Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles Your worst recoil experience?

My old 12 gauge shooting slugs lets you know in no uncertain terms when it goes off.

Taking a picture would provide evidence of buffoonery. That or my head is ringing too much to remember to get a pic.

i've never been kissed that hard....

As for my worst experience, strangely enough, I remember it coming from a lowly .30-06--my Ruger M77 MK II loaded with Federal High Energy ammo. That rifle/ammo combo rattled the fillings in my teeth. I'm no tough guy when it comes to recoil, but I've shot some rifles that kick. Not even Safariman's .416 Rigby kicked like that '06 with those stupid High Energy rounds. I had to go shoot about 1000 .22lr rounds afterward to get rid of my flinch.

Turkey hunter who decided to drop down from 3.5" to 3" loads.

Me neither. Actually, I take that back. Once at the range, shooting my .35 Whelen with 250gr bullets, my rear bag wasn't positioned correctly, and rather than take 2 seconds and fix it, I decided to lean down and into the rifle. The Butler Creek cap caught me just hard enough to draw a fine line of blood--almost like a papercut. I wiped it off and it didn't bleed anymore. But, I still remember that it took away my right to brag that I'd never been scope bit. God probably was working on my prideful attitude--which is always a good thing for me...

And FWIW, that Whelen (which I still own and love) never kicked like that '06 with Federal's High Energy ammo!

8 years old and a neighbor thought it would be fun to let the neighborhood kids shoot his war trophy K-98.

If I was 60 lbs then I'd be surprised.

I touched off a German military load and the recoil put me on my butt. My shoulder hurt for a week and I asked the guy if I could fire another one!

As an 8 year old, I got immune to recoil shooting a break open single shot 20 gauge that probably weighed about 4 pounds. With high brass loads, that is still the most unpleasant recoil I've ever experienced.

There are few accounts of the 10 ga. BPS.

The local range officer loves retelling the story of how he "stole" a new BPS from an owner who was getting his world rocked by the gun. The RO gave $250 for it, but never could bring himself to shoot it, & hasn't been able to find a buyer for it.

FC

I have actually......by a .264 WM of all things...I was deer hunting in PA and had a deer come to my right at about 10 yds...I'm right handed but with this situation I had to shoot left handed sooooo I did.

When all was said and done I was bleeding over my eye and nose and had a dead deer in front of me.....ahh the days.....

Army basic training - 1955 Fort Riley, Kansas.
Fired the M1 rifle grenade from the shoulder - never, ever again.

I pattern quite a few turkey guns and they will definitely get your attention. Winchester 3.5" HV loads are some of the worst.

Had a Savage 16 in 300WSM briefly. It didn't have a recoil pad and was quite unpleasant from the bench. Sure felt worse than any light weight 300WM I've ran.

Toss up, between the time I shot straight up at a crow using a borrowed Win. M120 Ranger 12ga pump w/3" mag load (plastic butt plate on collar bone).

Or the time a known miscreant at our gun club, suckered me into shooting his Siamese Mauser, with a "mild, cast bullet load". Shot it from the bench, resulting in a very sore shoulder and the idiot cacklin' behind me like a mad hatter, then telling me that load was "nippin' at the heels of the 458 Winchester".

Okay, I was probably "the idiot" in both cases.

+1.

Winchester XXT12L4, 12 Gauge 3-1/2", MAG DR. Equiv, 2-1/4 oz., 4 shot turkey loads from a Remington 870 Super-Mag.

After a morning of walking in the woods with my hunting buddy, we found ourselves on a ledge. Some pines were growing below one in particular had a top full of green pine cones. The cones were shoulder high and I decided to try out one of those loads to see how many cones I could blast out of the tree.

The recoil knocked me back a couple steps, knocked my glasses askew, and I thought my middle finger was broken by the trigger guard. After recovering sufficiently, I told my hunting buddy �Your turn.� He showed good sense and politely refused.

It was a couple hours before my finger quit hurting. Out of the original box of 10 there are 9 left and they will undoubtedly last me a lifetime!

I have fired a lot of hard kicking weapons but the Mossberg Pump 12 ga with Fiberglass Stock and the Fed 3.5 inch Turkey Loads is about as bad as it gets, they will rattle your teeth.

INteresting reading. I"ve got quite a few of the guns mentioned as bears....

But I'm like Dober, its gonna nail you regardless so you may as well hit with it.

Wife and I have shot everything up to the 460 wtby level, no big nitros, no one owns one around here....

The worst by far was a 378 wtby and 2 rounds of that and I was done... I have a 338-378 thats not bad at all. And have shot the 30-378 same. The full on 378 sucks for us. Just too quick on the recoil for me. Not so much too much, but it hits faster than I could "expect" it.

I"ve got a single shot NEF 10 ga, an off brand single shot 10 thats lighter than the NEF(NEF is a puzz compared recoil wise) and a BPS 10... none of them have ever bothered me. Buckshot loads would get your attention though as would heavy turkey loads but still nothing bad.

I still don't have a clue why the 378 just beat us up, wife and I both. Though she did shoot a squirrel with it before we gave it back to friend that had bought it, and he resold it after he shot it one time... And we've shot all kinds of 375 H/H, 375 wtby, 416 mags etc...none of them seem bad. ONly thing I can maybe come up wiht was stock design, have no clue what that stock was though...

The lighter mags for me, are interesting, the recoil is never bad, but light means they move and torque around on you etc... you have to watch from being scope bit, but I often feel the light guns recoil is mostly movement of the muzzle up in the air, more so than straight back into my body.

The other thing I"ll note, seems fairly consistent too, the bigger the folks are the more they complain about recoil, the smaller the folks are the less it bothers them it seems. I can see the more mass you have to absorb the recoil, IE stop it, instead of recoiling with it, the worse it COULD hurt.

Oh yeah, just recalled, 870 with 3.5 inch hypersonic loads. 3 of those were a bit strong, strong enough so that I don't think I"ll buy more of those.

The Federal 1550 stuff at 3.5 inches though is fine.

I've shot .378s, .460s, lots of .338s of various weights and 10s etc, but the one that I remember as painful was a pre-64 M70 in .375. I reckon the stock and I were just wrong for each other.

I've shot a .378 before, about like an unscoped 870 slug gun, noticeable, but not horrid.

The worst thing that's got me, a Contender in .35 Remington, with 250gr. cast bullets, loaded max+, that a friend had loaded for his gun. I shot it once, couldn't believe it kicked that hard, and HAD to shoot it again to prove it to myself.

I hate Contenders anyway, the stock shape really, REALLY pounds my elbow, for some reason. It doesn't bother my wrists or hands, but it kills my elbow.
Another buddy liked his .357 Maximum Contender. Same deal there, sore elbows.

Contenders just suck, period.

One thing about the Contenders I didnt like was the trigger guard design...a knuckle beater if there ever was.