My kid just turned 8 and is entering 3rd grade. We are already are in Cub Scouts and he loves shooting BB guns and archery there. So we attend our first 4H Shooting Sports event last night.

I was like lets go try it out and let mw know if you want to continue this. Afterwards, he told his mom he had a lot of fun and wanted to continue. He will be in the Rifle club where they shoot BB gun, Air Rifle, and Air pistol for now. 22 rifle and pistol in a couple of years.

Hopefully we can continue working on our safety, marksmanships skills, and following instructions from adults.

Any other present or past 4H Shooting Sports families out there?

We heavily promote 4H and youth shooting teams at our local gun club. These are some of the greatest young people you will meet.
They are the future.

Currently discussing the possibility of letting the local 4-H kids use our private range. Have to work through all the legal mumbo jumbo.

It was a looong time ago but I was heavily involved in 4H shooting sports. My dad was the instructor for it for many years. Great memories. I still have the 22 I shot back then. Dad passed in 2014 or I would ask him more details about it.

My son was in 4H 2008 to 2012 or so, Elm Fork 4H shotgun. Below are some pics from 2008 tournament, me him and his team. Great bunch of kids. My son was 11 and the youngest one, the rest were high schoolers, and they were incredible shots. I was also into it, and got my 4H shooting instructor certification.

My step-son was on the Burnet County 4H marksmanship team. He shot 22 cal. He's not on the team now as he graduated from HS and ships out for the Marines 07/26. My son is on the Bell County 4H sporting clay team. Loves it!

Hoping my 2 grandsons get into the shooting sports when old enough.

4-H is great.

Did the 4-H shooting sports program when my son was young. Did the .22 open sight 50 foot target program. 50 ft is not far, but the target is about the size of a 50 cent piece, and to bullseye is the size of a .22 caliber bullet. Practice every Saturday for several months, then traveled to several matches. Did three positions, prone, kneeling, and standing. He did well, and had lots of fun. Then county cut funds for some 4-H programs and shooting got cut. Still have his Anshuitz single shot bull barrel target rifle with peep sights in gun safe. We played with here at home, unbelievable how accurate that thing was with target ammo out to 50 yrds. Son could do better than me as his eyes were a lot younger than mine.

Yup - Great program. Great kids.

Coached precision air rifle a few years.
Amazing how they can put a .177 pellet into a .200 circle time and again, with just aperture sights!

We ran the parker County club for a while. My son was the president, a state ambassador, and a national ambassador. There are a lot of scholarships available for this.

Yes sir! I recommend doing the small bore rifle, the sooner the better. You can teach him gun safety with that, and if the noise is an issue to your kid than use CCI Quiet. That’s what my kids used to shoot, back then even with plugs and muffs the noise was off putting for them. I still have a couple thousand rounds of it, will gladly sell you some for the same price I paid but I think it’s available on CCI website right now for less ($4.99/50 rounds). My kids shoot mini mags now.

He will have more fun with the small bore rifle because you can get a truly kid size .22 rifle, light weight and proportioned properly, and pretty much all of those single shot .22’s are pretty accurate. Not to mention (at least in my experience) there are a lot more people involved in small bore rifle, so you will meet more parents and more kids for your youngster to make friends with.

A pellet gun that could touch a single shot .22 in accuracy is going to be very expensive, and it’s not gonna be kid sized and will be hefty.

Great job fellas. I'm always ready to take my friends kids shooting. I try and talk a lot about it, so they won't think it's all about shooting people and mass shootings as, this is all they pretty much see about shooting these days.