In the rural Pennsylvania Dutch culture, kids are seen as small adults and are expected to contribute the communal effort to the extent of their abilities. When I was about 10 years old (1956), I was “issued” an old junk 10 gauge hammergun that was about as tall as I was and assigned to guard the garden.
I still have that old 10 gauge (the middle gun in the pic - the upper gun was my deer rifle as a kid and the bottom one is a 16 bore model 12 my grandfather gave me for getting all A's in school when I was 12 years old).
Except for three years spent overseas as a prisoner of the US Army in the late 1960's, I've been a hunter and shooter ever since. I've moved on to "fine" guns and my dogs and I travel all over the country hunting birds, but groundswatting stuff in the garden is where it all started.
