It’s possible to mitigate the effects of recoil by shooting from positions with more give, but the wisest course of action is to limit exposure to heavy-recoiling rifles.

The elephant were spread out, feeding and moving slowly. By the time we got the wind right and isolated the one we wanted, the light was going quickly. It wasn't too dark to shoot, but it was pretty dim for a brain shot with open sights--which, I'm sure, is why my partner missed the brain with both barrels. But at this moment the reason didn't matter. What mattered was that it was awfully late in the day, the elephant was still on its feet, and my friend's double was empty.

I'd been lugging a double .600 for several days, and this was my chance to use it. I stepped around my buddy and raised the rifle to take the "going-away hip shot." That's the last clear memory I have, at least for the next hour or so. I sort of remember being propelled backward, completely out of control, and I think I understood that both barrels had gone off.

One of our party caught me, and a video camera shows that I got one barrel loaded, and we went forward so my buddy could finish his elephant. After that I had to sit down for a little while.

Recoil has never bothered me a great deal, but I clearly met my match on that late afternoon in the Zambezi Valley. The opening lever cut my left thumb to the bone, and that same thumb smacked into my cheekbone at speed, raising a welt a prizefighter would be proud of. That stuff healed quickly, but the gun doubled four months ago, and my shoulder isn't right yet. I assume it will be in time, but I'm not gonna put any money on it.

For some reason we tend to think that standing up to massive amounts of recoil is, if not exactly fun, at least really cool. Conversely, we're sissies if we admit that recoil is unpleasant.

Unfortunately, recoil is an inescapable byproduct of all shooting. Most of the time it's harmless, but if you take it too far it can hurt you--and there's nothing at all cool about getting hurt. There are two reasons for this. The obvious is that if you let a gun hurt you, then you need to heal up before you can shoot again. Less obvious is that unpleasant recoil may not cause physical damage, but it can really mess up your shooting.

I trust we can all agree that I took things too far when that .600 doubled, which could've happened either due to my trigger finger inadvertently hitting the second trigger under recoil of the first barrel or due to mechanical malfunction. Regardless of how it happened, I took about 280 ft.-lbs., mostly straight into my shoulder. That was quite enough, thank you.

This was a rare incident, but there are lots of other ways where recoil can get to you. It doesn't take a bunch of foot-pounds of recoil to give a really nasty scope cut; all it really takes a weird shooting position so that the rifle is allowed to get a running start before the ocular lens embeds itself in your forehead.

Clearly, the more recoil you're dealing with (and the less eye relief) the greater the risk, but I've seen scope cuts from 6mms and .25s, and one of the worst ones I ever got was from a .30-06, fired hastily at a deer from the prone position.