Youth deer rifle.

jamesboles said:

Grandson turning 12 but expected to grow another foot. Will look at all options. Thanks.

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One of the best options I've ever seen is to buy a full sized wood stocked model, then have a good stocksmith measure the boy and cut it off to fit.

During the process he can drill out a couple of dowell holes prior to cutting and when the kid reaches adulthood he can take it back in, have the cut off portion reinstalled and the stock finished.

With modern laminates this becomes an even better option as far as I'm concerned.

Depending on where you live and hunt something along the lines of a .260 Rem or 7mm RM would be ideal.

Back in the eighties a friend of mine just for grins entered his 10yo along with himself for the NM resident Elk Draw, both drew tags and suddenly he was in a real fit bout what to do for the boy.

We got him the 7mm RM and gave it to me and I found some 110gr Sierra's for it and worked up a mild but very accurate load.

He killed his elk with a single shot at 300yds, and dad could not have been prouder.

Dad killed his elk too with his old dependable 06 but ended up having to shoot it five times starting out at around 60yds. Sometimes they just don't want to go down.

I ran into him a few years ago again and he's still telling that story.

Gobears16 said:

I'd pick up at 243 and load up some 80gr ttsx. Zero rifle at 200yd and he can hold on hair out to 300 and with very low recoil he would be more likely to be accurate. For platform I'd pick a rifle with multiple aftermarket stock options so when he does grow he can drop rifle into stock to fit him. If it were me I'd pick him up a tikka tx3 lite and watch him pile up deer and hogs by the truck load.

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I agree, except my 9 year old beat me to it, I was using a steyr 7mm08 and he shot two deer at 100m and 200m through the heart with it, just because it was there. I wound up buying him a Tikka 7mm08.

In the TX Youth Hunting Program (www.tyhp.org), we keep rifles available for kids to use for various reasons. They're all .243 or .22-250, and all of them I've seen are Remington 700 in plastic stocks with the non-glare finish. I've lost count of how many kids I've had to put behind one of these rifles because the parent brought them with a rifle that used a .30-06 parent case or larger, even as light as .270. I've seen .308 produce the same issues, but not as often, and I've seen .243 cause issues because of poor gun fit or a scope without enough eye relief. We let them start in the program at 9 years old, and some of them aren't up to handling the recoil of the traditional starter guns. We start them in blinds, so a heavier rifle is a good thing there.