Gun rest?? Hamburger arm

[judgemint]

We went out today to double check the iron sites on the 30 06 . I am new at shooting high powered rifles.(or any other firearm) I shot a box of 20 a couple weeks ago from a stand up position, a piece of cake my arm didn't bother me a bit. went out with a good ol boy today to make sure everything was set right. we set up with sandbags and sat on a bench at a range. I don't know if it was the angle of the rear bag or what but my shoulder felt like a stick of butter from the first shot, and a couple of times it was all I could do to shoot. maybe I held it wrong or something? My arm feels like raw hamburger tonight. I shot a few times in the stand up pos and it didn't wipe me out like sitting down at the bench. I'm 6' 1" 225lbs and I felt like a 12 year old girl on the bench. I was wondering if anyone uses those shooting rests? are they worth a damn? Do they help reduce recoil??

[Rocky Raab]

A warm welcome to HuntChat.

Shoting from a bench does seem to make a gun kick harder. Your body is more constrained, and you gave "give" less. So it hits you harder. It's even worse if you're hunching down and forward to get your body down to the gun.

As an extreme example, imagine how hard you'd get hammered if you were leaning the back of your shoulder against a tree when you shot. That'd be like getting hammered on an anvil.

The best way to reduce the recoil is to make sure you're sitting as upright as possible and use a good recoil pad on the gun. You can also put an additional pad between it and you. A rolled towel is okay, but a bag of lead shot is even better because it adds to the mass as awell as spreading out the area of the blow.

[fabsroman]

I use a shooting rest and it helps to tame the recoil because it essentially adds weight to the gun. Unlike you, I am 5'9" and 150 lbs and I used to feel like a toddler when I pulled the trigger on my .300 Win or my slug gun. A couple of times I got caught by the scope on both guns. Since then, I have added weight to the .300 Win and gone to an auto slug gun with 2 recoil reducers on it. With those mods, I barely feel any recoil in the field. With the addition of the shooting rest on the bench I barely feel any recoil on the bench.

When I bought my last gun/sighting in rest, the lead sled wasn't out yet. If I were in your shoes I would go out and buy the lead sled, a couple of bags of lead shot, and head back out to the range.