About seven years ago, Dave and I got our gun licenses. We went to the Hamilton Gun Club, which is, according to them, the oldest continuously operating trap shooting club in the world (!!) for skeet and trap shooting and Silverdale Gun Club for target shooting.
The stationary target shooting at Silverdale was loads of fun and my 22 long rifle received compliments from almost everyone who saw it. I turned out to be a decent shot with it. Using Dave's shotgun was another story: It's a 12 gauge, weighing 7.5 lbs, and way too long for my pathetically short arms. During our first sojourn skeet shooting at the Hamilton Gun Club, I found holding the gun up, with my arm completely outstretched, to be very uncomfortable. I never went skeet shooting again.
So, we've known since then, that if I were to use a shotgun again, I needed a youth stock. It would be a shorter stock, so that I wouldn't have my arm outstretched, with the added benefit of being a bit lighter. While shopping in the big city (Sault Ste. Marie, pop. about 75,000) for hardware items yesterday, on a whim, we asked the clerk if he had a youth stock shotgun as Dave had seen one there some months ago: I now own a 20 gauge Mossberg 500 Youth Bantam. It is much shorter -- stock and barrel -- and weighs one pound less than Dave's shotgun, still not light, but better and actually fits me.
Mossberg 500 Youth Bantam in 20 Guage:
Dave thinks it also adds some versatility to our gun ownership, using different ammunition and being slightly lighter and shorter and so being a bit more portable and handy to hike with.
We have taken our Hunter Education course and a separate course on wild turkey hunting. Since we are now country people, we thought that at some point we should take advantage of the hunting available. For an idea of the wildlife here, click on Photos on the Main Page to see "Wildlife on the island". We know that there are many animals on our property which we have not seen ourselves, but have shown themselves on the field camera and via tracks, scat, and other signs.
Neither of us has hunted anything before, but we are planning on turkey hunting in the spring and probably deer hunting next fall. We won't be deer hunting this year, as we have limited freezer space, but plan on buying a freezer in time for the wild turkey season. We must think positively!
Angi
Dave Here... Angi didn't mention it, but a day or two after getting her new gun home we went out into our field and threw a few clays. It was a cold day and the clays weren't releasing well from the plastic hand-thrower, but as soon as I managed to get some throws that actually went into her field of fire, she started breaking them immediately. Not bad considering she had a layoff of probably seven or eight years!
And the gun performed well for me as well. Even with the short stock, I was able to throw clays for myself (Angi couldn't get them to release from the thrower at all!), drop the thrower, shoulder the gun, and break the clay with no problems. It has a nice balance and even though I have to hunch over a bit to fit it, it worked for me perfectly well. I'd heard before from more experienced shooters that while a small person will have a very hard time using a too-big gun, a bigger person can adapt fairly easily and be proficient with a too-small gun - this has definitely proved to be true for us.