The caliber question has been beat to death I suppose, but I thought I'd mention a few other considerations. Fit has been mentioned, but I'd add that you'll want to make sure both the length of pull and the stock height are good. You may need a slip-on cheek pad to get their eye up to a comfortable position while keeping their cheek tight to the stock. A good recoil pad is always wise. While living in the US I became an NRA-certified shooting instructor and volunteered my time working with the Boy Scouts teaching youth to shoot. Helping new shooters avoid developing a flinch with centerfire rifles is important if you want them to actually hit what they aim at and not be afraid of the gun. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, get them as heavy a rifle as you think they can manage to lug around on a hunt. A Mauser-type action (or other action with lots of steel) in a moderate caliber with a cut-down wood or laminate stock and heavy-ish scope will really help reduce felt recoil and would be a better choice than many of the light-weight synthetic offerings out there. I have a fairly light .243 Sako with no recoil pad and a peep sight and it's noticeably more punishing to shoot than my .30-06 Mauser or even my synthetic .270 with a good recoil pad and heavy scope. Likewise avoid short carbine length barrels that may have more muzzle blast. I would avoid starting them off shooting from a bench rest unless you have a lead sled or other weighted rest to absorb most of the recoil. Let them get used to the noise (even with hearing protection, which is a must) before they have to deal with the full recoil. Shooting from a standing or kneeling position is also a good option at first because more of your body can absorb the recoil compared to shooting from a sandbag on a bench, making everything less violent in general. It's also closer to what you'll probably do on a hunt. Don't worry if they can't hit squat from standing, just let them get used to the thing. At that point you can consider moving them to a bench with ordinary shooting bags, or a tripod, or whatever you plan to use hunting, and start dialing in aiming, breathing, trigger pull, etc. Lastly, make sure the rifle has a good trigger that breaks cleanly. A light pull but of course not too light. If the trigger pull is long, or gritty, or creepy or anything other than a clean break after a light to moderate pull there's a bigger chance of developing a flinch because they'll start to anticipate the point when it goes off. With the Accu-trigger (and all the knockoffs), and aftermarket triggers, there's not much excuse for crappy rifle triggers these days regardless of your budget, unless it's some old military relic with no aftermarket support. I always try to teach new shooters to slowly squeeze and let the shot surprise you every time. That's much more likely to happen with a clean breaking trigger.
Last edited by metallurgynerd; 08-23-2019 at 06:31 PM.
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