Moderate power firearms (Shooting/Firearms legend Ayoob advises "Everything in moderation")

Backwoods Home Magazine ^ | March 2008 | Massad Ayoob

[Stoat]

Moderate power firearms By Massad Ayoob

Robert Ruark, the great American writer of the mid-Twentieth Century, was also a big game hunter. One of his most popular books, written on the latter topic, was titled Use Enough Gun. That has proven over the decades to be really good advice.

That said, there are also a lot of people who use "too much gun." One of the last century's top authorities on guns and hunting was Jack O'Connor, a contemporary of Ruark's. O'Connor was an advocate of medium-powered hunting rifles: the .30-06 Springfield, the 7mm Mauser (also known as 7X57mm), and the caliber he is credited with popularizing, the .270 Winchester. He well understood that a gun with excessive power for the task would also "kick" so hard that many people wouldn't shoot well with it. He wrote in 1965 in his Complete Book of Shooting, "Men hate to admit that recoil bothers them. Again they feel that if getting belted by some hard-kicking gun bruises them and shakes them up they are lacking in masculinity.

[longhorn too]

I think I will stick with my .270!

[wastedyears]

That would take my arm off.

[Tijeras_Slim]

5,250,000 grains.

[Lurker]

Everything in moderation, including moderation.

L

[Tijeras_Slim]

To qoute a friend of mine:

“Shot placement is King. Adequate penetration is Queen. Everything else is angels dancing on the head of a pin.”

[Billthedrill]

Oh, yeah. There's a reason the rifle is nicknamed "Tyrannosaur." Ahmed's buddies set up him the bomb... You can hear 'em laughing in the background. If I had friends like that they'd be buried in my backyard by now.

[El Gato]

.577 Nitro.

Source indicates it's .577 T-Rex. The same weight bullet but at 2,460 fps verses 2,050 fps for the .577 Nitro Express. In the same weight rifle, that would translate to about 20% more recoil. (.8 dB more recoil.. to mix general usages.)

[shibumi]

Wow! - That’s even morealot.

[Copernicus]

I like Massad Ayoob.

In this case I think he may be fixing something that is not broke.

There are any number of recoil reducing pads and recoil reducing accessories on the market now. Limbsaver comes to mind as one example.

The hardest kicking rifle I have ever personally fired was a Military Spanish Mauser chambered in .308.

It had nothing to do with the cartridge or the bullet weight.

The buttstock had a strange cut with a steel plate attached to conform to the shape of the cut.

Mounting it to my shoulder in the soft "v" as is my custom I thought I had separated my shoulder blade after I fired it the first time.

Before I fired it again, I purchased a cheap rubber sleeve type recoil reducer to slide over the buttstock and now it shoots as well as any gun I have.

Great truck gun.

Recoil was not the problem, it was gun design.

Best regards,