I have a fairly small statured son who will be turning 10 this summer and that is the legal hunting age here in alaska. He is left eye dominant so I have been teaching him to shoot left handed. He has picked it up pretty well and does quite well with a cut down 22lr with a red dot. He has even managed to kill a few rabbits with it.
Being right handed the only logical choice of my rifles was my T/C Encore. I have rifle barrels in 22-250, 30.06, a shorty 45/70, and 209x50. After keeping my eye open for a 308 barrel for the last few years I came across a blued sportier 308 barrel for $100 bucks locally. I jumped on it and finally had all the makings for what I considered the perfect starter rifle for my son. had originally indented to get a wood stock and cut it down for him to use until I came across this collapsable m4 style stock that Choate makes. With a LOP variable from 11-16" it seemed like a great choice for something that we could both use.
First I cut and recrowned the 308 barrel at 17.25", and put the sights back on. I mounted a 2-7 Nikon scope and its good to go. I'm planning on starting him out with some reduced loads with Trailboss. There are a bunch of good reduced loads for the 308 that run between 900-1400fps with bullets in the 150-180 weight range. A good friend gave me a few hundred 173gr RNGC cast bullets to load up. He also gave me a recipe for 7.0gr of trail boss that had this bullets running around 975fps out of his 22" barreled 308. These ought to be very mild shooting. According to him no touch more than a 22lr.
Its still a little heavy for offhand shooting but with lots of practice off shooting sticks or packframe he should be good enough with it in a year or so to make moderate range shots on baited blackbear and maybe even fall moose.
