Bryan,
Here is a photo of my little girls chipmunk.
She started shooting it when she was 3 and will be 5 in March. I learned a few things about very young shooters and guns for very young shooters. The first thing I found out was no one makes a gun small enough for these young starters. The chipper you see in the photo has almost 3" of the rear of the stock cut off. That was as far as I could go and still keep it legal for aol. The next issue was teaching a 3 year old how to use a peep rear and post front, not happening. First I got the scope mount and a small tube scope. This absolutely sucked. The scope was
way to high and now my LG could not get the shells loaded into the chamber, scrap that idea. I noticed when she played the hunting game on the computer that she did well when the game made use of the red dot sight. I buzzed out a mount that I could scout mount the red dot sight far enough forward that she could still load the rifle. Everything looked fine until I realized that my face is just a little taller than hers and I built a cheekpiece for it. Up until this point she had shot the rifle only twice with low interest because what I was saying, I am sure made no sense to her, she could not hit anything or hold the rifle correctly etc. Once the chipper was fit and setup the results were simply amazing. We started with a shoot & see 8" target at 15 yards from the sitting position so I could sit around her. I was praying for just a hit in the circle when she landed the first shot in the 10 ring at 3:00. She loaded 4 more rounds and fired all of them into the 8" circle with 2 more 10's an 8 and the last cutting the edge of the circle at 9:00. We set the rifle down for a break and filled some pop cans with water and set them out. I got her into a prone position and she liked that much better, easier on the arms I think. She went 4 for 5 at 15 yards on the pop cans blowing water into the air and giggling all the time. I was so excited I scrambled around and got 3 more cans and filled them with water and moved her back to 25 yards. She took her prone position and with 5 shots hit the 3 cans. I was lucky enough to have captured this on video. My story was sort of windy but what I learned in short was, make the gun fit and be simple at any cost for the youngsters, make the targets reactive when ever possible. She has already voiced interest in shooting further after going to the range and watching me shoot at 1000 +. I plan the teach with some visual aids how to hold the dot over the can at distance to hit it, by using the hold of 1/2 a can, 1 1/2 cans over, etc. Hope you get to enjoy the time with your young one as well as the future benefits of engrained gun safety and handling. [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]
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