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I believe that when you choose a rifle to carry when hunting big and potentially dangerous game, you must be able to shoot it accurately from any position. The largest rifle I have been able to do this with is a .416 Rigby (350 gr X 102 grs H-4350), which I could hold for 3 rounds prone. I also had a .458 Winchester (500 Hornady 70 grs 3031)in a light rifle which was no bother to shoot either. The largest rifle I've fired was a .500 NE (570 gr X 87 grs IMR-3031), but this particular rifle was some what unpleasant due to a hard recoil pad.

Checking the recoil of the .500 on my ballistic software shows 65 ft/lbs of recoil energy, which very similar to the recoil of the loads in my .375 Ultra (380 gr Rhino 84 grs H-4350). The interesting thing about all these loads, .375 Ultra, .416 Rigby, .458 Winchester, and the .500 Nitro is that they all generate about the same recoil energy, of 65 ft/lbs, yet the .500 I found punishing.

Common wisdom dictates that bottle necked cartridges give faster harsher recoil than the slow push of the straight wall big bores. While I have not found this to be universally true, I have found that stock design plays a much larger factor in the effects of apparent recoil to the shooter than any other factor. A rifle which I found particularly nasty to shoot was a M-38 Mosin-Nagant 7.62X54R carbine loaded with factory military ammo. This was before my leap to larger calibers, but I remember thinking that based on the recoil of the little commie carbine I might be unable to shoot anything more powerful than a .300 Winchester. Happily that was not the case.

Some day I may build a very large rifle on a Ruger #1 action just to see how far I can go, after all it is not difficult to find rifles which can generate over 100 ft/lbs of recoil energy. In the mean time, a well stocked hunting rifle, that produces 65 ft/lbs of recoil, I can take afield confident that I can shoot quickly and accurately from any position.

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