A lot of this recoil terror seems like a myth to me. I got caught up in it a little bit back in 2009, when I bought the .340 Wby. I had been shooting that 300WM well for decades by then. But the writing on the .340 Wby was mostly that it had such killer recoil that only a few elite persons overdosing on steroids and Percocet could handle it. When I was waiting on the rifle to come, and choosing a scope and rings, etc., I was contemplating having a 1lb mercury tube installed in the stock to reduce the recoil to something along the lines of a 155mm artillery piece.
I couldn’t find a gunsmith that would do that in a timely manner. So, reluctantly, I took it to the range, donned the recoil pad, and let loose with some of the lighter, 200gr – 210gr loads, expecting my shoulder to be instantly dislocated. Bang!!! Wait? What? That was nothing! Loaded up the 250gr Partitions, and kept going for about two hours. I had been influenced by decades of magazine and internet writings about the — to me-nonexistent — crazy recoil of that cartridge.
It just seems like a self-fulfilling dialog. If people read hundreds of times about how a normal man can’t handle a 300 WM, but he can shoot a 6.5 Creedmoor with NASA-like precision, many will believe it. I don’t anymore.
After my 16-yr-old son first shot the 300 WM and 7mm Wby this year, with sub-MOA groups, I told him that, supposedly, some men can’t do that. He said: “Really? Why?”
Given all of that, I did start him off with the .243 from ages 8 to early-16 to get him really good at shooting before he moved up. My 13-yr-old still uses the .243.
About like writers saying that short barreled revolvers kicked less than shorter barrels, that's never been my experience
I got banned on another web site for a debate that happened on this site. That's a first
