No one is born knowing how to use a rifle, how to read wind conditions, or a fresh rabbit run as opposed to simply an area of ground looking appealing.
That’s why every old hunter sitting at the local diner had to begin somewhere, staring into the barrel of their gun and quietly wishing that the soda can they were aiming for would fall!
If hunting seems like it’s some sort of private club with a secret password, don’t be worried. The “handshake” does not exist; there are only hours spent shooting your weapon, waiting patiently and being willing to appear somewhat silly while you develop the basic skills needed to hunt.
Let’s learn more.
Start Where You Stand: The Backyard Is Your Classroom
Here’s the money-saving fact many first-time shooters never discover until too late about what really matters: the shooting itself is irrelevant.
Really?!
Yes, really.
What you really want to develop instead for your shooting skills are things such as trigger pull, proper breathing, a consistent cheek position, and not flinching when a loud noise occurs. All of these can be developed well ahead of time prior to firing a single shot. The best and least expensive place to begin developing these skills is twenty-five yards away from the rear door.
If you’ve ever thought about developing your shooting skills using a pellet gun, this is the perfect time. Quality break-barrel pellet guns come in two primary calibers (.177 and .22) by manufacturers such as Crosman & Gamo. These types of pellet rifles are nearly silent so they won’t bother the people living next door, and a pack of 500 pellets will cost you less than a Quarter Pounder and fries at McDonald’s. That means you can fire over 100 shots per day on your backyard range using one of these pellet rifles.
Build a safe backstop from a thick cardboard box packed with old phone books or a dedicated pellet trap, set a target at ten yards, and then get in regular air gun practice. Every pellet teaches the hands and eyes to agree with each other, and that agreement is basically the entire ballgame!
Make Friends With Your Miss
Missing is not failing. Missing is information.
If your group goes off target (such as low and to the left) when you’re a right handed shooter, the gun isn’t possessed. It’s possible something has changed in how you hold the rifle, how you breathe, or at the end of your pull back you jerked the trigger.
A low-left shot by a right-handed person, for instance, usually indicates that you are pulling the trigger quickly and/or flinching before the recoil occurs..
Why Small Game Is the Perfect First Hunt
Smart beginner hunters learn the basics of hunting by hunting small game. Rabbits, squirrels and mourning doves are all good examples of “forgiving” animals for beginners to hunt.
With small game there is less at stake, simpler equipment needed, longer hunting seasons (usually starting in late summer/early fall and continuing until winter) and most likely closer to your house as well.
All of these aspects provide many opportunities for those who enjoy the basic skills they have developed while learning to hunt small game. Squirrels don’t stay frozen on trees or branches if a hunter rushes up to them. They can freeze solidly to the tree or freeze when you snap a twig or move too quickly, and just like that, they’ll be gone behind the tree before you know it.
Picking Your First Real Firearm
At some point, the pellet rifle will be replaced with “the real deal” in the form of a real firearm (such as a .22 LR, more on this right below) and doing your research on this topic can save you a lot of grief later.
It’s tempting to go for something large and impressive when buying a firearm, but for small game, be wise and resist this impulse! An oversized magnum that hurts your shoulder and depletes your bank account teaches you nothing but a lifelong flinch. A .22 rifle, on the other hand, is more than sufficient for practically all small game hunting needs.
What really matters in terms of fit is length of pull, or how far the buttplate (back) of the firearm sits away from the trigger. Ideally, you want the trigger finger to be able to reach the trigger comfortably without being strained or cramped.
A reputable dealer of sporting firearms can match a first-timer to something balanced and manageable instead of a beast that gets bought once and dreaded forever. The right firearm is the one that gets picked up often, not the one gathering dust because shooting it is no fun.
The Humble .22 Earns Its Keep
If there were an official mascot in terms of calibers for new hunters, it would have to be the .22 Long Rifle. This rifle cartridge is very inexpensive when purchased by the box/round ($10 to $15) and has a recoil so mild that it will make you almost laugh.
In addition to being cost effective in terms of ammo expense, the .22 LR is also able to take small game such as rabbits and squirrels at ranges up to fifty yards or more. When combined with a modest scope, a bolt-action or semi-auto .22 makes going to the range affordable for most budgets, which allows the shooter (like you!) to spend more time at the range practicing, shooting their way to better skills quicker, and developing an interest in going to the range.
Drilling the Fundamentals Until They Stick
Shooting like you’re a pro, and owning a gun to be able to do so, aren’t exactly in the same league.
There’s an awful lot of practice and focus that separates the people who can actually hit something from all those other folks. This is where your “backyard tools” earn their money. Cheap and repetitive shots are what largely develop the muscle memory that will help hold everything together once that one real shot comes along, and your heart starts pounding.
Spending an evening practicing with BB guns on a row of cans is not childish;’ it’s downright shrewd. It reinforces stance, sight picture, and trigger press for pennies, and the whole drill fits in the time it takes a frozen pizza to bake.
Dry Practice Is Free and Wildly Underrated
Dry firing safely, checking each time to confirm that the round has been removed from the room and double checking the chamber after every shot is precisely what allows for a shooter to run through all of the steps involved in mounting, aligning the sights, and pressing the trigger at no cost.
Using a coin or an empty shell case placed on the front sight and then attempting to pull the trigger while keeping it balanced can be used as a test as well. If done correctly and consistently, this will help eliminate any jerkiness in your shooting form which commonly ruins your live fire. It’s free, quiet, and, honestly, quite amazing.
Stretching Every Dollar at the Range
Range time is the engine of improvement, but ammunition costs climb faster than anyone expects. The good news is there are honest ways to shoot more without spending more.
Roll Your Own
Once the basics feel solid, learning how to reload ammunition becomes a genuine money-saver and a satisfying craft in its own right. With a press, a set of dies, and components like brass, primers, powder, and bullets, a shooter can build centerfire rounds for a fraction of factory prices and tune each load to a specific rifle.
Saved brass then gets cleaned, resized, and reused many times over, and every reloaded round is a few reclaimed cents headed straight back into more practice.
Customize as Skill Grows
As confidence builds, small upgrades make a familiar rimfire even more pleasant to shoot and easier to master. A crisper trigger, a threaded barrel, or a better stock can sharpen accuracy without buying a whole new gun, and outfitting a dependable rimfire setup is precisely what keeps a beloved .22 feeling fresh through years of range days. Better tools never replace fundamentals, but they make logging reps a lot more enjoyable.
Heading Afield With Confidence
Eventually, you will have done your part with the backyard and the bench. Now it’s time to move on into the woods for the first hunt!
However, early hunts are often anything but glamorous. Cold fingers, an empty game bag, and a certain squirrel who has taken this hunt upon himself to mock every single hunter out there. This is all just part of paying your dues.
Early outings should be viewed as both scouting and hunting trips. Taking note of where rabbits take cover at the edge of brambles, when squirrels come to eat from oak trees, and how the terrain moves animals will turn future hunting trips into something way more productive than simply wandering around and wishing.
Room to Grow
For plenty of hunters, small game is the gateway to bigger pursuits, and there is no shame in eyeing a deer season down the line. When that itch shows up, gearing up with the right tools for deer hunting makes the leap feel a lot less daunting. The fundamentals built on tin cans and bushytails carry over directly, just with a larger animal and a longer, colder sit.
A Few Parting Words
Hunting is not just a sport for people with money or time. It’s for anyone who will begin small, be humble, and, ultimately, just show up!
Start at your backyard fence (if it can be done safely, of course), perfect the dull basics so you can do them without thinking, and from there, and let the wilderness continue to teach you. That first rabbit you harvest will taste good, and the path to harvesting that first rabbit remains open to anyone brave enough to put their first pellet into their rifle and carefully pull the trigger.
