I run this youth league/small bore program at my local club. It's a program that runs about 36 weeks and it's main focus is on firearm safety and the fundamentals of shooting. The kids in the program range from 10 to just under 18 and have a very varied background in terms of shooting. Some are "farm" kids that shoot at home or with their family all the time, others are kids that have move to the wild west of the Berkshires from all over and have never see or touched a gun in their lives.
Anyway we've been doing some very general shooting practice getting the kids used to load, ready, fire...sight alignment sight alignment and sight picture, lots of safety information and drills about safe gun use, the golden rules of gun safety, etc and so on...
One of the things we do to enforce how important each shot is is we have a small "shoot for the Cash" at the end of each session. One of the Instructors will pony up $5 and we cut out the small "5" from one of the corners. We paste that to the center of a target, run it out 50 feet. Each shooter gets ONE round, they can use any of the guns they want...and they shoot for the center...if they hit that very small target, they get the $5.
Well the first week, all the kids go, and one of the smallest kids that's second to last (and not a particularly great shooter-at this point) walks up to the line and drills that thing dead center. It took him about a minute to get what he felt was a good sight picture but I think he learned a valuable lesson...in the last two weeks, his scores have gone up quite a bit as he now takes more time with each shot.
Second week, no one scored a win.
Third week, I decided to up the anty to $10...and made the target a little harder...center of the target had to be hit, the center bull is like .20 inches in diameter. (so smaller than a .22 bullet). First kid steps up to the line...takes about 45 seconds. and bam... fist shot wins. All the other kids were bummed as the shooting stops after there is a winner.
So they convinced me to make other shots to the center worth a $1...out of 10 kids I'm out $17...I think these kids are ringers.
Anyway we've been doing some very general shooting practice getting the kids used to load, ready, fire...sight alignment sight alignment and sight picture, lots of safety information and drills about safe gun use, the golden rules of gun safety, etc and so on...
One of the things we do to enforce how important each shot is is we have a small "shoot for the Cash" at the end of each session. One of the Instructors will pony up $5 and we cut out the small "5" from one of the corners. We paste that to the center of a target, run it out 50 feet. Each shooter gets ONE round, they can use any of the guns they want...and they shoot for the center...if they hit that very small target, they get the $5.
Well the first week, all the kids go, and one of the smallest kids that's second to last (and not a particularly great shooter-at this point) walks up to the line and drills that thing dead center. It took him about a minute to get what he felt was a good sight picture but I think he learned a valuable lesson...in the last two weeks, his scores have gone up quite a bit as he now takes more time with each shot.
Second week, no one scored a win.
Third week, I decided to up the anty to $10...and made the target a little harder...center of the target had to be hit, the center bull is like .20 inches in diameter. (so smaller than a .22 bullet). First kid steps up to the line...takes about 45 seconds. and bam... fist shot wins. All the other kids were bummed as the shooting stops after there is a winner.
So they convinced me to make other shots to the center worth a $1...out of 10 kids I'm out $17...I think these kids are ringers.
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