OK. 13 year old girl and her siblings.
To the OP, how much field/hunting experience does your daughter and her siblings have on deer sized game?
Can they shoot, aquire targets/game?
What's their limitations on distance?
Is recoil an issue?
Also, sorry for the derailment, different strokes for different folks. Obviously nobody does things the same.
So we live in Iowa which until recently was a slug gun only deer state. I started at 12 with a 12gauge wingmaster, smooth bore dog barrrl and breaker slugs. Absolutely zero fun.
All 4 of my older kids have shot deer with a combo of a Winchester XPR in .350 legend or a Ruger #3 in 44 mag. Just don’t see either one of those being real effective out west, but that’s just me with 6-7 trips out under my belt.
They all like shooting, and we mostly use the .22lrs now, although all will shoot clay pigeons with a 20ga as we have bird dogs and my friends and I do a fair amount of shooting at clays and kids like to participate.
Kids are now aged 13,11,9,7 with 2 younger ones who will go down this same route if things work out. With the pair of t1xs my thought was to keep rifles set up with same scope, stock, trigger so they all felt the same.
The .22 is an obvious no brainer as it cheap to shoot and slows alot of practice. The .223 compact also slows more longer range practice with also being able to let them shoot at prairie dogs and coyotes.
Ideally I would let how they shoot dictate distance as my 11 year old shot her deer last year with her .350 @ 170 yards on her own while i watched through binos.
Trying to set them up right as I absolutely hated shooting that 12ga as a kid and was a poor shot due to recoil. Some are not old enough to hunt in certain states and we will cross that as they get older. Goal is to set them up for success and hope they continue to enjoy doing this with dad so we have a trip to look forward too each year. Like a previous poster said they grow up fast. Luckily I have a job where I have ) weeks vacation and a wife who is ok with all the hunting, even more so as I involve the kids and don’t just pass them off on her so I can go.
