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It's basic physics. Less recoil expends less energy to shooter and more energy to target.
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Campfire Tracker
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For myself, I never really feel the recoil or muzzle blast when hunting and shooting at an animal. It is there, I know but it is not relevant. Off the bench, it is another matter. The 9.3X62 with heavy loads and the 300H&H with heavies, about 10 to 15 rounds .. Then I know I am going to "feel" it and shots start to go down hill. I am accurate with them, but I do believe that recoil and blast matter. Practice, practice and know your limit. I as well have seen newbies with the biggest badest magnum fail horribly at game when in the fields and the old guy with the "puny" cartridge get the animal with no fuss.
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Campfire 'Bwana
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Campfire 'Bwana
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It's basic physics. Less recoil expends less energy to shooter and more energy to target.
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I have always believed that muzzle blast is a greater contributor to flinch...
It was my observation that perceived recoil caused more flinch than actual recoil. If a shooter believes he will be belted before he takes the shot, he will be convinced he was right after the shot.
I think you are right there. The overall effect tends to be a combination of factors including noise and also what is happening between the ears of the shooter - mute witness to which is the fact that most don't even notice recoil when making a shot on game. Shooting static targets at the range seems to let these things become a distraction. How you hold the rifle plays a part too and this may be a part of the problem for beginners or those who have poor technique - and perhaps those who tense up expecting to be belted make things worse for themselves just by doing that. Bottom line though is that you need to be able to put the bullet through something vital, and that is less likely with a rifle that you find hard to shoot.
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It's basic physics. Less recoil expends less energy to shooter and more energy to target.
Good question.
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Campfire 'Bwana
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Campfire 'Bwana
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How does less recoil deliver more energy to target?
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How does less recoil deliver more energy to target? Its really rather simple..... You always position for the shot so you can use the counter rotation of the earth to your advantage. It pulls the rifle away from the shoulder gravitationally while at the same time slinging the animal toward the bullet because the earth is spinning at over 2000 mph. Shesh...you'd think a mathman would know this stuff  Shod
Last edited by Shodd; 11/28/14.
The 6.5 Swede, Before Gay Was Ok
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Campfire 'Bwana
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Campfire 'Bwana
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I've heard of loaded questions, but now we're into loaded answers. 
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I think much of it is that many hunters are too civilized, or domesticated. This dampens the 'killer' instinct. Deep down we do not want to kill, because of our disassociation with meat and how we get it. Farmers and country folk have less of an issue with this therefore the caliber of rifle is less of a concern. Those of us that have no mental issue with it tend to be more successful.
Adalwolf
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Campfire 'Bwana
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Campfire 'Bwana
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a lot of what is being said here, I've seen over the last 12 years or so, handloading ammo in various calibers for kids when they are beginning hunters... I sorta got started with observations over at our local range... typical was a 10 to 12 year old, that was given Grandpa's 30/06... dad would taken him out to shoot it, and then get angry as hell at the kid for him getting intimidated due to the gun kicking the crap out of him... I had pretty much in my old age, figured out that one doesn't need a cannon to down a deer...also 90% of all game is taken within 100 yds and 99% is taken within 200 yds or less...so I was asking myself, why does one need a 500 yd load, to take a darn deer at 100 to 200 yds... So with the pair of those concepts in my noggin, I decided to take a closer look at the reduced loads Speer had in their manuals...doing alot of testing also with bullet penetration capabilities at different velocities into different mediums.. I started noticing a lot of stuff that was happening that wasn't in the hunting mags and the reload manuals... I came to the conclusion that the reason the 30/30 has hung on for so long, as it covers a lot of what the average guy really needs... so I started loading stuff to 30/30 speeds... Kids and women really responded well to the reduced recoil and blast....what was really funny, is that once some of these dads had their kids try these reduced loads at the range and saw how well their kids did with them, they would ask me how much would it cost to have me load some up for their kids... My policy always was, since it was for a kid, if the dad bought the components, I'd load them for the boy or girl at no charge... just passing on to the next generation of shooters... What was funny was after loading up a batch of ammo for a kid, the dad would call me up in a week or two and ask for some more... I'd ask if their son had already shot the ammo up, frequently they would reply NO... they shot a couple of them and liked the lack of recoil, that they wanted to have me load some up for them... I usually would if it didn't get too crazy close to deer season... I've used a lot of these reduced loads myself, for deer hunting locally...last really good sized black tail I took weighed about 205 to 210 lbs on the hoof...he was taken with a heart shot at 50 yds or so...I'd seen this animal a couple of seasons over the years and he was a wylie darn buck... He was taken with a 7 x 57... with a charge of 28 grains of SR 4759 and a 115 grain Speer HP...Recoil felt less than a 223... here is why the deer dropped with a 115 grain Varmint Bullet, was due to shot placement and the Varmint bullet performance at lower speeds... ![[Linked Image]](http://www.hunt101.com/data/504/medium/Deer_2008_Heart_004.jpg) Although using a different powder ( Blue Dot) and a 130 grain Sierra SP...this is the same 7 x 57, and here is the results from 100 yds with it...charge was 22.5 grains of Blue Dot.. Rifle is a Model 70 Featherweight, chambered in "7mm Mauser" as stamped on the barrel... ![[Linked Image]](http://www.hunt101.com/data/500/medium/LS_Graduation_Car_Show_317.jpg) So lack of recoil, on this rifle as an example, shows how shot placement is made a lot easier... and if you look at a trajectory chart in some of the reload manuals, you will see, that is a bullet ( regardless of Weight or caliber), if the MV is in the 2250 to 2300 fps range.. if zeroed 3.5 inches high at 100 yds, it will be pretty much dead on at 200 and about 3.5 inches low at 230 to 240 yds or so.. equate that with the fact that an average antelope is 14 inches from back bone to breast bone ( regardless of weight), cut that in half you have 7 inches...consider a trajectory that is calculated at 3.5 inches high to 3.5 low, all one has to do is hold the rifle steady, and you can aim at hair.. pull the trigger, and you should not have to do any compensation for trajectory out to just short of 250 yds... then return to consider that most game is taken at 100 yds or less and definitely 200 yds or less, you have an awfully capable load, especially matching the bullet to the impact velocity speeds... no advocating here of anything, just offering food for thought... it definitely helps kids and women with shooting accuracy and shot placement made easier.... and if we can think outside the box, it'll probably work for the most macho of Campfire Members also...
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Campfire Tracker
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Because information coming from a different source is often received more willingly, I've let my two older daughters read the pertinent replies in this thread which explain the reality of flinching and how to "fix" it in the short-term. When we're working with their 20 gauge slug guns or .243 Win and .260 Rem, , even with reduced loads, it's more recoil than either of them like, though Seafire's Blue Dot loads are a God-send in the rifles. I always have the option of loading their guns for them and I'll mix in a fired shell to check for follow-through and flinching. They have not fully understood why I take away the 20 gauge and the .243 Win when I see them flinch and had them the .22LR if they want to keep shooting. My explanations are the same as all of yours, but someone other than dad saying it can make all the difference.  This has evolved into an excellent discussion out what I thought was a trolling OP. I obviously thought wrong.
Selmer "Daddy, can you sometime maybe please go shoot a water buffalo so we can have that for supper? Please? And can I come along? Does it taste like deer?" - my 3-year old daughter
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Campfire Tracker
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a lot of what is being said here, I've seen over the last 12 years or so, handloading ammo in various calibers for kids when they are beginning hunters... I sorta got started with observations over at our local range... typical was a 10 to 12 year old, that was given Grandpa's 30/06... dad would taken him out to shoot it, and then get angry as hell at the kid for him getting intimidated due to the gun kicking the crap out of him... I had pretty much in my old age, figured out that one doesn't need a cannon to down a deer...also 90% of all game is taken within 100 yds and 99% is taken within 200 yds or less...so I was asking myself, why does one need a 500 yd load, to take a darn deer at 100 to 200 yds... So with the pair of those concepts in my noggin, I decided to take a closer look at the reduced loads Speer had in their manuals...doing alot of testing also with bullet penetration capabilities at different velocities into different mediums.. I started noticing a lot of stuff that was happening that wasn't in the hunting mags and the reload manuals... I came to the conclusion that the reason the 30/30 has hung on for so long, as it covers a lot of what the average guy really needs... so I started loading stuff to 30/30 speeds... Kids and women really responded well to the reduced recoil and blast....what was really funny, is that once some of these dads had their kids try these reduced loads at the range and saw how well their kids did with them, they would ask me how much would it cost to have me load some up for their kids... My policy always was, since it was for a kid, if the dad bought the components, I'd load them for the boy or girl at no charge... just passing on to the next generation of shooters... What was funny was after loading up a batch of ammo for a kid, the dad would call me up in a week or two and ask for some more... I'd ask if their son had already shot the ammo up, frequently they would reply NO... they shot a couple of them and liked the lack of recoil, that they wanted to have me load some up for them... I usually would if it didn't get too crazy close to deer season... I've used a lot of these reduced loads myself, for deer hunting locally...last really good sized black tail I took weighed about 205 to 210 lbs on the hoof...he was taken with a heart shot at 50 yds or so...I'd seen this animal a couple of seasons over the years and he was a wylie darn buck... He was taken with a 7 x 57... with a charge of 28 grains of SR 4759 and a 115 grain Speer HP...Recoil felt less than a 223... here is why the deer dropped with a 115 grain Varmint Bullet, was due to shot placement and the Varmint bullet performance at lower speeds... Although using a different powder ( Blue Dot) and a 130 grain Sierra SP...this is the same 7 x 57, and here is the results from 100 yds with it...charge was 22.5 grains of Blue Dot.. Rifle is a Model 70 Featherweight, chambered in "7mm Mauser" as stamped on the barrel... So lack of recoil, on this rifle as an example, shows how shot placement is made a lot easier... and if you look at a trajectory chart in some of the reload manuals, you will see, that is a bullet ( regardless of Weight or caliber), if the MV is in the 2250 to 2300 fps range.. if zeroed 3.5 inches high at 100 yds, it will be pretty much dead on at 200 and about 3.5 inches low at 230 to 240 yds or so.. equate that with the fact that an average antelope is 14 inches from back bone to breast bone ( regardless of weight), cut that in half you have 7 inches...consider a trajectory that is calculated at 3.5 inches high to 3.5 low, all one has to do is hold the rifle steady, and you can aim at hair.. pull the trigger, and you should not have to do any compensation for trajectory out to just short of 250 yds... then return to consider that most game is taken at 100 yds or less and definitely 200 yds or less, you have an awfully capable load, especially matching the bullet to the impact velocity speeds... no advocating here of anything, just offering food for thought... it definitely helps kids and women with shooting accuracy and shot placement made easier.... and if we can think outside the box, it'll probably work for the most macho of Campfire Members also... These loads are great, thanks. When (if) I get set up for loading at the new house I'll give these a try. I'm sure the pigs won't know the difference between these and "regular" loads, and it'll help when practicing in the field.
"An archer sees how far he can be from a target and still hit it, a bowhunter sees how close he can get before he shoots." It is certainly easy to use that same line of thinking with firearms. -- Unknown
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Definitely.
A lot of shooters believe a flinch is all mental, and can be overcome by practice and concentration. To a certain extent that's true of an "early-onset" flinch, caused by introducing somebody who doesn't know much about shooting to a firearm that hurts them. A lot of people do this inadvertently, because they don't realize not everybody feels the same things when a firearm goes off. This kind of flinch can usually be overcome by sufficient practice with a firearm that doesn't hurt.
But what might be called a long-term flinch is caused by plenty of popped primers, as Battue stated. One of the greatest professional shotgunners of his era, Bob Brister, suffered from this kind of flinch, simply because he was addicted to shooting. He shot so much his brain eventually subconsciously refused to pull the trigger, because his body had taken so many rounds of punishment over the decades. He eventually went to both lighter-recoiling shotguns and a release trigger, but eventually even that solution doesn't last.
I once hunted ducks and doves in Argentina with Bob when he was around 70, and had been shooting a release trigger in competition for a while. For that trip he brought a shotgun with a standard trigger, because he worried somebody might pick up his release-trigger shotgun and have an accidental discharge. He shot pretty well during the first, duck-hunting part of the trip, because the limit was "only" 25 a day and he didn't use many more than 25 rounds to kill them.
But when we switched to doves, with unlimited shooting, by the first noon his brain/body connection often refused to pull the trigger. I once watched him stagger forward four paces while he attempted to use his whole body to pull the trigger, and it just didn't happen. And that is not unusual in shotgunners who pop 10,000 primers or more a month, as Bob did.
I had a brush with the subconscious effects of cumulative recoil maybe 10 years ago when I went on a prairie dog shoot with a company that had just introduced a new varmint rifle. The rifle was actually designed for coyotes, with a medium-weight barrel chambered for .22-250, weighing about 9 pounds with a scope, but it's far easier to test new varmint rifles on numerous prairie dogs, rather than relatively few coyotes.
We started shooting about 10 o'clock one morning, and aside from a little lunch break, shot until late afternoon. Then we got up the next morning and started all over again. By mid-morning the .22-250 started feeling more like a .375 H&H every time it went off, and I realized I'd started flinching. Yeah, I could overcome it by concentrating, but shooting had really ceased to be fun. I switched to a .22 rimfire and the flinch went away.
On any such test I make it habit to put my fired cases in a duffel bag, in order to keep a round count. It turned out I'd fired about 600 rounds of .22-250 ammo. So now I know my 24-hour limit of what most people would consider light rifle recoil. That's a very interesting post, John, especially the part about the accumulating affect of recoil on developing a flinch. I have a question, though: How do military snipers/sharpshooters overcome it? They probably shoot as much as anyone, and their life literally depends on their ability to connect shot with target. And, more generally, what's the secret to overcoming a flinch if lighter recoiling guns aren't always the solution? Thanks.
"An archer sees how far he can be from a target and still hit it, a bowhunter sees how close he can get before he shoots." It is certainly easy to use that same line of thinking with firearms. -- Unknown
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Campfire Kahuna
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Campfire Kahuna
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Here are some guesses:
1) Most snipers are young.
2) Most U.S. sniper rifles are chambered for the 7.62X51 (.308 Winchester), and those for bigger cartridges are mostly braked.
3) The rifles tend to be heavier than many hunting rifles.
4) While snipers practice a lot, I doubt many shoot as much as a hard-core shotgunning competitor. And when in the field, they sure don't shoot as much as a shotgunner during a weekend competition.
“Montana seems to me to be what a small boy would think Texas is like from hearing Texans.”
John Steinbeck
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Campfire Ranger
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These little nuggets are somewhat amusing too. Flinching, whether an acquired habit or a natural response to noise and recoil, is real and there is not much truth in these gems...
It's basic physics. Less recoil expends less energy to shooter and more energy to target.
The flinch develops at the bench, not in the field.
I never notice recoil while out in the field.
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Some friends and relatives of mine in Central Texas used to hunt deer in the 1960s and 70s, and decided they would like to hunt varmints (coyotes, bobcats, foxes) on the off seasons. Some couldn't afford two rifles and didn't want to shoot coyotes with their hard-kicking 30-06s, so they traded for .243s. They found that their success on deer went way up. The off-season practice with the one rifle, shooting smaller, often-moving targets, made it much easier to make vital hits on deer. After all, a fox's whole chest is about the size of a deer's heart.
They simply weren't willing to practice as much with the larger rifles. I think most everybody enjoys practice more with the rifles that kick less.
Less kick doesn't mean the rifle is more deadly, but less kick means the shooter gets more practice, and more practice DOES mean the SHOOTER is more deadly.
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Hence, the 7x57 for big game.........
I feel like Corleone. Every time I get away, it just pulls me back.
When truth is ignored, it does not change an untruth from remaining a lie.
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Since Ingwe is out of touch, I'll answer for him: Well, yeah...!!!
"An archer sees how far he can be from a target and still hit it, a bowhunter sees how close he can get before he shoots." It is certainly easy to use that same line of thinking with firearms. -- Unknown
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Campfire Ranger
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Campfire Ranger
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I have shot skeet and clays with a friend who has shoots several times a week year round. Many rifle shooters dont understand this means one to several hundred rounds per occasion. Tom is a great shot and does not miss much. Except when he cant pull the trigger. It is funny to see him all hunched up taking a step toward the departing "bird and his whole hand is jerking, but the trigger is not being pulled.
Parents who say they have good kids..Usually don't!
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Back in the 70's my family hunted a lot. We used the 250Savage, 257Roberts and the 7x57. My brother always had to have the biggest and baddest so he went down and bought a 264W western w/I believe 22in barrel. He wanted me to go and help him sight it in. He had some 140gr Winchester PP's and we proceeded to the range. Not really ever having shot anything bigger than an Enfield 30-06 I volunteered to go first. The recoil was brutal due in part to poor stock design but also the caliber. What I noticed after 3 shots was that the muzzle blast bothered me as much as the recoil...abrupt and brutal. There was a short period of time after that I could not shoot even the little 250Savage w/o flinching and squinting at the shot. I have since learned the stock design has a lot to do w/recoil but nothing helps w/muzzle blast and a brake just makes it worse. I have since shot lots of magnums w/no ill affect up to the 375 but my mind always goes back to the 264M experience. Weird! powdr
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