The Best Ways to Reduce Rifle Recoil for Shooters

Recoil is something most of us learn to live with, and bodily injury is usually no more serious than an occasional sore shoulder or at the very worst a half-moon scope cut above an eyebrow. Rarely is it more serious, but bad things can happen.

Years ago, friend and colleague John Wootters suffered retinal detachment in an eye, and as best as I can recall he was shooting a rifle chambered for the .416 Taylor. Far more common than that is an incurable flinch, something trap shooters who have been breaking clay targets with heavy, shoulder-pounding loads for many years are often forced to contend with.

Some shotgunners fool their brains into thinking recoil is not coming until it has come and gone by installing a release trigger on their guns. In other words the gun does not fire when the trigger is pulled, but it does when the trigger is released. Of course, such a trigger would be not only impractical but quite dangerous to use elsewhere on any type of firearm.

Anyone new to shooting should be gradually and comfortably introduced to recoil. Not long after Phyllis and I were married, she decided that hunting with me would be more fun than staying at home. During our courting days she enjoyed shooting my .22 rimfire rifles and had eventually worked her way up to a rifle in .220 Swift, so she was already comfortable with light recoil.

Why Reduce Recoil?

Soon after wedding bells had stopped ringing, a very accurate Winchester Model 70 Featherweight I had owned for quite some time became hers. A lefty, she quickly adapted to its bolt handle being on the wrong side and used it to take a pronghorn antelope so good it took me several years to catch up. Whitetails, mule deer and feral hogs followed.

Then when our Wyoming friends invited us to try for elk in the Bridger National Forest, I bought Phyllis a left-hand Remington Model 700 in .270 Win. She had plenty of time to become accustomed to shooting that rifle, so we began her recoil conditioning program by handloading the Speer 100-grain bullet to about the same velocity as a bullet of the same weight from the .243 Win.

During following months I gradually increased velocity in small increments until she could still shoot accurately while absorbing about 15 ft.-lbs. of recoil, and eventually she took two good bulls with that .270.

Several obvious ways of reducing recoil exist, and increasing the rifle’s weight is one of those. With scope, my custom Rifles, Inc. Lightweight Strata in 7mm Rem. Mag. weighs six pounds and when pushing a 160-grain bullet along at 3,000 fps it generates just over 32 ft.-lbs. of recoil. In comparison, my Remington 700 BDL in 7mm Rem. Mag. weighs nine pounds, and with the same load it taps my shoulder with 21 ft.-lbs.

Increasing the Rifle's Weight?

Through the years I carried that rifle in a lot of rugged mountain country, and not once did it dawn on me that it was too heavy. Now that I am older, wiser and own several suppressors, I hunt more often with the lightweight rifle.

Attaching one of the huge scopes that have become all the rage today can increase a rifle’s weight by as much as two pounds. If the rifle has a wooden stock, remove its buttplate or recoil pad, drill a deep hole in the stock and fill it with lead shot. To keep the rifle balanced, add the same amount of weight up front by drilling several shallow holes of appropriate size in the fore-end beneath the barrel, and fill them with lead handgun bullets held in place with Super Glue.

Replacing a recoil pad that doesn’t work with one from Pachmayr or LimbSaver is an easy fix for any good gunsmith.

Excessive drop in the stocks of some older rifles will whack your cheek with each pull of the trigger, a problem easily solved by attaching an adhesive-backed soft rubber padding called CheekEez from Brownells. Easily trimmed and shaped with scissors, it won’t harm the stock’s finish, it’s easy to remove and is available in thicknesses from 1/16 inch to 11⁄8 inches.

Build up the comb of the stock with layers of thin cardboard held in place with the masking tape until your eye is aligned with the open sights or scope, measure that thickness and you will know what to order.

Try Using a Smaller Cartridge

Game is no more difficult to kill today than back when hunters considered the .30-30 Win. and .35 Rem. plenty of cartridge for anything in North America. In fact, several years ago Federal began loading the .30-30 with the Nosler 170-grain Partition in response to hundreds of Alaskans who continue to take moose for the pot with Winchester 94s and Marlin 336s chambered for the cartridge.

Where legal and at reasonable distances, the .22-250 Rem. pushing the Nos­ler 60-grain Partition or Swift 62-grain Scirocco II at 3,400 fps and placed where it should go drops pronghorn antelope and smallish whitetails like a lightning bolt. Even better is the .243 Win. The .243 I took to the Southern Alps of New Zealand was built around a titanium receiver by Ross Spagrud, and it weighs 6.5 pounds with the scope. Two 95-grain Nosler Partitions bagged chamois and Himalayan tahrs at impressive distances.

I have also taken game with the 6mm-06 wildcat, which is often described as a poor boy’s .240 Wby. Mag. Moving up a bit in downrange punch, I began using the .25-06 Rem. when that too was still a wildcat, and I consider a good 120-grain bullet from that load even more of a good thing.

The big magnums are wonderful inventions, but 99 percent of the hunting 99 percent of hunters do can be handled quite nicely by the .270 Win., .280 Rem., .30-06 and .35 Whelen—along with several others, including the 7mm-08 and .308 Win.

Lighter Bullets?

The development of modern bullets has allowed the use of lighter weights for less recoil, with little to no sacrifice in performance. As an example, a nine-pound rifle in .300 H&H Mag. pushing an old-style 220-grain bullet along at 2,700 fps generates 30 ft.-lbs. of shoulder push. Switch to a modern 180-grain bullet at 3,000 fps, and it is reduced by about 15 percent. It’s not much, but when it comes to kick, every little bit of reduction helps.

The favorite rifle of Coni Brooks, who co-owned Barnes Bullets with husband Randy for many years, was in .338 Win. Mag., and she used it to take a lot of game—including a huge Alaskan brown bear. As I recall, she used 185-grain X-Bullets for everything.

There are a number of ways to dampen recoil when shooting a rifle from a benchrest. About 25 years ago, I was offered what was then considered to be fairly good money for sitting at a benchrest and developing accurate loads with about 20 powders behind 500-grain bullets in a Weatherby Mark V rifle in .460 Wby. Mag. With scope, it weighed 11.5 pounds, and recoil was about 100 ft.-lbs.

So I cheated by using multiple wraps of strong fiberglass tape to secure a 25-pound bag of lead shot to the bottom of its fore-end, and doing so reduced the pain to about 32 ft.-lbs. That, along with a heavy leather sissy bag between the recoil pad of the rifle and my shoulder, transformed a raging beast into a tolerable putty tat.

The wonderfully efficient Caldwell Lead Sled accomplishes the same thing, and each time I have used mine through the years my shoulder offers thanks to the clever person at Caldwell who designed it. Mine is the CLD82031 model, and when a hard-kicking rifle is to be bench-tested, I would never leave home without it.

Its weight of 18 pounds is easily increased by adding as many as three 25-pound bags of shot or a couple of 25-pound barbell weights. But don’t get carried away with additional weight, especially when you’re shooting a rifle with a wooden stock, as doing so can snap the stock at its wrist. If the rest is not moving slightly to the rear with each shot, you have added too much weight for the rifle being tested.

Moving to less perceived recoil reduction, we have the PAST strap-on shoulder pad that has been around for many years. I use mine mostly for high-volume dove shooting in Argentina, but one stays in my truck for range use when bench-shooting a rifle that kicks just enough to prompt me to use it.

Attaching a muzzle brake to a rifle can reduce recoil up to 30 percent and sometimes a bit more, but hunting guides hate them with a passion—for good reason. I used to use brakes when shooting at a benchrest while wearing double ear protection, but I never used one for hunting unless it was a custom barrel with an integral brake and I donned the muffs when shooting it. When hunting with a guide, I never failed to whisper “ears” when a shot was imminent.

In my opinion, due to the muzzle blast reduction, suppressors have made brakes alone obsolete for hunting. Attaching one to a rifle reduces recoil by momentarily capturing high-velocity propellant gas and slowing it down a bit prior to its escape into the atmosphere. In other words, the so-called jet effect is reduced.

Suppressor Speculation

Second, and while I have no scientific evidence to confirm this, I am convinced that force applied against the rear surfaces of the baffles as the gas slams violently into them tends to push a rifle forward, thereby further reducing its push against the shooter’s shoulder.

Some suppressor designs put the double whammy on both noise and recoil by allowing the use of an internal muzzle brake as well. My Nosler SR-30 Ti and SR-30 ALTi were designed to be installed directly to the barrel of a rifle by using 5/8x24 adapters that came with them. Removing the adapter reveals 7/8x28 interior threads that match those on the exterior of a two-ounce titanium muzzle brake available from Nosler.

The brake attaches directly to the barrel and the suppressor attaches to and therefore totally encloses the brake. After trying the combination on several rifles, I am sold on the idea.

Just prior to writing this, I used the SR-30 ALTi on a rifle in 6.5 PRC weighing a bit less than eight pounds with scope, and recoil felt about the same as shooting a non-suppressed rifle of the same weight in 6.5mm Creedmoor. With the suppressor and brake attached, recoil was further reduced to what my shoulder perceived as quite close to .243 Win. level.

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