re: How to Fix Anticipating Rifle Recoil - Youth Shooter

Your kid is lucky. Before I shot my first deer, I had only shot a 22. My dad took me to Mississippi to hunt one weekend when I was 8 or 9, and only brought a 300 win mag. Being the stupid little kid I was, and the a-hole my dad was, he laughed his arse off when I shot a doe and almost dislocated my shoulder. fricker just kept laughing for like an hour

I would make your wife shoot the gun to show your son it's not to big for him. He most likely got nervous after your buddies son dropped the doe.

Buy a .30 cal suppressor.

Amongst the many reasons why they are awesome, they are the best tool ever for teaching kids to shoot.

Sounds like a perfectly good reason to buy another new gun to me! Maybe an AR15 and start him on irons like another poster mentioned. You can blame it on the wife for this one too!

My son's deer rifle is going to be an AR in 6.8spc with a suppressor.

Should be able to easily handle any deer we see. He hasn't shot it yet but has shot an AR and an AK.

Start off with a Lead Sled or something similar. That takes the brunt of the recoil out of the equation. Once he gets to the point where a round being fired (noise) doesn't bother him, then it's time to work on the recoil. A good recoil pad can help.

The key is, let recoil happen. Following through and staying in the rifle takes time and practice. If I don't shoot for a while, I'll catch myself needing to stay in the rifle, even though my accuracy doesn't suffer. That's much easier to fix than a flinch, but I'm sure we all get to where we flinch sometimes. If your shoulder takes a beating, you're naturally going to brace yourself for the impact.

Another thing you can look into is buying a shoulder pad that fits under the shirt.


Edited: Misread some things and didn't read some things. Multi-tasking right now.

Take him back to range with a 22

Need to control their breathing and have them learn to hold their breath before they exhale and to squeeze and not jerk the trigger

Reading through all of your responses, sounds like you are doing everything the right way so I suggest just keep on and it will come. Sounds like maybe the scope to eye (which does hurt like hell) may be in his head. That concern will also cease as time goes on and he is exposed more. You know your son better than anyone regarding how he responds to various situations and I feel you understand the "don't rush it advice". Good luck with it and if it does not get better this year and he does not want to shoot deer because of the recoil, keep hitting the woods and field with the 410 and enjoy yalls time together - trust me, it sill be gone before you know it


Look forward to seeing more posts on the progress!

This is how I learned. Pops did the loading and made it a game. It's like anything else, once it clicks in your brain what works, you can do it with no problem.