As a young boy, McDaniel honed his own hand-eye coordination by spending his summers at his grandparents' farm in Middle Georgia in the 1930s. Money was scarce, and he often hunted for dinner with a .22 rifle and a .410 shotgun. He was expected to bring back one rabbit, squirrel, or game bird per cartridge fired and usually did. As a teenage pool hustler in Warner Robins, Georgia, he earned the nickname "Lucky". Later, McDaniel became a route man for the U.S. Tobacco Company, moving stocks of Brown's Mule chewing tobacco, Brewton's Dental snuff, and Sano cigarettes to crossroads country-stores in rural Georgia. To entertain the storekeepers in the early 1950s, he would hip-shoot his Daisy BB rifle without sights and hit ants scurrying along the floorboards, or flies roosting momentarily on window sills. As his grand finale, Lucky would throw a BB up in the air, shoulder and shoot his BB gun at it, and hit the thrown BB every time.