Bring Back Mumblety Peg!!

[scottmandue]

I have fond memories of a camping outing in my early teens down to the Salton sea in So. Cal.

Two of us brought Jr. size bow and arrows... we found a small lake, got on either side and lobbed arrows at each other lawn dart style.

Even more creepy was that sometimes the arrow would fall short and stick in the mud... I would wade out a few feet and pull it out. That night walking around the lake with flashlights we saw large leeches crawling around in the shallows. somehow I didn't get tagged by one.

[89911]

What about "Bat Fights"

YouTube - BAT FIGHT with Will Ferrell

[VaSteve]

Originally Posted by 1968Cayman

I was watching an old episode of the Fess Parker show "Daniel Boone" (the rippin'est, roarin'est, fightin'est man the frontier ever knew); two ten-year-old kids were playing it. With their own knives. While this is entirely acceptable to me, some of the folks around today would have all passed out from seeing it on the telly.

Ah OK. I was watching Boardwalk Empire and the character was playing the knife game between the fingers. I thought that game was called Mumblety Peg, thus why I looked it up.

[Arizona 911]

Me and my friends would take a circular saw blade and fling it to the ground at each other. It would zip across the yard and you try to avoid it. Sometimes it would hit a bump in the grass and jump to about throat level. We all survived. Another time, we were at a party and some guys were flinging a car coil spring to the ground to get it to bounce really high. This big doofus does the classic " here , hold my beer" and throws the spring to the ground. It bounced back up into his face and knocked him out cold. He was a bloody mess.

[Jagshund]

Heck, I remember bringing a pocket full of knives to school once. Middle school. Teacher told me to put them away. Now- nail clippers 'n yer out. I'm guessing that at some point in history throwing knives and whittling may have even been class activities.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

I remember growing up there was a large apartment/condo development near our neighborhood. Every day after school all the kids would go roam around over there and found the excavations particularly interesting. Dirt clods and/or rocks would make for some great "fights" between opposing groups of kids. Nowadays there'd probably be black helicopters dropping SWAT teams to arrest all the kids for trespassing. And there'd be no way to get on the site anyway - they'd probably have it all fenced off and everything. Not back then!

[myamoto1]

We played apple wars and blowgun chicken growing up.

Apple wars were probably the most fun, probably because they caused the most damage. First, you need an apple tree. Next, get yourself a 10 - 12 foot straight, thin, green tree. Take off any branches and carve a spike at the tip. Place apple on tip, acquire target and let 'er rip. If you whipped it off the stick just right, the apple would make this eery whistle sound as it went through the air. I have no idea how fast those things were going, but having a full sized apple explode upon impact w/ any part of your body sure hurt like hell. It only took a few hits before you became a master at dodging flying apples.

Blowgun chicken was our second favorite. We had these clear plexi tubes, that were about 2' long. We'd make darts out of pins and a wad of thread (wrap thread around 2 fingers, tie one end to the needle, glue, then clip the other end = instant dart). The game involved sitting against a wall with your hands over your face, for protection and to add to the fear factor. The other person would then try to see how close they could shoot an outline of your head with about 20 darts. To keep things interesting, every round you'd move a few feet back. The other aspect most didn't think about right away was the "revenge dart." If your buddy nicked you with a dart on the last round, there was a 101% chance he was getting one in the scalp, chin, neck, or hand. No crying and no bandaids allowed.

[Erakad]

At some point I had to draw the line....my older brother came up with the brilliant idea of cutting ninja stars out of tin. Great idea until he threw a couple and stuck them in 3/4 in plywood from across the garage. Even I could figure out who was going to come out on the short end of that!

[Jagshund]

Reminds me of the time I convinced my younger brother to test a zip line I'd made!! Broke his friggin' arm after a 20 ft fall! Good times, good times . . .

[Burnin' oil]

Yeah, I remember getting the short end of the stick a few times. "O.K., you ride your bike by me and I'll throw rocks at you." "What?!? What's the fun in that??" "Just do it you pussy" "oh, OK"

[Amail]

Chuck Thielste and I made javelins out of tennis ball tipped bamboo. We'd ride across the backyard and try to knock each other off. I'm amazed neither of us ever got skewered.

Dirtclod fights - ah, the memories. Trash can lids for shields and a pile of dirtclods hucked at each other from 100' or so away. Did the same with oranges in Valley Center.

We popularized a version of dodge-ball played with tennis balls on a tennis court. Get 8 guys to a side with a whole mess of tennis balls, then go apeschit! I learned what tennis elbow was thanks to that game.

Also tried playing racketball on those outdoor handball walls, but use golf balls. People figured out in a hurry that was just bad mojo.

[john70t]

I actually caught a snipe during a snipe hunt.
Chased the thing for almost a mile, almost grabbed it at the top of a pine until it jumped to another, swam across the river and over the rapids in pursuit, lost it for about three days, then finally got ahold of it while it was feeding on a fresh bear carcass.
Wrestled it for several hours and finally got ahold of it, until it slipped out of my grip.
Those buggers are hard to catch.

[targa911S]

BB gun wars!

[myamoto1]

Originally Posted by Erakad

At some point I had to draw the line....my older brother came up with the brilliant idea of cutting ninja stars out of tin. Great idea until he threw a couple and stuck them in 3/4 in plywood from across the garage. Even I could figure out who was going to come out on the short end of that!

We used to make them out of 4 - 6 nails. Put them w/ the ends in the middle and wrap a ton of electircal tape between them. you could get them to stick into a tree from about 50' out. At least we were smart enough to know, we were too stupid to play that game...