Some are nibbling around the ket issues IMHO...which, to me are that recoil does not effect your whole body....which explains why little lightweight folks can manage it(sometimes) and big people cannot(again, sometimes)......generalizations about "toughness",body weight,gender,etc have utterly nothing to do with it....and neither does physical fitness(the more weight lifting you do the more recoil you can manage,which is "bull")....
What is affected by recoil are those body parts in touch with the rifle,or directly affected by the recoil, ie, head, face neck,hands and shouler area(if I left anything out lemme know
As you age, you better keep an eye on your retina's too, which are not quite as well put together as they were when you were younger.
Also, the way you shoot.....dealing with a very hard recoiling rifle requires greater muscle tensio to control the rifle in recoil than a lighter kicking one....sometimes, for some people a lighter hold allows better more accurate shooting than something that will fly out of your hands if you fail to get a monkey grip on it.....
And heavy rcoil is detrimental to accurate shooting,most especially over long strings,or from awkward and unsteady field positions.
If you don't believe this set up a 3" dot at 50 yards,shoot it off hand with your 22 rimfire.....it is no trick to hit it every time,off hand. Try the same thing with your 30/06 and see what happens.....
Of course for a couple of shots in the field,all this will not matter much......
I could pick up anything from a 22 rimfire to a 458 and do well with it....but that doesn't mean I want to, or should...generally the less the better especially if you shoot a lot.....I have found there is a lot of dishonesty among riflemen when it comes to how much recoil they can truly manage.JMHO
