Geo,. Think about a 28 or a 20 loaded like a 28. The 3/4 ounce 20 loads work well and recoil is very manageable. I started my boys off with a Remington 1100 Standard weight 20 ga. with a barrel which some moron had opened up the gas ports on. He sold it because it kept breaking parts. I figured out what he had done and went to ultra light loads. It works perfectly. Standard loads worked the action too fast and caused parts to break. Never figured out why he thought he was smarter than the people who made the gun in deciding what size hole was needed to operate the gun. So it has became my starter gun for ladies and kids alike now. Would work with loads as light as 5/8 ounce shot but the 3/4 ounce loads hit just like they do in a 28 and 20 shells are real easy to find.
Stan. a .410 is fine for a starter gun as your good looking grandson proves. It is not my first choice. But he had a unfair advantage, you. I see too many kids stuck with fathers who barely can shoot themselves and have no ability to teach them how to shoot correctly. Worse in their eyes dad is the expert so whatever he tells them, no matter how wrong, is taken as the right thing to do. You gave him lesson number two, know your range. Lesson number one is gun safety at all times.
Had a kid shooting with his father, in my field this year who shot 50 shells with zero dead birds and this field had several hundred birds in it. His father sent him down to me, I think so he his father could get his own limit.
After talking about safety we got down to business of range. Showed him my weed markers, 20-25 yards out. Everything outside them was too far I explained to him. He had been shooting at too many birds, way outside of his effective range. Third shot he killed a bird. Never mentioned lead other than slightly in front of the bird. With the rest of his last box he killed eight birds. I have a strict three box of shell limit in my fields. If you can't kill 15 with 75 shells you can't go back to the truck. Shoot better next time. In fact I had a two box limit on fields when the limit was 12 birds. Friends claimed I was too hard on them. Maybe but sky busting is not a thing I like at all.
Two weeks later the same kid got his first limit with two boxes and had shells to spare. He was shooting a 20, which was fine for his needs. His problem was his father, who needed 75 shells to get 15 birds, with years of practice and that was all he knew how to pass on. Safety, range and slight lead will kill a lot of doves which will make a lot of kids happy as heck. Give me a year with that kid and he will be taking his father lunch money shooting.
I like 1100's for starter guns. Used they don't cost that much. Easy to repair. Easy to find a cut down stock to fit people of all sizes. Works as a gas operated single shot. You can progress to two shells easily. They come in all the gauges you want and I have them oh hand.
