CLANG! {rattle}

Around age eight, I got a BB gun.  A couple years later I was allowed to have a pellet gun.    Most people will just assume at this point that I must've gone around killing birds and whatever else I saw

Yeah - NO.  I did NOT go around killing things.  There is something else much more fun you can do with a BB/pellet gun.

I used to set up aluminum cans in the branches of trees and shoot at them.  Also fun to set the can up so that it will fall when you hit it.  A partner waits for your shot and then tries to shoot the can on the way down.  The only thing we killed doing this was hours of time.  Birds and squirrels and so forth do NOT make that satisfying CLANG! when you hit them.  Properly sighting the gun was also great fun.  You had to invent some kind of way to hold the gun perfectly still and keep everything consistent, and then make your sight adjustments.  It was a creative and ultimately very rewarding challenge to really get it dialed in.  I got it to the point where I could hit a thin piece of rope from about 25 yards back.  That never made a sound, but it was very satisfying to see the whole rope move when you hit it solid.  Initially I would rest the barrel of my gun in the fence for that shot, but sometimes I could shoot it freehand.

Cans were probably the most fun, but after a while they'd have enough holes in them that you'd run out of fresh metal to hit.  Old, shot-up cans just don't sound as satisfying as fresh ones, so the other thing we'd turn to was Army Men.  We would build bunkers and trenches and fortify them with twigs and bark.  Then we'd stand back the 25 or so yards and see which of us had made the strongest reinforcements.  Lots of creativity there, too.

One day, while we were shooting from the deck in back of our house, my neighbor comes walking over holding a dead bird by its feet and says, "I think I got one of your victims here."