They are made for a specific purpose ,Big Game Hunting ,where not many shots at a time are going to be fired ,unless you are culling ,there's a lot of BS over the years about them about how much they kick etc ,and staged photos of the ''chosen'' firing them with barrels going near vertical ,and one Australian magazine about the 338 Win mag years ago stating ''The 338 Winchester magnum is only for people who know how to use it, and others have no business using it '' ,I would hardly call the 338 a hard kicker ,just rubbish ,a lot of hype ,when I first fired a 404 and a 458 win mag I was surprised how they didn't really kick that bad, the hype you read about big bores .