Tuesday, July 26, 2011

New shooter. A kid at that.

Earlier this year my nephew asked me to teach him to hunt. I suggested that I teach him to shoot before the hunting began. As you can tell by my lack of postings I have been very busy. I finally got the opportunity last weekend to to take the little guy to one of my shooting places.
I took an Oregon Arms "Chipmunk" .22 for him and a few .22 pistols for me later.
The Chipmunk was a Christmas present to my son when he was five. He took very good care of this little rifle. 19 years later it looks brand new.


This little gun is 31.5 inches long and is a single shot bolt action with peep sights. It only weighs something like 3 pounds.


I took a resettable swinging target for him to shoot at. First things first, we went over the safety rules of handling firearms. He like the part about keeping your booger hook off the trigger.Then came a lesson on how to use the sights. He must have been listening as his first three shots were on the money. The fourth grazed the plate and the fifth connected solidly. To hit the reset plate took two shots. This first grade kid has never had any experience with guns and took to it like a duck to water. After a few round with the iron plates , we set up a target board at double the distance(25 feet) I asked him to shoot one time at each of the five orange spots. Five shots later he had 3 targets with a hole in them and the others had very close holes. We kept up with the plates and orange spots for a while then took a break for some root beer. His grandmother called and wanted to take some pictures of him shooting so we extended the break and I took the opportunity to shoot a couple of the pistols, a Ruger MK II with a 5.5 inch bull barrel and 4inch Smith and Wesson 422. All I can say is once the pistols came out my nephew forgot all about the rifle. When Granny showed up he was making plastic root beer bottles dance all around using the Ruger. Granny was very excited about that. Later she put a few round down range and did pretty good herself. We all had a great time and will soon do it again. I'll have to bring some different targets to keep things interesting for him.

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