Heavy recoil is like a snake. You know you’ll probably never see it or get bitten, yet the fear lingers in your mind and makes you abandon your normal routine.
Fear of felt recoil leads to flinching and extended trigger pulls and can be a constantly nagging fear.
Here’s the good news from Hornady and Federal about cartridges that perform well, yet have almost half the recoil of normal loads, which is a huge reduction. Mark Kayser lays out the details in this post from Grand View Outdoors.
Nobody likes to be punished at the range or during the hunt by teeth-busting cartridges. I can recall more than one trip to the range where I’ve had to improvise with a wadded up shirt for extra recoil protection. Most predator hunters don’t worry about recoil. That’s because they shoot calibers like the .17 Hornet, .223 or the .22-250. Combine these smaller calibers with a heavy rifle and you have recoil so light that you can watch the critter tip over in the riflescope.
Of course a handful of predator hunters like to reach out and touch “Wile E.” with the impact of a Stanley hammer. Folks like you put calibers such as the .243, .270 and the fan favorite .308 into play. These calibers aren’t outrageous in the recoil department, but can lead to some flesh abuse at the range. That can easily create flinching and accuracy issues down the road. You don’t want to flinch on a 200-yard coyote and create a dust splash instead of a watermelon thump.
And what if you’re introducing a young shooter or spouse to predator hunting? You certainly don’t want to create any bad memories if you’re introductory rifle has a bit more wallop than a .22LR Making any shooting event enjoyable with accuracy results should be a number one priority… [continued]
Tell us what you think in the comments section below.
