You Will Shoot Your Eye Out

Want to get better at handling the hard hitters? Here are six ways to reduce felt recoil from the bench.

When we shoot from a bench rest, we’re usually sighting in a rifle or testing ammunition. When doing either, it’s important to get the best shot to shot results we can. The problem is that sustained recoil can negatively impact not only your shooting but also your enjoyment. There are some ways you can mitigate felt recoil when shooting from a bench rest, and these techniques become very important when you crawl behind a hard-kicking rifle.

The general consensus among firearms trainers is that most experienced adult shooters can withstand about 20 shots from a bench rest with a .30-06 Springfield rifle without experiencing excessive discomfort or a negative impact on accuracy and precision. The amount of free recoil energy the average .30-06 rifle with a scope will generate is right at about 20 foot-pounds. Of course, some rifles recoil much harder. A .338 Winchester Magnum can generate almost twice as much free recoil energy.

But it’s not always about free recoil energy.

Due to the configuration of some rifles and their lack of a soft butt pad, even lighter recoiling rifles can be uncomfortable to shoot, and too, everyone has different recoil tolerance levels.

Years ago, I purchased a Marlin 1895 Cowboy lever action rifle in .45-70 Government. Based on recoil calculations, that rifle recoiled with just a tad more than 20 foot-pounds of free recoil energy.

However, because of the way the rifle was configured with its thin hard plastic butt plate, it was painful to shoot from the bench. Shooting while standing offhand wasn’t bad at all, but after four or five shots off a bench with full-power loads, your eyes would start watering.

If you’re going to be doing a good bit of shooting from a bench rest with a rifle that has a bit of bite, try some of these techniques to help diminish that bite. Individually they all work, but by combining them you can usually make a rifle that’s no fun at all to shoot from a bench at least tolerable enough to allow you to test several loads and/or sight it in.

1: Hold Her With Passion

As soon as a rifle fires, it will begin moving to the rear. If there is a space between the rifle’s butt pad and your shoulder, that movement and impact will enhance recoil pain. This is especially true if the rifle does not have a soft butt pad.

Before you press the trigger, make sure the butt stock is snug against your shoulder—but be careful not to pull the rifle back into your shoulder forcibly. The stress of your muscles will make it more difficult to hold the rifle on target steady.

2: As Mom Would Say: Sit Up!

When most shooters get behind a rifle positioned on a bench rest, they tend to position the rifle as close to the bench as possible. If you do that and you’re about 6 feet tall, with most benches you will need to lean over to get low enough to place your shoulder on the rifle stock and your eye behind the sights. This position puts more of your body behind the rifle and when the rifle recoils your body will absorb—feel—more of the recoil because your body will not move easily to the rear.

The closer you can sit to an erect position when you shoot from a bench the less you will feel the punch on your shoulder. It more closely replicates shooting from a standing position. A gunsmith I know who builds dangerous game rifles built his test shooting bench high enough to shoot from while standing to limit felt recoil.

3: Get Yourself a Sissy Pad

One of the easiest ways to limit the pain associated with recoil when shooting from a benchrest is to use a sissy pad. These are pads you strap on your shoulder to help mitigate recoil. Caldwell and PAST offer several versions—and they do work. Your range buddies might call you a sissy and rag on you for using one … but just ignore them.

Remember, the reason you’re shooting from a bench is to evaluate ammo or sight in your rifle, and both need to be accomplished with as much precision as possible. You don’t shoot from a bench rest to demonstrate your manhood.

4: Slings Aren’t Just For Shoulders

When I am doing a lot of shooting from the bench with a rifle that has stiff recoil, I like to take the rifle strap and loop it firmly around the top front sandbag(s). This can tremendously reduce the reward force of the rifle during recoil, because the rifle must pull against the weight of the sandbag as it moves to the rear. If you’re using a real sandbag—filled with sand—as opposed to those filled with polymer pellets, this technique works like a lead sled.

5: It’s Time to Get a Suppressor

The baffles inside a suppressor redirect and slow the gas produced when a rifle is fired. This, in conjunction with the weight a suppressor adds to the rifle, helps reduce free recoil energy, sometimes by more than 25 percent.

But when it comes to felt recoil, the reduction can seem even more. With big-bore, hard-kicking rifles, the reduction is very noticeable because big-bore rifles require big, heavy suppressors. For example, the Banish V46 V2 suppressor, which will work on 0.375- and 0.458-caliber rifles, weighs right at 1 pound.

6: It’s OK to Put on Weight

The Caldwell Lead Sled is a mechanical rifle rest that has a cradle for your rifle’s forearm and a pocket for the butt stock. It’s adjustable and holds the rifle reasonably firmly. If you add one or more bags of lead shot to the undertray, it can eliminate a lot of felt recoil. The system, however, is not perfect because you are dramatically altering the way the rifle reacts to recoil … and this can alter your point of impact.

If you sight in your rifle with a lead sled, you should confirm your zero without it. Also, with extremely hard-recoiling rifles, the lead sled can strain the bedding of the rifle and, in some cases with extensive shooting, cause damage.

A lead sled still has application and is especially useful with new or young shooters who are very recoil sensitive, but if you properly employ the first five techniques a Lead Sled is not necessary.

Don’t Overdo It

All these techniques—individually or combined—can help you make hard kickers more tolerable to shoot. But even with these techniques, some rifles can still be uncomfortable. It’s not just the impact on your shoulder; it can be the sort of whiplash sensation applied to your neck.

One of the best things to do when shooting a heavy recoiling rifle is to shoot in moderation. A sustained pounding is what puts professional fighters on the canvas, and it does little to help you shoot your best.

Physics Lesson: Free Recoil Energy

If you use the internet as a source for recoil calculation, you’ll find various calculators you can plug data into to determine the recoil velocity, recoil energy and recoil impulse of a gun. Ironically, just as two shooters will experience the felt recoil of the same gun differently, these calculators will give you different results—they’ll be close but rarely identical.

But does it matter?

Not really, because none of these calculators will tell you exactly what it feels like to shoot a specific gun with a specific load. Still, because humans are conditioned to rate or score everything by numbers, we want a numerical answer to everything including how hard a gun will kick.

The Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute (SAAMI) sets the specifications manufacturers follow when they make guns and ammo and is a great source for free recoil energy information.

According to SAAMI, the momentum of a free-recoiling firearm is equal and opposite in direction to the momentum of the bullet (or shot charge/slug and wad column) and the propellant gases. Because propellant gases are extremely difficult to weigh, SAAMI equates the propellant gas weight to the powder charge weight.

But SAAMI tempers the velocity of the propellent gases based on gun type. The way the different calculators express the velocity of propellent gases is one reason you’ll see different results from different formulas.

According to SAAMI, the formula for determining the free recoil energy (FRE) of a firearm can be expressed as:

FRE = WF/(2×32.17) ((WEVE + WPCVEf)/(7000 x WF))2

where:

WF = weight of firearms in pounds

WE = weight (in grains of the ejecta—bullet or shot and wad column)

VE = velocity of the ejecta in feet per second

WPC = weight of projectile charge in grains

7000 = conversion factor for grains to pounds

VEƒ = velocity of the propellant gases (VE) multiplied by gun factor (ƒ)

where the value of ƒ =:

High Powered Rifle – 1.75VE

Shotguns (average length)  – 1.50VE

Shotguns (long barrel)  – 1.25VE

Pistols & revolvers  – 1.50VE

Given this formula, a 7-pound high-powered rifle firing a 165-grain bullet with a powder charge weight of 40 grains at a muzzle velocity of 2,700 fps would have 18.26 foot-pounds of free recoil energy (FRE):

WF           WE.      VE       WPC  VE        ƒ            WF.          FRE

7/(2×32.17) ((165*2700+40*(2700*1.75)/(7000*7))2=18.26 foot/pounds

I plugged this same data into three online recoil calculators, and the results were: 18.19, 18.2, 18.88, for an average of 18.42 foot-pounds for free recoil energy. You can take the time to work the formula, but that time will be mostly a waste because we’re all going to experience recoil force differently … at least by as much as the varied results provided by online calculators.