My 12 year old grandson has started Jr NRA shooting. They have range guns for him to use but I'm thinking shooting the same gun every session has to speed the learning up a bit. The range guns are a variety from match target Crickets to Winchester and Remington match guns to Anschutz match guns. The weights vary from perhaps 6 lb to well over 10 lbs.
We tried my Kimber 82G but it, at 12 lbs, is too heavy for him. He has been shooting the Crickets but they really are too light for him. He is at the cusp of starting his big growing jag but not quite there yet. I don't want to buy an expensive gun that he'll be through with in a year or so. But I want him to have a real match gun along the weight of the CZ 452 (perhaps between 5 and 10 lbs). Unfortunately the CZ has no match peep sights that are required to successfully shoot Jr NRA. And accessory match sights are as expensive as the whole of the gun. We already have a Junior CZ 452 for plining but again finding correct sights that are not an arm and a leg and fitting them to the gun is a problem (??).
My first thought is a used Winchester or Remington match gun with the correct sights but I have no idea of the cost of that route or the actual weight of those guns. I see Savage makes one new but it is well over $600.
If you can find a Remington 513T, which were available in the past from CMP or their predecessor DCM. They aren't as heavy as some of the target rifles but the are pretty accurate. Cost I'm not sure, but I think you should be able to find one reasonably priced, at least not as much as a 52, 40x or Anschutz.
As far as no match sights for the Cz. check with Brunoman over on Rimfire Central he sells old Bruno sights that fit the CZ's and, if I'm not mistaken, are target type sights.
Our kids in the 4H shooting club are really liking the 540XR Remington that we recieved from Millwight from this forum.....The 540X rifles are of the weight those yougserts can handle well. The 40X's and 52's we have are a bit much for many of our younger shooters to handle with confidence.
The Anschutz 64 actioned match rifles are light enough in some configurations for Jr shooters as well. I belive you may have one?? Any way they are one to try with the younger set wishing to get involved in NRA style shooting.
I hope you find a workable rifle for the grandson...
He had a CZ scout and we got a rear peep sight off of a Brno for it that fit without an adaption. The front sight was the problem and I had to go to a Williams ramp, a dovetail adapter and a Lyman large globe front sight.
I advertised at the club for a gun before we put the CZ together but got no responses. I did not hear anything all that great about the Savage version and it was a lot of money. I looked at my Anschutz, which is scoped now as it is a Silhouette model. It has no way to mount a front sight so I gave up on it. I did not want to pay a gunsmith to braze a ramp on it. We tried the Kimber but my grandson is only 12 and it was way too heavy for him. So the best way seemed to be to go with the CZ Scout he already had and just add the Olympic style peep sights. As he grows we'll move him into the superb Kimber 82G. The CZ will have to do for now.
In my other post to you I explained where we are with the sights (close but not quite there yet but we will get it).
Take a look at the Savage Mark I FVT single shot (@ 5.25 lbs) currently MSRP $445.00, most dealers are around $400.00 retail. The reality is for NRA target shooting, the Savage Mark I is probably more accurate than the 99+% of the shooters.
The remington target rifles are pretty good but probably getting harder to find one in perfect shape. I have an Anschutz 64 sillouhette gun that I started with and it is phenomenal. It was OK when I was shooting it but after I bought my Win52 B, my dad had the barrel set back on the 64 and the headspace corrected a bit better and man, that thing is stupid accurate now. Very lightweight, I started with that when I was 11 years old, average size kid.
I'm so out of the smallbore loop these days though, I'm curious to see everyone else's response as I will be getting back into target shooting when my boys get a little older, they will need their own guns as well. My 52 is sitting in wait...
In the few gun stores in my area there are never any used guns set up for Jr NRA for sale. I even posted a ad at the gun club looking for anything that would work. It never generated one call and someone tore it down(??).
So I went with a Brno rear peep sight and a Williams ramp, and a Lyman large globe front sight. All of this was mounted on the grandson's CZ Scout. But not without a bit of trouble. The adapter from Williams did not fit the Scout barrel all that well and took some customizing. The dovetails of the Lyman globe did not exactly match the Williams ramp so that took some fine filing for another custom fit. The stock cheek piece was too low for the height of the Brno rear peep so I am putting a strap on cheek piece from Brownells. I put a rail on the bottom of the forearm but the coach says it is to teetery and I'll have to inlet it some. But we almost got it now.
The whole purpose of this exercise was to get away from him getting a different gun every shooting session (club guns). He was getting terrible accuracy, Just this last week the coach worked with him, suggested the stock mod, and found he was flinching (the grandson swore he was not flinching but the coach observed him close his eyes with every pull of the trigger). So we may be headed for better results.
While it may sound as if I am pushing him for better results. The opposite is actually the case. I stress with him that it is all fun regardless of the results. Fortunately he finds shooting exciting and is having fun even without results. I want to keep him interested so I want him to have equipment that will not work against him. For now it is the CZ but in a couple years he can move into the Kimber 82G that I have that I bought for me.
Anyway, the search for a Jr NRA gun is over. Thanks to all those that commented here.
Our kids in the 4H shooting club are really liking the 540XR Remington that we recieved from Millwight from this forum.....The 540X rifles are of the weight those yougserts can handle well. The 40X's and 52's we have are a bit much for many of our younger shooters to handle with confidence.
The Anschutz 64 actioned match rifles are light enough in some configurations for Jr shooters as well. I belive you may have one?? Any way they are one to try with the younger set wishing to get involved in NRA style shooting.
I hope you find a workable rifle for the grandson...
I agree on the 540XR or better yet the 540XR JR with a shorter stock for Jr shooters. I own a 540XR and have owned two 40X 22's, a few 513T's, Mossberg 144's and a few other "target" rifles. The 540XR that I own is the most accurate and easy to shoot well of them all IMO. The lock time of the 540XR is the fastest I ever experienced. Yes, my 540 is more accurate than the others including the 40X's I owned. I was just as amazed.
If you look they can be found and at a more than fair price and at about half that of a 40X.
I shot on the rifle team in high school, we used 40x's and 540X rifles. The 540XR came out right after I was out of school (1973) and always wanted one. I found this one about five years ago at the local gun shop for $399. I ended up having to add a scope because I'm too old for those peep sights.
Here's the rifle and the target I used to zero the scope. The bottom right was dialing in the scope, the bottom left was tweaking it better, the top two are 5 shot groups at 50 yards.
I started my grandson in the NRA Junior program to see if he would like shooting. He loves it even though he is currently stalled in his results but that will change in time. They provided everything but... he didn't always get a jacket that fit or a sling that fit and the number of different guns available was huge. There was no consistency to his equipment. So I got him a jacket, a sling, and started looking for a gun. My first choice was the Kimber 82G I got from CMP but the gun was way too heavy for him. I posted a wanted ad at the gun club and got zero responses. In our area we really don't have any real gun stores that stock anything or have used guns and certainly no peep sighted target guns especially of the weight he could handle at his current size (12 years old).
So I decided to convert his CZ Scout. I put a sling rail on the stock. I found a Bruno peep sight that literally dropped right on. The front required a Lyman globe with a Williams ramp and adapter but it took some serious fitting. We got that right eventually. But the coaches kept trying to move the rear sight around to adapt to him, screwing up the zero in the process and making it shoot loose. I fixed that with a set screw and a divot taken out of the top of the receiver to lock the set screw to the receiver. He was having trouble with his eyes straining so his mom got him reading glasses which he says super helps with the sighting as well as with his reading. We also put a foam cheek piece (from Brownells) on the stock to get him a proper cheek weld to the stock. His results are improving. But the most important thing is he wants to go shooting and finds it exhilarating. Neither he nor I care how well he shoots but only that he has a good time shooting. I may have given him the gift of a sport that he can enjoy forever. That makes me happy.
With this activity we share Thursday evenings at the indoor range doing what he enjoys. His mom and dad are fine with it. His dad has guns I gave him decades ago but rarely uses them. His mom got a 38 revolver for home defense recently and she goes to the outdoor pistol range with me and the grandson and enjoys the shooting too.
Maybe my efforts will help promote shooting for fun for the future for them.
That's great LD, thanks for sharing the whole story.
I tried the same thing but only had girls to work with, my daughter and my niece. Both loved to shoot and both were pretty good too. But...girls grow up into young women and suddenly guns weren't doing it for them and went through a stage were guns were "icky" but grew up since. They are still good at shooting and enjoy it so that's a good thing. They just never seem to have the time to shoot with me anymore.
Good news is my daughter should be delivering our first grandbaby this September...I hope it's a boy! I already have a 22 for him.... or her.
Enjoy the hell out of while you can LD, they grow up so fast.
Don't tell me how fast they grow up. My son is going to be 40 next year and my daughter is already in her mid forties. The bad thing is I didn't start a family until I was in my 30's so that makes me really old!
Anyway, I really love all four of my grand kids, between my son and daughter, but the grandson, the only boy, seems to like all the things I do. We have fun together.
We have a 10 lane indoor range in the winter for the 4H shooters I work with. With 10 different rifles and no set person assigned to each, I can see one of the problems with what we are doing with our kids listening to you parents. Unfortunately they are not as apt to tell us the issues they are having, as the time we spend together is realatively short and kids are shy sometimes. I have noticed some kids don't like certain rifles, but due to numbers we don't, or cann't really assign rifles to shooters as would be ideal. In the summer time we shoot out doors with only 5 lanes so rifle choice is eaisier than when we use all that we have. And we do have a variety to pick from....
Good points. Glad to hear others experiances, and to think about what we are doing. Keep up this discussion, please.....
Regards, Kirk
PS I need a bolt stop pin for a 540 XR if anyone knows where to get one...
My kids never had a chance to match shoot. They were taught with what I had available. They were taught to hit their target. My oldest daughter learned with a Ruger 10/22. At 50 yards she does NOT miss, no scope. She is now 32 years old and still is a crack shot with her own Ruger 10/22 at 50 yards.
I can't make a recommendation on this at all I'm sorry to say. I was taught how to shoot in the Boy Scouts and to use whatever rifle was at hand to do so and make sure I hit my target. That is what I taught my kids. My youngest son is a Gunners Mate in the Navy - he practices now with shipboard .50 cals....
I started shooting at an outdoor range with a friend and his father before entering high school. In High school we did a marksmanship program as part of Jr ROTC. There we were taught all the military position using match 22LR guns with peep and globe sights. We were offered the chance to Qualify which I did. The school did have a rifle team that competed with the other three high schools in the area, I was not on that team but this same close friend was.
My grandson's Jr NRA program (this is his first year in it) is actually very good. They too have a selection of target rifles mostly too big for the grandson. The ones close to the right weight are actually too small for him, The CZ Scout after the sight and sling conversion are actually perfect for him now at his present size (12 years old and average size for that age). But when he starts growing he can move into the CMP Kimber 82G and he is looking forward to that day. He has had the opportunity to compete in one club match and he enjoyed it although he did not do all that well. He just loves to shoot regardless of his scores and that is all I ever wanted him to get out of shooting.
As luck would have it after we got the CZ setup, a Savage rifle showed up used. It would have been great for him and was barely used. It seems the owner's grandson is left handed and the Savage was right handed so the grandfather bought the kid a Anschutz after only a couple of sessions with the new Savage. But we are all setup with the CZ Scout and my grandson just needs to practice to get better. He has all the details figured out, has relatively good equipment, and has the desire to shoot. We are planning an outdoor range trip over the spring break with his mom and he can't wait to shoot my 10/22 that is set up with extras to look like a Thompson machine gun (it is a kit for a 10/22). We'll probably let him shoot one of the 22 pistols too.
LDBennett
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