My African hunting companion was shooting his Krieghoff O/U .458 with scope from the sitting position, when he decided to try shooting the top barrel first, using the rear trigger. Unfortunately, he forgot that he had already set the front trigger when he made this decision. As a result, when the top barrel went, so did the bottom barrel. The scope hit my friend so hard that it bent the tube. He, however, went on shooting, once he stopped the blood flow.

My attitude toward heavy recoil rifles is that you don't need to punish yourself by practicing with full loads. I have shot hundreds of reduced cast bullet loads through my heavy rifles and consequently am thoroughly familiar with their handling characteristics, trigger pull and other features. I reserve the full loads for actual hunting situations or for sighting in from the bench.

In shooting from the bench, I make use of a home made device, now commercially available, which adds 25-35 pounds to the weight of the rifle, so that shooting it is less punishing than with a .30-'06. A welder friend of mine notched an 8" piece of 3" channel iron in the middle, bent it to 90 degrees and welded it at the notches. I bolted it to a 2'X 4' piece of 3/4" plywood, placed on the bench rest, placed the bench rest stand and rear sandbag, plus a 25 pound sack of lead shot on top of it, and positioned the rifle on the stand, with the butt on the channel iron and the channel iron in my shoulder.

Using it, my 8 3/4 pound .505 becomes the equivalent of a 37 pound rifle, with a concomitant reduction in recoil. Shooting the same rifle at game, I have never been aware of the recoil at all, and never had a headache or bruised shoulder, even on the occasion when I fired four shots in about ten seconds at a running Cape buffalo. Checking the sighting in in the field, I folded up a towel and placed it under my shirt at the shoulder, then rested on the hood of the hunting car. Again, no ill effects.

As a consequence, my scopes have not taken the beating they would have, had I subjected them to the same number of full loads, and none has ever gone bad. (Knock on wood!)