Youth - 243 or 7mm-08 (break & sub pressed)?

[PlumberED]

You can’t go wrong with any of the suggestions, 243, 7mm08 or 223 suppressed. The .223 is an ideal cartridge for training a young person to shoot, especially when suppressed. No recoil and no muzzle blast. Reduced loads in a .243 or 7mm08 will probably give similar effects.

 

[flyfisher117]

243. That's what my dad started me on. Still my favorite deer rifle. Even though the internet says it's a "women's" gun or it's too small. Thankfully it makes me fit right in on Rokslide. Lol

Go supressed.

 

[Ringbill27]

If they weren’t 7 I’d recommend either the 243 or the 7mm08. 7mm08 is what I’d choose and is what I consider a forever deer cartridge.

But they are 7 and probably can’t hold up the rifle so I guess I’d say the 223. If ranges are long what not a go 300blk, 350legend, 7.62x39. Then you could go with Ruger American gen2 and take the spacer out. I think the rifle comes in 6arc as well.
Ruger American Ranch gen1 in 7.62x39 w/ Hornady black with the 123gr SSTs is my go to deer rifle. It’s killed every deer I shoot at.

Id give them a couple more years to grow. But I grew up in the day when you needed a firearms training certificate to hunt deer. Sound Fuddy I know but it’s how I was raised and I wouldn’t trust my 7-10year old nephews and nieces to hold a rifle let alone point a loaded on at anything.

 

[chaser_2332]

another one to throw out there is a 6.5 Grendel surpassed is very pleasant.

 

[Toneloc]

.243, recoil is minimal, its effective, and I believe underrated today. Still use mine for deer, 80gr TTSX is good medicine for deer.

+1.....243 with 80gr TTSX is an awesome setup for deer. A few more options down the road for the .243 as well.

 

[Sooner]

I started my son with a compact Ruger American 243 when he was six. I wouldn't take anything for that gun. He's 14 now and it has killed more deer that I can count. I find myself taking it if he isn't home. I killed my biggest buck to date with that rifle.

 

[ResearchinStuff]

.223 for bear, mountain goat, deer, elk, and moose.

DON'T HAVE TIME TO READ 176 PAGES? HERE'S THE CHEAT SHEET. “Bullets matter more than headstamps.” “Spent primers offer the supreme tutorial”. I’ve read it here and elsewhere online. It got my attention. I started digging and asking questions and listened. The 77gr TMK delivered by a .223...

rokslide.com

 

[CMF]

My kids(11,14,16) have a .243, .270 and I just got a 6.5cm for my 11yo. They also shoot .50 cal muzzies and 300wm.

I went with the 6.5cm because of the range of ammo and the ease of finding ammo.
It came with a break and I recently got a suppressor. I can put 95grain varmit rounds and it has zero kick with the suppressor. We're probably taking it Oryx hunting this weekend with 143eldx's, but I could put 125's in for deer or even the 95's would work and probably be similar to the biggest factory 243 ammo.
If you're stuck between those two only though, I would go 7mm-08 and start with the 120grn lite recoil

 

[TaperPin]

I like to have a progression of cartridges. If they shoot a 223 ok, try a 6mm, if they shoot that ok try a 6.5 or 7mm. Being that small a 223 would be a good starting point. If reloads are available any of them can be down loaded for similar recoil. Heck, a 22 creed can easily be loaded down to 223 velocities.

Our default rifle for new shooters has always been a 243 and it works well with any factory load, but I can see 22 creed being good if a person is careful about bullet choice. I picked up a 22 creed barrel for the newest grandson’s first rifle, but after sitting on it a while it will be changed out for a 243. When he’s a little older and hunting with teenage friends, they tend to shoot whatever is available, and off the shelf ammo will get used sometimes.

 

[Macintosh]

That kids rifle manifesto linked above is required reading and spot-on imo. It deserves read thru 6 times.

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.