My dad borrowed my neighbor's sxs .410 and let me use it on a squirrel hunt when I was in the third grade. I got a squirrel and wanted to own a sxs from that day on. I was 14 before I actually owned one. It was a lousy gun, but I did become a decent wing shot with it and would have used it as my main shotgun for decades if it hadn't fallen apart.

I bought most of my early guns from a good friend of my father who was a sporting goods rep. I knew that he was a Garcia rep and he got me several reels. What I didn't know at the time was that Garcia was the USA importer for Beretta in those days and he could have gotten me a GR2 for about half of retail and I could have grown up using a decent gun. Oh well