sometimes, you would pull the trigger and it was like being in a snowstorm!

Now, I'm much older and cheaper and only shoot 410 and 28. I have about 5 boxes of 410/2.5 papers in #4 and #5, I just can't bring myself to waste this fine old ammo!

Ivan

Gosh yes I remember those days. I wasn't that old but already seriously interested in shooting and hunting. My only gun back in those days was a Sears bolt action 16 gauge. I still have it. I shot the heck out of that shotgun mostly with paper shells. Plastics were a little more expensive and lawn mowing money only went so far. I recall the ads for the Winchester Mark 5 plastic hulls with the wrap around plastic shot protector. Then along came the Remington Power Piston.
My grandfather who cared little for guns and less for hunting supported my interest enthusiastically. Each birthday and at Christmas he gave me a case of shotgun shells always paper hulls. Mostly Canuck, anyone remember those, or Alcan. A very few times Federal. I was in hog heaven as a big kid hunting out the back door of the house. Taking back 40 safaris. LOL
This was back in the early 60's. I usually got the latest Gun Digest for Christmas and reading the articles and looking over the catalog section. I still remember the look of horror on my mothers face when I told her that as soon as I could get the money saved I was buying a Smith and Wesson revolver. LOL Big plans for a 13 year old. Took a few years to get there but I made it.
WOW a flood of memories. One of the perks for having lived a few decades.

Yes I remember the Canuck hulls........
and I still have about 300 "Blue Magic" hulls with the original boxs
that I loaded for trap use back in 2008.

I now load the red Estates for my toss aways and save the Remington
green & gold plastic uni-hull for my quality shotgun loads.

My days of walking the hills and fields for upland game came to an end last year
but I may still go duck hunting, where they will come to me, if the weather is not real bad.

Edit;
I remember the Elko deer camp (old school house) that my fater and friends would get a "Group tag" for eight
or more with my brother and I as the "go getem" work horses, to dram them back and maybe also gut them out?
Great days and hunts and "War stories" at the end of the day.
We two young kids are that is left of that group, evryone else has passed on.
My brother and I looked forward to the kill but as we got older and more mature, we found out what hunting and
fishing was really, all about.
Enjoying good friends and maybe a cold beer or toddy to put a smile on your face.

I sure hate to hear about any hunter having to stop due to age. Mostly because I know the day is coming for me sooner than I will want. I have been having nerve pain issues this summer that are still ongoing and it has sure given me a wake up call about aging and the outdoors. The desire is there just not all the ability.

I do remember some Winchester paper hulls and some of the plastic hulls in the Winchester box that was all shinny from a metallic type of ink.

As far as hunting goes, when I can no longer walk to the hunt I'm hoping my son will wheel me out to my stand (stump, ledge, etc.), and leave me for the day, then come and wheel me back in. On one of those days I'm going to tell him not to come back.

For muzzle loader season this year at our cabin it was just me and my long time best friend. A couple more are supposed to make gun season. We will see. The crowd has thinned a lot in the last few years. We talked at length about helping each other so we can stay at it as long as possible.
Getting old is rough in lots of ways

I guess, in a way, I can say No, I do not remember that. I vaguely remember shooting paper shells when I was a kid but things were quickly turning to plastic.
There was a red, clear, hard plastic shell but I can't remember it's name. It never caught on. I'm talkin' mid 60's.

My plan is to hunt until it is physically impossible for me. The key is to try and live a healthy life style so that as gravity catches up, you can push back a little. Diet, exercise and mental hygiene are the key. We're all going to pass on to whatever is next no matter what we do so it really isn't about living longer. It's more about dying healthy.

When I was a rabid trap shooter in the 80's, it wasn't uncommon to use Federal paper trap loads. They were cheaper and I really couldn't tell the difference between them and Winchester AA's. They also held up well to reloading except that the crimp wouldn't stay after about 3 loading. I always kept a role of masking tape close to the reloading bench.

Same as you, there is me and one other left in the group. Most have passed away or are too feeble to hunt now. One of the things I love most about hunting now is that as we prowl our old spots, I spend a lot of time thinking of them and remembering the times we had. Maybe it's the long lens of time, but I have a hard time remembering anything negative about our times afield. As I write this, I'm thinking that I have to get going and get my stuff together as we leave next week to head deer hunting. Even after all these years, I still get excited.

Peripheral Neuropathy ended my hunting days but the last that I did was really enjoyable. I was fortunate in having an excellent place to still hunt squirrels, a valley with a spring running running down it to the river with big trees on the hill sides.
We could drive through the barn lot to within 50 feet of the head of the spring which came out of a sandstone cave. Going in was all down hill but coming out was the tough part, go about fifty yards and rest the legs and hips.
We would just sit and still hunt and never take anything but a head shot. I messed up one time and didn't quite center it and the squirrel was flopping around and I put my boot on it's tail. Big mistake! He bit the toe of my boot and almost went through. We always cleaned some for Mr. Cundiff who loved squirrel.
I first got to know them when I was sixteen and delivering gas and kerosene to the farmers. His tank was very high and you climbed a ladder to put the fuel in. I will never forget, his order was usually three hundred gallons. You filled a five gallon bucket and climbed the ladder and poured it in. It got tough before you were through. Mrs. Cundiff told me later that she would look out the kitchen window and wonder if I could finish before giving out.
Back then there were no deer or turkey and now that is a prime area

__________________
Mighty 90's,Trying 4 a 100!

Sounds schmucky but I'm learning to slow down, look around, and enjoy the little things. Finding out I don't have to go on these big expeditions in order to enjoy myself. There's a pond in the park behind my house I can walk to and fish. It's almost as much fun as driving 700 miles to the gulf.

I'm beginning to see the significance of the bonsai gardens people grow. You can find the sense of goodness in little things.

Oh yes...paper shell days. Bought my first shotgun with money I made crabbing(caught a lot of crabs and snapping turtles that summer) on the Chester River in Md...and
working on farms in the afternoons. Browning A5 with IC and Full VR barrels. And a case of Peters paper trap loads. Don't remember the actual retail price on the shells but I paid 21 bucks for them(1959). I think the owner of that old shop gave ne a discount for spending all that money. And I bought a Mec 250 loader to reload at the same time. A learning experience for certain. Nothing smells quite like paper shells. I also remember loading paper shotshells and had to iron the shells with a shell ironer that you would put wax on to make the crimps stay down. I bought my 1st handgun the same year. Klein's Sporting Goods... a real US of A 1911 45 auto for something a bit north of 25 bucks. Being dislexic at order time I said I was 21 instead of 12...y'all know how numbers get mixed up when you're a young'un. I musta waited almost 3 weeks for that thing till it came in the mail. A fellow that worked at Aberdeen Proving ground GAVE me a bunch of ammo. My mother found it in my closet and only let me have it if I was going shooting alone...no other kids. Ahhh the world WAS a different place then

We lived here in Florida in a block house with no A/C. Over a few years paper shells would swell to where they would not even chamber. I don't remember ever seeing any plastic shells until I was older. Had to keep the guns oiled on regular bases as they would rust in a hurry in that house as well. The walls would sweat moisture in the summer time form the humidity as the exterior and interior walls were block with wire mesh and concrete stucco. I still live in the same house with a couple of additions and pretty much complete rebuild other than the original walls. These days we have central A/C and better insulation so the moisture is not a problem.

I grew up with paper shells, they were about all that was available until the mid-1960s when plastics first appeared. Like stated earlier, they had a short reload life, maybe three or four times before the cases burned through or the mouth shredded. I remember Remington cases were troublesome. Not only did they use a smaller diameter primer than used by the other manufacturers, but the inside base wad (the area around the primer) was made out of some crumbly material that came apart after a couple of reloadings. It may have been made up of something like sawdust and glue. I never fired many shells with the cardboard topwad, as the more modern pie-fold crimp style appeared in the early 1950s. Federal stuck with paper cases longer than anyone else, and I remember them still being used into the 1970s. Maybe they are still made for all I know, as many trap and skeet shooters for some reason liked the paper cases. I am not sure when plastic shot cups came into being, but I remember using them in the mid-late 1960s. At about the same time Winchester and Western were using felt over-powder wads, but they had a strip of plastic between the cup and the case wad which acted as a shot protector, instead of having a molded plastic shot wad. Swollen paper shells were a big problem for hunters, especially waterfowl hunters, because when they got wet, they would swell enough to prevent insertion into the shotgun's chambers. Plastic cases solved that problem, but before that, Remington used to market shotshells to duck and goose hunters which used a shellac-ed paper case to seal it against water. They were the "Arrow" brand, and were very shiny in appearance. Does anyone else remember the all plastic shotshell cases - like Wanda? No metal base on the case.

The only 100% plastic hull that I have ever shot and loaded are these.

I believe the Wanda shells were the first, from sometime in the early 1970s. They were manufactured by some outfit in Houston. They were made of a fairly hard and somewhat transparent plastic, not very flexible. They used a snap-in plastic topwad, not the pie-folded crimp shown above in the Activ shells. One selling point was that they were simple to reload, with minimal need for tools. I don't think they lasted too long on the market. I have one full box in my collection, and they are somewhat hard to come by these days. I know the Activ plastic shells were around in the late 80s, and I have fired and loaded some of them back in my trap and skeet shooting days. I may even still have a few of the Activ shells laying around somewhere. I remember that Herter's (remember them?) was also selling all-plastic shells back in the 1970s, but they were not Wandas, maybe made by some European maker.

Beat me to it DeWalt. I remember the Wanda shotshells. Even bought and fired some of them. I am wanting to think some of them cracked or broke on firing. They did not last long in the shooting world.
Anyone remember the Gyrojet guns? I saw one at a gun show a long time ago. There were even some of those weird bullets with it.
Anyone else here ever go to a store and bought only how many rounds of ammo you thought you would need? Where I grew up all the country stores sold ammo in basic common stuff. They would break a box of ammo and sell you a many as you had money for. The first time I went deer hunting with my 16 gauge Sears bolt action my Dad bought me 3 rounds two buckshot one slug. The advice was make them count son. I nearly wore them out taking them in and out of the gun before I actually got to shoot them at a deer.