If you haven't bought him anything yet, I have some suggestions. I've trained shooters for years, so when my daughter was ready for her 1st year of actually carrying the rifle, I let her use a pet 7mm08 I'd had for years. To make a long story short, she got 2 clean 1 shot kills her very 1st year with it! She's claimed that little 7mm08 ever since! By the way, she was the ripe old age of 11 at that time. I consider the 7mm08 to be arguably THE best all-round whitetail cartridge EVER designed of all time! Very mild recoil, extremely accurate, easy to reload for, not load picky at all in every rifle I've ever seen shot or shot personally, pretty flat trajectory, and it kills all out of proportion & well beyond what it's modest paper ballistics would suggest! It's THE perfect diameter bullet for deer hunting, being big enough to definitely do the job EVERY time, have enough weight to go as deep as needed or depending on bullet choice, but yet don't even have over 2/3 the felt recoil of the mild recoiling .308, and you can even choose elk loads as long as you stay within reasonable range, and for sure it'll do the job further out than a youth has any business shooting!