Recoil and Your First Hunting Rifle

My 50 caliber muzzleloader with magnum loads develops fierce recoil, but it was worth it this time!

Recoil Front and Center

Do you remember the first time you shot a rifle? How old were you? I don’t know exactly how I knew it, but when I was seven years old, I knew that guns “kicked”. My dad had to coax and cajole to get me to take my first shot with a .22 long rifle. I just knew that sucker was going to hurt, or something bad would happen. As it turns out, I was pleasantly surprised to find it didn’t kick much at all! I didn’t know the term recoil, so “kicked” is how I thought of this.

For me, shooting firearms was pretty aptly managed by my pop. He introduced me to successively more powerful weapons over some years. The first centerfire rifle I shot was my Mom’s 22-250 Remington. Boy, was it ever loud and I could actually feel the recoil; however, again, pleasantly surprised was I! And thus it went to .410 shotgun, 25-06 Remington, and 20 gauge shotgun between the ages of nine and 13. Each time, I realized the kick wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d feared.

Back to my original question. How old were you? What was your first experience with a long firearm, be it rifle or shotgun? Was recoil on your mind when you took that first shot? Were you curious? A bit worried? I can’t say for everyone, but for myself and those I’ve watched or help introduce to shooting, it has clearly been the biggest worry.

What Is Recoil?

Recoil is a real-world example of Newton’s third law of motion. You’ve heard it in one form or another since you were a school-aged young’un. To shorten and paraphrase it: For each action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This is how jets and rockets work. Blast enough mass out of the back end fast enough, and the jet or rocket goes the other way. This works with whipping firehoses, when you push against your friend in a swimming pool, or really when force is applied to any object, whether you can tell or not. It certainly applies to firearms!

When the exploding/burning powder in the case expands, it has only one real place to go…out the muzzle of the barrel. It pushes the shot or bullet ahead, wedging them in the barrel and accelerating them as the controlled explosion continues. As that powder burns (really fast), it still has mass. There is another law in physics about the conservation of energy and since E=mc² and c is a constant, then we get conservation of mass! I love physics, but anyway, the point is this…the gases shooting down the barrel still have all of their original gunpowder mass.

The bullet is going fast when it leaves the muzzle. The remainder of the jetting gunpowder gas is going even faster. Both combine to push back against the rifle and its owner. Guns kick you this way. The energy that is in the kick is pretty much one half mass times velocity squared for each the bullet and the gas added together. Blah blah, there goes most of the math in this article. What can we learn from this?

• Double the bullet + powder mass (roughly), keeping velocity the same, you get about twice the recoil.
• Double the velocity of the bullet and powder (roughly), keeping the bullet/poweder mass the same, you about quadruple the recoil!

That math isn’t perfect as the gas and bullet are going different speeds and the impulse at the muzzle of the barrel occurs over minutely different time frames, but you hopefully get the basic picture.

Who Cares About Recoil?

So why the heck should any of us care about this? Big deal, so the kick is a little harder with some rifles or shotguns. Who cares? I’m certainly tough enough to handle it if it means I can shoot a bigger gun and kill bigger things or at longer ranges right? I would say, from my experience, the answer to that question is a simple “nope”. Whether you believe (or admit) it or not, recoil scares you. If you focus and work at it, you can definitely overcome this fear, but until you do, accuracy suffers. Accuracy really suffers in many cases.

Because we all fear recoil to some degree, we tend to anticipate it and brace ourselves for it. This manifests itself in a yanked trigger or a flinch in anticipation of the pain, or both. I’ve seen some of the manliest of men make some pretty embarrassing shots when shooting powerful rifles. That same person would easily make the same shot with a .223, but put a 300 Ultra Mag in their hands and that bullet could go anywhere.

Get to the Point, Steve!

My point is that recoil works very hard against accurate shot placement. When it comes to hunting and (obviously) target shooting, accuracy is everything. Good shot placement is the hallmark of a quick and ethical kill. If recoil is working against placement, it is working against a quick and ethical kill. The problem arises when the hunter or huntress desires increased energy through increased bullet mass, velocity, or both. Power increases, but recoil does too.

What I’m asking you to consider is the tradeoff between magnum killing power and magnum recoil. The way I look at it is you should consider using the stiffest cartridge you can manage without sacrificing accuracy in the field. That is a pretty tough evaluation to make, as it takes time and practice. Is there a shortcut? Well, there aren’t really any shortcuts in life, but here are some rules of thumb to help you develop a reasonable starting point.

Rules of Thumb

In a modern sporting weight rifle of between eight and nine pounds, several cartridges stand out as striking the balance between recoil and killing ability. Keep in mind that this is a very complex evaluation and someone can always find a “better fit” through trial and error.

Most North American game will fall quite readily to bullets impacting with north of 1500 foot pounds of energy. Elk generally will want most or all of that, while deer and antelope sized species will need only about 60 percent of that energy. I’m avoiding sectional density, bullet weight, and some other factors, but remember, we are looking for a safe starting point.

Deer Sized Game

Deer sized game are going to fall nicely to cartridges in the .308 Winchester and 30-06 Springfield families of cartridges. The .308 variants, in low to high recoil ranking include: .243 Win, 260 Rem, 7mm-08, and .308 and all are proven game stoppers. In the 30-06 casing, you have 25-06 Rem, 270 Win, 280 Rem, and 30-06 Springfield, all being a bit more powerful than their .308-based cousins, with a touch more recoil. Some folks swear by the 30-calibers. None of the cartridges here can be argued as being inadequate for deer until you start to talk about long-range hunting, and some of these will hold their own at very long range.

Elk Sized Game

Let the controversy begin. Although elk have been killed with every cartridge I mentioned under “Deer”, most folks lean toward the upper end of the spectrum for elk. The 270 Win and 30-06 are good all-around elk cartridges, but many favor the 260 Rem or especially the 7mm-08 and .308 for elk. With proper bullets and good shot placement all can work.

The 7mm and .300 magnums bring more to the table for elk-smashing power. I’d never recommend anything bigger than a .300 Win magnum for a new elk hunter, unless the shooter is accomplished with high-recoiling weapons. The 7mm Remington Magnum is a very adept elk cartridge with a bit less recoil than the .300. Beginners can safely start with a 270 Win or 30-06 Spr. Those who are particularly prone to recoil sensitivity would want to seriously consider the trio of 260 Rem (6.5 Creedmoor is same), 270 Winchester, and 7mm-08 Winchester. These three are all very good moderate recoil elk rifles.

Redux

I get it. The 338 Lapua is fantastic. So is the .300 RUM, .300-378 Weatherby, 300 Weatherby, and 340 Weatherby. They really are crazy good cartridges…if you can honestly handle them. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Grown men with, shall we say, certain issues, who must have the biggest and baddest setup, but who are unable to close the deal in the field.  Why waste your money on a rifle that you cannot handle? On the flip side, there are some folks who adeptly handle the heavy recoil and use the bigger guns to great advantage. This takes practice, though.

Start with a reasonable caliber rifle and enjoy hunting with it. If you choose something like a .270 Winchester, it is great for almost everything. Then, one day you might wish you had a little more. That might be the right time to reach for a magnum .300 or .338. By then you will know you can handle more recoil, I just wouldn’t recommend starting there.