Our First Rifle(s)

Make no mistake this was a big transition for self proclaimed liberal easterners, the acquisition of our first firearm. Growing up in densely populated Northern New Jersey I never handled or fired a gun when I was a child. There really was just never the opportunity or reason to do so. Since moving to a farm in Western Maryland things have changed substantially. As just one example a few months after we moved in one of our dogs chased/cornered a groundhog into the goat stall of the barn. Now groundhogs are a real pest around here since they do a job on the fields with their tunneling, as well as their habit of digging into gardens and eating all of the good fruits and veggies. We realized that we wanted to dispatch it, but needed to ask our neighbor to come over with a rifle to take care of him.

So when my Dad mentioned that he had an old single-shot .22 rifle that he won in a poker game during college (whole other story there that we will not go into) I jumped at the chance to have it, "for the farm" as my dad put it. My folks still live in the same house I grew up in and thus the rifle had been sitting unused in the attic for more than 40 years.

When I brought the rifle into the house, we had a family discussion, ostensibly to talk about the responsibilities associated with having a firearm. We were talking and the kids were listening and interjecting and at one point I was somewhat sloppy in my choice of words and said something along the lines of "Since we now have a weapon in the house..." My 6 year old quickly interjected to correct me stating that we already have weapons "we have all these sharp knives ...". The obvious albeit sometimes overlooked fact that many of the tools we have around the house and farm can be used as weapons, and the fact that my children recognized this made me more comfortable that they understood what the rifle signified.

Since that was out of the way obviously the next thing was to see how well the rifle shot. After cleaning the barrel the kids and I went out to the back pasture where we would have a safe backstop, set up a makeshift target and tried out the rifle. While the rifle seemed to operate fine my shooting prowess needed a significant amount of work. The kids all tried it out, but since this is an adult sized rifle they were not able to hold it with proper form. Not wanting them to be discouraged or learn bad form I did what any unschooling homesteader would do, went out and bought them a youth-sized single shot rifle. So now in the space of a week or two we go from zero to two rifles in the house. The model I bought the kids is actually a matched pair, meaning it has a .22 rifle barrel and a 20 gauge shotgun barrel that are interchangeable so depending on how you want to count things maybe 2 rifles and a shotgun.


The new rifle fits the kids much better and was an instant hit with the girls. Sam however was getting frustrated since he was unable to site the rifle properly. For those of you unfamiliar with shooting a gun, when you use open or iron sites you need to focus on the end site and line it up in the slot of the rear site. To be honest if you are not used to doing this it takes a while to get used to and it helps to close your non-shooting eye. This is a lot to ask of a six year old and I wanted shooting to be something Sam enjoyed not something that made him feel insufficient. It is really tough always being the youngest. This lead to another trip to the sporting goods store and the purchase of a Red Dot scope. This is a non-magnifying rifle scope that superimposes a red dot on the target. All you have to do is look through the scope put the red dot where you want to shoot and squeeze the trigger. With this addition Sam is doing great and it felt great to me when he lit up with the re-newed self-confidence.

Not sure where we are going to go from here, but we have discussed hunting some rabbits since they are in season now, although Julia wanted to jump right to deer. I explained that we needed a much more powerful rifle for that and we would not be going deer hunting for a number of years. She took solace in the fact that if we got any rabbits she could sew their pelts into cool stuff.