Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Retinal detachments from recoil?

Thanks for your good wishes mate. Yeah, pucker is certainly the word. Based on my experience I can't stress enough that if you do start seeing any of the symptoms you need to get it checked out straight away. I can stand my present level of discomfort a lot better than I could stand losing the sight of that eye.

Daniel,

Glad you got the tear handled early on.
You'll be back to normal in short order.
I'd be moving away from shotgun shooting with the 12 gage, and look into using a 20, or 28 gage for future clays shooting.
Nearly all of my problem was 12 gage skeet and trap shooting from 1960 to 1993, when my retina tore. Most weeks I shot three days, about four rounds each outing with the 12 gage. Much of that shooting was with a Model 12 and over and under 12 gages. These things are not eye friendly from a recoil point of view. An 1100 is much better with its lower recoil.
For some reason, it took about eight months for all of the residual blood to absorb out of the eye.

Don

Same here... And I shoot stuff that can really jolt the old eyeballs...

Yeah, I probably do about as well at Sporting Clays with 24g loads anyway, and a nice little 20 or 28 ga would make a sweet bird and rabbit gun. I'm going to be taking it pretty easy for a while though, and I'll be having another good chat with the ophthalmologist about shooting and other activities when I see him again next week.

Oddly enough if I hadn't been wheeled into the operating theatre bright and early Saturday I'd have been shooting a couple of rounds of Sporting. I would have preferred to be doing that ;-)

Daniel,

Best of luck to you. I can only imagine your discomfort having to accomodate to the scleral buckle. Fortunately for me, my detachment was treatable by a combination of cryo- and pneumopexy (freezing and gas bubble) but I had to endure three rounds of treatment before it was completely reattached. Scleral buckle treatment was always an option (threat) that I fearfully resisted throughout the ordeal.

Good work recognizing the symptoms and getting yourself to medical treatment without delay. Best wishes for a speedy recovery.

-dan

Seems to me that the flexibility that exists between the shoulder and the eye would provide for quite a shock absorber for the eye. That is to say, acceleration rate is dampened quite a lot by the time the force of recoil reaches the eye itself. Now, if you put the butt of the rifle on your forehead, you'd probably see some major retinal detachment.

I have a good buddy who has a number of "big-boomers". I consider that catagory to inclue his lightweight .338 Win. Mag, a lightweight .375 H&H, a regular weight .458 Win. Mag., his big-bore African double rifle and the .505 Gibbs, he likes to load UP above published maximum loads, with 600 grain bullets.

He has had two detatched retinas and suffers from a totally screwed up (I know that's not a medical term) shoulder he's had two operations on. He's right handed and it's his right shoulder.

He refuses to believe any of this could possibly relate to his chosen hobby.

Me, I'm not so sure...