Dove season has been a little different this year for me, missed opening day (first time in 15 years) and the 2nd shoot due to C-vid. Made up for that last weekend though with a good shooting performance and the dog did really well retrieving. The boys did well shooting my empties with the BB gun and practicing safe gun handling.


Real reason for this post is my oldest Colton (6) will turn 7 in a couple weeks and he has been watching anything fishing or hunting on YouTube he can. Been asking us for the past few weeks for his own gun for his birthday. To this point hasn’t shot anything other than BB gun and pellet gun, so I told him we’d start working our way up to the different recoil guns. Well rewind to Saturday and a buddy shows up with a Tristar .410 semi auto that he just bought for his daughter (who went to football game) and Colton is entranced by it, asks if he can shoot it and he obliges. We get out in the field and he can barely contain his excitement. Loaded 1 shell into the gun and he is ready, first bird comes by and he flips the safety and squeezes the trigger *miss* but the grin on his face was from ear to ear. We load him another shell and get him ready for the next one. By this time he thinks he’s a professional and asks me why I don’t have my gun loaded yet. His 2nd shot was a miss, but 3rd times the charm and he knocks one down all by himself on the wing. Lots of high fives ensued. This particular gun is still a hair big for him but he handled it really well especially for the first time shooting a shotgun. Even made me proud to hear him say one time that he didn’t shoot at a bird because someone was sitting over in that direction. Overall he did really well safety wise too, only once or twice did I catch him with safety off after he decided not to shoot at a bird too far. Barrel never once went in an unsafe direction.

He’s been coming to the dove field with me since he was 11 months old (with mom’s help) and by himself since he was 2, crazy to watch them grow up and mature to the point where they are starting to shoot too. He’s mad the season is out and we have to wait a few weeks to do it again.

What he doesn’t know is I have had a Mossberg .410 pump in the gun cabinet waiting for him for the last year.

I’ll be starting a go fund me for .410 shells though.






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