Airguns - A Great Gateway to Introduce Kids to Shooting and Hunting
If you’re wanting to get one of your kids, grandkids or even a neighborhood kid into shooting and hunting, there’s no better gateway than airguns, and for many reasons.
They have no recoil to speak of.
They’re quiet and won’t damage the hearing of small children.
There are inexpensive to shoot and a lot of fun.
A lot of the modern airguns are super cool looking.
You can set up a shooting range in your basement or garage to shoot all winter.
I’ve taught quite a few Airgun 101 seminars at venues like Cabela’s on up to the SCI Conv. in Reno, the Great Northwest Outdoor Show in Nampa, Boise Sports Show etc. At the bigger shows — and I guess even at store level shows — it seems a lot of dads and granddads bring kids. I probably don’t need to tell you how much a grandad longs to take his non-hunting grandkids into the outdoors with him. Many little girls just aren’t going to want to hunt as readily as a little boy does. I know, I have all daughters. But who cares? Take them anyway. Get girls plinking cans and other reactive targets and they’ll embrace it as readily as boys do. Many Olympic airguns shooting champs are young women.
You have probably forgotten your first few shooting excursions. Think back. Was it fun or slightly intimidating? Did it knock you on your butt or hurt your ears? As a kid no one that I knew had any hearing protection. The .45 pistols and 30-06’s my mentors let me shoot deafened me. Such loud blasts can spook away a lot of small children. But airguns? Ha, not an issue! Compared to real firearms, airguns barely whisper.
But what about recoil? Same story. There is even less kick than there is noise! Sure, the big .50 cal. UMAREX Hammer has some kick but the smaller airguns don’t. Calibers .17 and .22 are easy to shoot. Kid’s love ‘em. So don’t do like they had me do when I started hunting. Dad shot 180 gr. ammo in a 30-06 so of course so did I. As an 11-year old. That rifle about flipped me out of my rinky dink tree stand. No such issues with air guns. Kids aren’t afraid of them, so that means they’re eager to practice more. And practice makes perfect. By the time they’re ready for firearms, they have their technique honed.
So, are you game? Want to make this play out in real life? Okay, my advice is to get them a CO2-style airgun. A small child won’t be strong enough to cock a break barrel. Operating a PCP will be too complicated. So, that pretty much narrows it down to CO2’s. There are a whole lot of cool looking CO2’s on the market that your kids would love. Let them help do the shopping with you. Or, let your fingers do the walking and hit the internet and check out some of the cool semi-auto’s that UMAREX offers. A couple of them even offer 6-shot full burst mode. How cool is that? (I’m thinking forget the grandkids on these and remember us old guys!)
A lot of the CO2’s will be BB guns but some might be .177 pellet guns. CO2’s will spit out projectiles at a lower fps than a break barrel, usually 400-800 fps. That is nice because they won’t ricochet over the hills. But make no mistake, a metal BB can bounce around if shot in your basement or garage. Learn and use all recommended safety practices when shooting air guns. Safe area, safe backdrop, proper targets that don’t ricochet, and mandatory safety glasses! Safe gun handling at all times. No horseplay. Remind those kids in no uncertain terms that this isn’t some make believe video game. It’s real life with real people.
CO2 powered airguns are easy to load and operate and mimic real guns, so you can begin proper gun handling training from the get-go.
TARGETS
Next on the agenda, targets. Tin cans remain a classic. Or plastic bottles filled with water. Have them start near the top and see if they can poke holes all the way down before all the water leaks out. Clay shotgun targets perched in the sand are good. Ditto small balloons tied to stakes. Manufacturers now sell spinners, flippers, shooting galleries and a wide variety of other action targets just for air guns.
And of course kids love shooting the Birchwood Casey Shoot NC targets that splatter a fluorescent ring around the spot you shoot. We use these at the ScootersYouthHuntingCamp and the kids love them. So gear up and get your young shooters off on the right foot with airguns.
P.S. In this age of ammo shortages airguns offer extra value: abundant, available, and inexpensive BBs and pellets. Cheaper than even the lowly .22 rimfire. Load up and start shooting.
Self-resetting galleries and spinner targets are fun.
