I agree with this 100% on caliber and rifle. If you wanna spend the extra money get her a ruger m77 Hawkeye compact. I ran across a deal on one about 6 or 7 years ago with a Leopold VX3 3-9x50 for only $400 dollars and scooped it up immediately. Now that I have a son which will be 5 in April one day when he's old enough this is what he will be shooting to start off with. I started off with a Remington 700 BDL in 243 and killed a ton of deer with it never losing one so its definently big enough to get the job done.