My two old local favorites were Gafford Auto Parts and Nash Hardware. We also had a Western Auto and later a Gibsons.

growing up in a relatively small town in central TX, our local hardware store (Wither's) carried an assortment of guns and ammo, sold hunting/fishing license, various outdoor supplies. Dad would go there and buy our hunting/fishing license and a couple boxes of ammo, 20 & 12 gauge towards the end of August and then back early November for his rifles (30-06, 243 & 218 Bee). If we were getting low on ammo, there was usually a hardware store in whatever town was nearby, Buttery in Llano is one I recall. We finally got a Gibson's in the late 60s which forced Western Auto and White's Auto to up their game on hunting supplies including shotguns & rifles. On rare occasion, we would make the trip to Burnham Brothers in Marble Falls or McBride's in Austin but that wasn't very often.

I bought my first own shotgun, double barrel 20 ga, at Gibsons with money I had saved all summer from working in a fruit & snow cone stand when I was about 11 years old. I still have it.

I'm from Throckmorton and we really didn't have anything in town. However, the Gibsons in Graham had an outstanding hunting department and it was always fun to load up with a bunch of friends and go see what we could find. I found Deena Davis but that's another story. Anyway, I bought a cartridge belt there 45 years ago and still use it. I would say I got my money's worth.

This is where we went.

wow reading through this thread sure brought up some fond memories! I am trying to remember the names of the mom-n-pop gun shops my granddad frequented, there weren't many out in far west Texas so he did a lot of mail order. I remember seeing a lot of Golden State and Hunters Lodge catalogs and flyers ...ironically both out of California (of all places).

Some of the retail stores I remember visiting, that had a lot of firearms/reloading supplies etc were Montgomery Wards, Sears, JC Penny, Otasco, Coast To Coast, TG&Y Gibson's and Western Auto. Kmart didn't have a large selection but I remember that when Walmart first came to Texas they had an impressive selection of firearms and reloading supplies.

One of the most "colorful" characters that I remember that owned a gun shop, was a man named Tony Valentino at Tony's H&T in Longview TX. Not sure what the H&T stood for but EVERYONE got the best "brother in law" deal from Tony (according to him anyway) LOL