I've read a few books on stock design and it seems even the "experts" disagree somewhat on what is required to tame recoil. This is just my opinion and I haven't shot a ton of hard recoiling rifles like some here, but enough to know when it is uncomfortable. My experience is that stocks with lots of drop at the toe and heel and a Monte Carlo rollover type cheekpiece with the proper cast will direct recoil up and away from your cheek, which reduces the immediate impact of recoil and the up and away action rolls the recoil across a larger area of the shoulder to dissipate the felt recoil. I'm just guessing here as I'm not expert but the early Weatherby rifles had this style of stock as well as several of the present rifles I've handled with rollover cheek pieces and they seem to be a lot more comfortable to shoot to me. About the worst to shoot IME are the Model 94, Marlin 1895, and Savage 110 stocks, which all seem to have fairly straight back designs in their layout with very little cast and a cheek area that comes right up at your cheekbone when firing....
