Just imagine being able to pull the same trigger your whole life, from your first kill to your last. Learning to take pride in the care you provide cleaning and maintaining your rifle/ML/shotgun. Sure Encore is more expensive, but what do you do with a youth model when your done, sell it?...no way! that's the gun your child used to learn with and hopefully made their first harvest, so instead it sits in the back of the gun case collecting dust. Get an Encore and have the stock cut and barrel cut down to fit and then when he his older buy him a new barrel for $200 and stock for less than $100. This way he willhave a long time to get the feel of the trigger and break it in.Even if money is a concern,you buy him the frame and have other relatives buy other parts of the set up...fore arm,barrel, butt stock, scope, etc...