Kids rifle manifesto

[deer_hunter132]

243_2_55

there isnt any real light data there it seems for .243w; ive used imr4198 in a 7RM with 120gr & 139gr pills and it worked great for reduced loads.
at 100gr pills for .243 there is quite a few options

243_2_100

Varget From 30.0 grains to 34.5 grains, i mean thats not a ton of powder.

 

[beerbucksducks]

Thanks! From what I’m seeing and what I have on hand, looks like 70-85 grain with 4064 or varget might be a good place for lower powder charge and lighter bullets.


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[deer_hunter132]

Thanks! From what I’m seeing and what I have on hand, looks like 70-85 grain with 4064 or varget might be a good place for lower powder charge and lighter bullets.


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give it a shot and see. theres a balancing act with case fill vs powder burn rate. too slow of a burn rate with too low of a case fill and you get S.E.E. (secondary explosion event) and its a bomb, literally. I would try to stay 70%+ case fill regardless of "rifle" powder. pistol powder is going to have a low fill % and thats ok; mostly. the biggest issue is where the powder column is located (point rifle up or down first) and powder shifts in the case alot, which causes wide FPS variations, typically. not always ideal. things can get spicy quick with the fast burn powder too so being extra cautious when loading is necessary. Personally i can tell the difference in a 6 dasher vs a .243w with the same bullet, but 200fps less when shooting them back to back. thats the difference of 32-35gr of powder varget/4350 vs the 42gr range of 4350 type powder. close to the same weight gun too.

 

[Flatland]

I've chimed in on so many different "what rifle for my age XX kid?" threads that I thought I'd try to consolidate my thoughts here.

My oldest son is 14 now, started shooting centerfire rifles at 9. My younger kids started shooting centerfire rifles at between 5-7 yrs old. 5 kids shooting now, and a bunch of their friends that I have been involved or around as they learn to shoot. probably 20-ish kids? Here's what I've learned in the last 5-6 years.

Recoil matters, a lot. "Handles it pretty well" is way way different from "ideal for building skills as a rifleman." My oldest loves to shoot, wasn't scared of 7mm-08 recoil, but it pushed him around a lot more than I realized at the time. He definitely started to anticipate the shot breaking, even when we played the "dad loads the rifle and puts dummies in there" game pretty regularly.

The common "6.5CM/.260/7mm-08 is a great kids' gun" view is a bad one in my opinion. A 120-140 grain bullet going 2700+ FPS over 42-44 grains of powder is going to have recoil energy in the mid teens at least. 15 ft-lb for a 100lb kid is proportionally like an 8 lb .300WM for a 200lb man (~30 ft-lb recoil). A .243 is around 10-12 ft-lb, and a .223 is 5 or 6 ft-lb. Please realize, your kid gets pushed twice as hard as you do by the rifle. A .243 rocks your kid about like a .30-06 hits you, from a physics lens.

The effect that that recoil has on them is greater also (typically). Think about the snap of a rubber band. It does not scale with body weight, from a physics perspective, it affects you and your kid equally. But a snap that is hard enough to just begin to disrupt your focus and concentration is going to be much more disruptive to the focus and concentration of a child.

A brake is not the answer. Permanent hearing damage will occur, and flinching will not be cured. Several of my friends now have kids with braked 6.5CM's or larger. They anticipate the blast and don't shoot better because of the brake. Double hearing protection is a must at the range and should be done in the field but no one does. In the field, adding ear pro to the shot process is not something I am interested in doing. If you're in a box blind, a pair of electronic muffs are great and while not truly hearing safe are probably fine for a shot or two. The problems I've found are making sure everyone present has them in/on before the shot and the difficulty in quiet communication if not everyone has electronics. The process of teaching a kid to focus and stay composed is enough of a challenge without adding those factors. Carrying electronic muffs sucks in the backcountry/mountains, but I realize that's less of an issue for a lot of folks.

Suppressors are a game changer. Reducing recoil and report/blast has a huge positive impact on letting kids learn to focus on the fundamentals and not tense up in anticipation of the explosion that's about to happen 6 inches from their face. Do it if you can.

With nearly perfect correlation, I see two trends.
1) people who recommend a .308 size cartridge or larger (to include 6.5CM, 7mm-08, etc), often with reduced recoil ammo, have not taught very many kids to shoot. It "worked for them" or their kid "handled it fine". That was me with my oldest. We started him with a 7mm-08 for "his first deer rifle" on the conventional wisdom that it was a great kids' cartridge that he could grow into.

2) people who have taught lots of kids to shoot always recommend the very bottom end of the recoil spectrum. .223, 6mm ARC, MAYBE 6CM/.243 with a suppressor (especially if we're talking about teens rather than 10 yr olds). I very seldom see someone who's been really actively engaged in helping more than a handful of kids become good riflemen recommend 6.5CM or larger for a kids' rifle (and the only ones that do are ones who have never tried .223 or small 6mm with good bullets).

The T3x compact .223 is THE young kid's rifle. Second place is the Howa Mini in 6mm ARC (especially if suppressed). Both are cheap to feed and easy to load for, recoil is very low, and they will kill anything that walks in North America out to 400+ yards with the correct bullet selection (see .223 thread and 6mm thread). I've seen consistently better kills with the 77 TMK and 108 ELDM than I ever did with 120 NBT's out of my son's 7mm-08.

To recap, I 100% believe thad no preteen or early teen child is going to have an optimal learning setup with a rifle that runs more than 150 grains combined bullet and powder weight, and if we are approaching that it should 100% be suppressed. 100 to 125 grains combined weight is far preferable, and the difference is not debatable to anyone I know who has tried both ways.

The difference between a kid watching an impact on steel in the scope and telling Dad, "hit!" before hearing the impact, vs asking Dad whether he hit or not is such a big difference, it really is almost two different activities.

Edit to add: Please feel free to add your experiences of teaching kids to shoot. My hope would be that we could get multiple people who have taught lots of kids and seen trends and patterns, vs what I had when I was starting out (not enough different things tried to draw conclusions about what works better or worse). I think a thread that draws a lot of these experiences together could be a great starting point for folks looking to teach their kids.

Great information

 

[AkRyan]

Great information

Other than recommending a 223 or 6arc to kill anything. Those cartridges require great accuracy when shooting large game and that comes with time behind a rifle.

 

[270-300]

Im hoping to buy one of the $300 ruger rimfire suppressors soon for my 17hmr bolt action that is threaded.
Then the kids can learn to shoot precisely for a couple hundred yards at the range, and shoot some long shots rabbit hunting before moving to antelope.

 

[Formidilosus]

Other than recommending a 223 or 6arc to kill anything. Those cartridges require great accuracy when shooting large game and that comes with time behind a rifle.

Probably better to speak on what you actually know from long personal experience, rather than theorize about what you don’t know.

 

[Marbles]

Other than recommending a 223 or 6arc to kill anything. Those cartridges require great accuracy when shooting large game and that comes with time behind a rifle.

My 223 with 77 TMKs requires no better shot placement than my prior 30-06 pushing 180 accubonds. Both have to hit vitals to kill. Both bust bones and destroy organs on the other side.

A kid needs to know how to hit vitals and have proven to be capable of that level of precision with the given equipment at the range in question under field conditions before taking a shot qt game. Adults should do the same.

 

[eric1115]

Other than recommending a 223 or 6arc to kill anything. Those cartridges require great accuracy when shooting large game and that comes with time behind a rifle.

Out of curiosity, how many big game kills do you have with 77TMK and 108ELDM/103ELDX/95TMK's?