@HK thank you for another great suggestion. @aarond thank you for such a detailed and very informative post. I will be looking at the henry and the CZ. Thank you all who contributed. I have a nice winchester M69A but it would hurt for you others to watch h shoot it. Although he's not terrible at it at all. He is determined. Part of this was to get him something that was HIS and could grow with and admire as his first REAL rifle. So I think I'll scrap the super small youth idea. He's just such a small fella its a hard hurdle to jump. I keep telling him to eat that dinner....