Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles is the 270 too much for a kid to start out with?

Here's the thing. Kids learn what they are taught. My kids were shooting BB guns, pellet guns and .22s at an early age. Bought my oldest a Red Ryder while he was in the first trimester.

But my youngest is The One. He started shooting competitive trap in the 5th Grade. I didn't tell him about recoil hurting you and he never whined. Stayed in a 20 ga. about 2 months then went to a 12 ga. Beretta 390 Trap and an SKB 85TSS Unsingle shortly thereafter (bought while I briefly had a real salary in the gun industry).

Connor shot four rounds of trap per weekend. 100 rounds of 3 dram 1 1/8th oz. loads. He was 10 years old 4 ft. 8 and 85 pounds.

Meanwhile kept him on a training regimen with a 10-22 with a 4 power scope. Once it was zeroed we NEVER shot from the bench. We shot offhand, standing barricade, kneeling, sitting and prone...all on steel @ 50 yards. Then we worked on snapshots, pivoting-mounting-shooting, 180s. Then we introduced a shot timer with a par of 1.5 secs. from buzzer to hit. He was soon in the 1.2 sec range.

Gave him the choice of any rifle I had in the battery for his first hunt. He picked a Remington Model 7 .350RM I had in for an article because it looked cool, the cartridge was bad ass, and, most importantly, it had a Leupold with a German No. 1 reticle in it just like the one in the Call of Duty game he was playing for fun.

Let him shoot it and he said "it only kicks like a 20 ga.".

Nothing came by the stand the first morning. Walking out of the woods a young doe stood up almost directly behind us in light brush. I said "Pivot and shoot the deer."

He did it in well under par time and that deer was DRT.

If you train them right and don't make them worry about recoil they WON'T be afraid of their guns.

Connor has since killed deer with .308, .223, and .22-250 with heart and shoulder shots. He's up to 6 now. After his third he said:

"I don't think caliber matters nearly as much as hitting them once in the right spot."

I told him he could probably NEVER be a gunwriter or post on this website with radical ideas like that.

And to answer the OP. Let him shoot a lot of .22 from field positions and kill lots of small game and vermin. Get him a dang .270 with a low power scope and buy him a case of Remington Managed Recoil loads. He will kill the first deer he see with no problem or pain.

P.S. I foolishly sent the Model 7 back to the factory after talking to Mule Deer about the efficacy of standard cartridges at SHOT. He pointed out to me he never said I shouldn't keep it; he's right.