Answer: both my first and second gifts at ages 12 and 13 yr.
Kept my first .22 rifle. Recently purchased a 20 ga bolt action that is a clone of my 13 yr old birthday present.
Have many memories of my paternal grandfather teaching me as much as he could about hunting (he was born before 1905 / began life as a subsistence hunter / far beyond just poor; Cherokee in his blood, mostly Scots-Irish, but Native American in his hunting techniques) . I was carrying that 20 ga bolt shotgun. It put food on the supper table. If it does the work, then it does the work. I love squirrel gravy!!!!
Cornbread, beans, a bit of smokehouse meat or just-killed meat, poke greens, mustard greens, out the side of a mountain rock-face artesian well-water (you built your cabin where the purest of water shot out the side of a mountain rock-face; a cabin begins with a water cistern), ... these things sustained generations up in the Appalachian mountains. All this a LONG time before grocery stores. If you made it past childhood, survived the feuds, you stood a good chance of living past age 80, 90, ... I've talked to many a relative and family friends who were born in the 1880s. Pap in youth only had a .32 muzzle-loader. "Beware the man who owns but one rifle." My kin were the "over-mountain men" of the Revolutionary War.
It's not a matter so much of being "nice". It's a matter of survival. "Are you going to make it through the winter?!" That's a big deal when you are way far beneath just being poor. Modern folk forget this reality. When times go sideways, you'll look past "nice" and seek functionality. No rule says that nice and functionality can't go hand-in-hand. When looking at a firearm for sale, I look at BOTH aspects. My out-of-date / collector firearms can also put food on the supper table. I've known what it is to be poor.
.