Vern Evans
When my six-year-old son looked at me and said he wanted a rifle, I went and got him a rifle. I’m a big proponent of starting them young and teaching safe gun handling, basic marksmanship and the joy of putting alittle piece of lead into a big target. There is a fairly competent market for small rifles designed to teach smaller shooters how to safely shoot. I shopped around a bit and eventually settled on a Savage Rascal.
The Savage Rascal represents the modern version of a boy’s rifle. A boy’s rifle is a genre of firearm that has been forgotten for years. Back in the day, companies would produce boy’s rifles for dirt cheap prices for kids. It wasn’t seen as a bad thing. If you tried to produce a boy’s rifle and specifically said this is to teach kids marksmanship, you’d have grilling extraordinaire Chuck Schumer calling on the FTC to investigate you.
Savage doesn’t specifically advertise the Rascal to kids. However, its features make it perfect for younger shooters or small-sized shooters.
The Savage Rascal – The Modern Boy’s Rifle
The Rascal is a single-shot, bolt-action .22 LR rifle. One of the features that sold me on the Rascal versus other options was the included peep sights. A lot of the options I looked at locally were setup for optics and didn’t have iron sights. I’m no Luddite, and I like optics, but I wanted to keep the investment minimalist and simple. The interest of a six-year-old often wavers.
The Rascal can accept an optic, and a red dot would likely be the perfect training tool. However, I didn’t want to get ahead of myself. A simple set of peep sights would work well enough to get the kiddo started.
The Rascal weighs less than three pounds with a 16-inch barrel. It’s 30.63 inches long overall, and the length of pull measures out to 11.25 inches. It’s perfectly set up for a petite shooter. The Rascal lacks a magazine of any type and is loaded by simply placing a cartridge on a ‘tongue’ that acts as a guide to the chamber. Smaller hands might be able to place it directly in the chamber, but adult hands are unlikely to fit.
The Rascal series of rifles indeed occupy the simpel category of firearms. They also occupy the cheaper series. I spent $125 on this rifle, and in 2024, this isn’t a bad deal.
Build It, And They Will Come
What started as a gun for my youngest quickly turned into a sport for all of my kids, some of their friends and some kids from the neighborhood who didn’t want to miss out. In short order, I had a line of shooters all wanting to give the gun a spin. Luckily i had a pre-Covid bucket of Remington Gold Bullet that’s perfect for this task.
Shooters as young as six and as old as 13 handled the rifle. We did so safely with two adults watching everything, lots of ears and eyes and a thorough safety brief. The shooters were required to bench the rifle and sit to shoot. The fact that it’s a single-shot bolt action brought me some comfort from such a diverse group of kids.
I was right beside each shooter as they operated the gun, but I liked that it was a single shot, so if an excited potential Annie Oakley hit a target and they tried to spin around in that excitement, the gun was empty. It never happened, but I was still comforted. I know my kids, and they’ve all had a life of gun safety, but I couldn’t say the same for the other kids.
Luckily, they got a lesson, and everyone obeyed the rules. Everyone also had a blast. We shot basic paper targets but quickly moved to old Coke bottles full of water, balloons and a polymer popper before they all settled on a .22 LR dueling tree with the tiniest of targets.
Everyone had a blast. I’ve learned that oftentimes, the more fun kids have, the more willing they are to listen. Once I saw I had a group of safe kids, we moved to standing and even a little kneeling shooting, and the Rascal got passed around a fair bit.
In The Hands of Babes
The Savage Rascal proved the perfect fit for boys and girls aged six to 13. My 13-year-old is a big guy, but handling a gun with a shorter LOP (length of pull) is easier than handling one with too long of an LOP. The Rascal’s lightweight design makes it easy for kiddos to hold and aim. The short design makes it comfy and allows them to lean forward.
Most kids dealing with a gun that’s too big for them lean rearward, and that’s a mess. That’s not a problem with the Rascal. Since it’s comfortable and easy to mount, they can focus on aiming, keeping a steady grip and hitting targets. The peep sight on the Rascal is fairly wide, so they aren’t struggling to look through it.
The gun’s accurate enough that I got kids who have never handled a gun in their entire lives to hit the black of a B8 at 15 yards in just a few tries. In my hands, the Rascal shot straight, but it’s not going to be mistaken for a 1 MOA gun. The Rascal landed half-inch groups at 25 yards with CCI subsonic ammo. It’s accurate enough for its purpose.
The Rest of the Rascal
The peep sight can be adjusted for windage and elevation, but out of the box, the gun was shooting true. The adjustments aren’t precise clicks but rather movements. It’s as simple as loosening a screw and moving the elevation or windage where you need it.
The bolt action is smooth, but it requires a firm pull to get proper ejection. Without a firm pull, it tends to drop the round in the receiver, which requires a quick dump to clear. Extraction was never a problem.
Recoil? What recoil? It’s a kitten through and through. The gun goes bang with most trigger pulls. The Remington Golden Bullet isn’t premium stuff, but it fired the vast majority of the time and cycled correctly.
Specifications
Caliber – .22 LR
Barrel Length – 16.25 in.
Overall Length – 30.63 in.
Weight – 2.71 lbs.
Capacity – 1
MSRP – $169
Where To Buy
Ratings
Accuracy – *** and a half
The Rascal won’t be mistaken for a competition rifle. It shoots straight enough to hit cans at 25 yards and closer.
Reliability – ****
I’ll subtract one star for the ejection issue. It’s a nonissue, but removing the cases from the chamber and ejecting them properly takes a fast throw.
Ergonomics – *****
I’m giving it five stars for its ability to fit smaller shooters. It’s perfectly suited for those little shooters in your life.
Overall – ****
The Savage Rascal is an excellent starter rifle, a great trainer and a worthy successor to the genre of Boy’s rifles.
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