My Wife is 69 and has problems with recoil, so I'm thinking like Jim. A hit with a wad cutter is better than a miss with something with more power.
Besides, McKay Sagebrush says he uses them for his BUG, where his life might depend on them. That's good enough for me!
Virgil B.
Virgil,
I appreciate the Kudos.
I spent the day yesterday with Ken Hackathorn and a select group of revolver aficionados and during the course of conversation we discussed the long term effects of shooting heavy recoiling rounds through handguns. KH, myself and a couple others are all pretty much in agreement that very heavy recoiling rounds are detrimental to making fast and accurate hits. They are also detrimental to the long term health of a shooter in the form of arthritis. I can tell you from years of pounding who knows how many top end 44 magnum and .45 Colt loads through guns that my right wrist does not care for it. In fact even tonight after yesterday's session my right wrist is still sore.
Your wife is much better off shooting wadcutters, and practicing with the same than messing with loads that will hurt her. Plus wadcutters have a very good track record of penetration.
The common untested train of though that a person can train with a light load then load a very heavy one and a person will not notice the severe recoil under the stress of a deadly situation is not a road you want to go down. That is a road to severe failure. People have an extremely difficult time doing even basic tasks under life threatening situations, so adding a possible (and likely) injury to their shooting hand is not something I would recommend. I have seen trained people do pretty poorly under duress, so there is no reason to deliberately handicap your wife by setting her up to fail.
Besides, not too many bad guys are going to take a 148 grain wadcutter in the chest or guts and say "Oh that was only a wadcutter, no big deal"..
They even work in N Frames..
![[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]](https://i.imgur.com/qZzZAd5.jpg)
