Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Recoil injury/damage ?

How real is the potential damage to the retina? Possible concussion? And maybe damage to an already repaired shoulder from the more powerful rifles?

My .375 seems tolerable, kind of like a big push instead of a harsh slap - but even so I don't usually shoot more than 20 cartridges in a single range trip with it.

The real big brutes, like African "stopping rifles" must be far worse... I've shot a .450 Ackley and a .458 Win mag - both were Model 70's and pretty brutal. In comparison a braked .50 BMG rifle didn't recoil bad at all. The blast was ferocious from that beast, but the recoil didn't seem nearly as bad as the .45 Ackley or the .458 Win mag.

A stout-loaded .45/70 Marlin was a pretty vicious kicker too.

Thanks for any info. Guy

I see a retinal surgeon every 6 months. I've asked him about this several times as he is a shooter himself. He knows of no true correlation to shooting and retinal damage. Detached retina rates have not been shown to be higher in shooters vs. non shooters.

Obviously just one man's opinion, but he does know a thing or two about the eye.

Guy, I can report that shooting anything with significant recoil (say, 30-06 or 7 WSM) triggers a relapse of symptoms from the severe concussion I suffered last November. I have to keep round counts down and I limit myself to shooting once a week.

From that I infer that it does "concuss" the brain to some degree. Whether recoil has a negative effect on a non-injured brain, I can't say.

Jeff, muzzle breaks wearing ear muffs is your answer.

Ugh

This doesn't answer your question Guy, but after my AC joint injury this fall I am much more sensitive to Sharp recoil vs big push recoil. That is I can take a sensibly loaded 45/70 or say 375h&h with factory 270gr loads, but shooting a light rifle in anything more than 308 winchester hurts.

I bet JB or Eileen weigh in here.
Some people can take being kicked, some can't.
Gus, if your family has any kind of retinal detachment history, I would pay attention. Or, if you've been concussed like Jeff, it's a factor. But the fact is, lots of people shoot and enjoy the loudenblizters. If you like them, and don't have overt risk factors, then do what you like.
Me, I just don't like being beaten up. So my top end for routine shooting is 30-06, and the only magnums I shoot belong to other people when I'm helping them work up a load.

A scope cut can cause damage to the Optic nerve or heavy recoil might lead to Retinal Detachment in older people. Otherwise i don't see how you could get any other damage unless you have a overload and gas and brass partials get in the eye.

Yeah, I thoroughly enjoy shooting my .375 Number One, and JB is very well acquainted with my rifle...

But I've had some injuries over the years in a rough & tumble life, and wonder about such things a bit. Am still in my mid 50's, more or less and in good shape physically, but a guy gets to wondering sometimes.

Anyone else wants to weigh in, your thoughts are appreciated.

Guy

I've known several people that have been affected by recoil.

First was Bob Brister, who shot tens of thousands of shotshells each year while competing. He had a detached retina that his physician attributed to so much shooting. (As Dirtfarmer has pointed out, there's a lot of disagreement about the effect of recoil on the human body, and a lot of it depends on the interpretation of data.)

Second was a gunsmith friend who passed out in his shop one day. His doctor asked if he was a professional boxer, because his brain showed similar symptoms to a boxer's. My friend has never boxed, but did personally test all the rifles he built, including some real hard kickers. His doctor advised him not to shoot the big rifles anymore, so my buddy found a friend who's real macho to do it. That as several years ago and he hasn't had any problems since. Dunno about his friend.

Eileen started getting reocil headaches a few years ago, from rifles and shotguns that hadn't caused any problem before. There's some disagreement about what causes recoil headaches, but they're definitely related to getting kicked. The most recoil she can take anymore beyond a few shots is from rifles like the .243 and .257 Roberts, and shotshells the equivalent of the 28-gauge.

The problem with trying to link detached retinas to recoil is that there are no and never will be any clinical trials to determine if its a factor or not.

Some people who shoot big bores never get detached retinas and some people who get detached retinas never shoot big bores. The older you get, the greater your chances. For shooters, the older you get, the more you have shot. Any correlation? Who knows?

Like the person above who must have shot well over 100,000 shotshells before having a detached retina, was his risk any different than the person who gets a detached retina without ever shooting a gun in his life? Would he have had a detached retina even if he didn't shoot shotguns all the time? Who knows?

I wonder if there is a larger incidence rate for African PHs to have detached retinas verses non shooters or small bore shooters. Or the incidence rates for professional skeet/trap shooters.

Obviously once you have had a detached retina recoil becomes very important, but its really hard to say what affect it has as a primary cause.

My general rule is if it hurts, don't do it. That threshold is around 416 rem/rigby level for me.

Yep, those are always the questions!

And your general rule is no doubt a good one--except for people who like to be hurt.

When you are healing your brain, you notice what brings on the Bad Times... and it's kind of amazing the things we do that jar our brains that I'd never noticed before. Like splitting wood. I threw myself for a loop a couple weeks ago, doing that. I guess the impact comes up through your arms? Dunno.

Or, think about how if you see something you don't want to remember, how people shake their heads real fast to sort of erase the last few seconds from short-term memory... weird stuff.

I'm moderatly ok with moderate kickers now in moderation... grin... but I shudder at the thought of something like my straight-stock Guide Gun, or my 3-3/4" 12 guage magnum turkey gun.

I suspect that as they dig deeper into this stuff (concussions) they will find that heavy recoil does indeed damage SOME brains. I'm told individual physiology really plays a huge part. I have a large brain (seriously) with less fluid cushioning around it than ideal which likely contributed to the severity of my concussion. I guess some numbnuts have brains with tons of cushioning and are much more resistant.

An association doesn't prove causation. For example, for years it was known that lung disease, heart disease and cancer were associated with smoking tobacco. It took years and mountains of data before a definitive conclusion regarding causation could be made. Causation requires a much higher standard of proof than association.

There seems to be a wide variety of symptoms associated with cumulative trauma to the nervous system. The retina is technically part of the nervous system. More is known about acute, less about the effects of chronic, cummulative trauma.

Why are some affected and others not? That has to do with biological variability. We're all put together differently and tolerate different amounts of trauma. That variability is expressed in probabilities, using bell curves and standard deviations, not too unlike some of our ballistic data. The more diverse the biological sampling and the more subtle the changes being observed and measured, the larger the sample size needed to establish statistical relevance.

So, it may take a very long time to sort this out, as these effects can be very subtle. Some questions may never be conclusively answered. In the mean time, common sense must rule. If shooting, etc., seem to be causing a set of symptoms, caution must the observed and action taken to prevent serious consequences.

Your rule, "if it hurts, don't do it", is actually a very good one.

DF

As far as testing, perhaps a new meaning to "mouse gun"?

I've wondered if there is something in the way that people handle recoil that makes a difference. By that I mean the actual physical way they absorb the recoil with their body.I've noticed that,when shooting heavier recoil firearms,some people tend to really lean into it in an attempt to control the gun.Others,meanwhile,seem to take a more upright and relaxed stance. Watching them shoot, it seems to me that the ones who stand more relaxed and upright exhibit more visible recoil, in that the gun tends to raise up higher and the body move backwards more upon firing. The former seem to absorb the recoil into themselves more by not allowing the gun to move and not allowing their body to move with the gun.
Maybe there's nothing to it, but it seems to me that letting the gun move and letting your body move with it would mitigate some of the effects of the recoil. I read an article many years ago about this,and the author believed that smaller,lighter people actually handled recoil better than larger/heavier people simply because there is less mass for the recoil to act upon. He claimed that heavier and larger people were forced to absorb more of the recoil before their body begins to move,while those with a ligher body mass were moved sooner,thus absorbing less of the recoil into the body.Seems to me like that may actually make sense, but I don't know if that actually bears out in real world situations.

caller bone, 375 h&h and the front tire all looking at a stump with a knot in it. The bone gave.

I seem to remember that both Brister and John Wootters had issues with detached retinas...
I guess that I'd consider both of them to be extreme shooters, in that they both did a lot of work with heavy kickers...

Wootters was a bit of a personal hero, and my favorite writer of the late 70s and early 80s...

i'm 54, and have had my share of mostly minor head injuries... A bicycle wreck in my teens netted me a bit of a concussion which took me a long time to fully recover from, as I recall... Nobody paid it much mind at the time, as it was common for young guys to get their bells rung, one way or another...

I've never aspired to shoot anything like as much as either Brister or Wootters, and i do not worry about head or eye trauma that might be associated with recoil...

I did have a shoulder replaced in 2008, and although recoil, per se, is not an issue, the surgery changed the way that i shoulder and hold a rifle... I have a newfound affection for the exaggerated, or california style monte carlo stock design, on the one rifle i acquired which has it...

Although the data is incomplete, I think it wise to pay attention to John, jeff, Dirtfarmer and others when they tell us thet here is what we did and this is what happened EVEN though we do not for sure know why. This seems like good, no BS reasoning to me. I used to enjoy the loudenboomers, but as I age, the lighter calibers are more appealing and so are the gas operated BARs. jack

We were just discussing Bob Hagel's chronic headaches in another thread and a few of us suggested that his affinity for shooting hot loaded magnums was probably a likely culprit. I still believe that. Also I believe I remember Jim Carmichael talking about someone who got a detached retina from shooting the Elephant rifles.