Youth/ladies rifle -- recoil management. Thoughts?

A cheap and easy way to add weight to a rifle is by putting an ammo sleeve/cheek bags with some extra ammo on the stock. Your son will probably think it's cool too!

I'm going the same route with a compact youth 7m-08 savage lightweight hunter.
Going to be handloading for it though. 139 SSTs and Varget hopefully does the trick.

Double up on hearing protection, plugs and muffs.

Helps with recoil management.

This vid explains how to get a pretty accurate LOP for body size. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOgIPbzKHWI

I have pretty petite kids that come hunting with me. My oldest is now 15, but when she was younger, I had her shoot my .243. It was too much for her being the size she was. She developed a kind of anxiety from it. When I would take her hunting, she never wanted to shoot because she was scared of the gun. Once I figured that out, I purchased a limbsaver pad for it. That helped a lot, but still not great. I was really concerned that I had screwed up so bad with not starting her properly, she wouldn't want to hunt with me anymore. I decided to put a muzzle break on the rifle. After a long time trying to convince her to shoot the gun again, she agreed. She now shoots it no problem. Her younger sister is now 12. I just asked her how much she weighs so she went to the bathroom to see. 62.5 lbs. She shoots this gun no problem. She took a deer and a bear with it last year. If you have another rifle for your son to use, by all means, wait a year, but if not, i'd say get a break. I wouldn't reccommend losing a year of hunting with the kid because his rifle kicks too much.
If this is your first that is hunting age, you will notice that a lot of animals that would have been harvested previously will walk. Take it in and enjoy it. They learn. good luck with your efforts. Hope you get a chance to get out with him soon.

I second the 6.5 x 55 low recoil with no mod’s and cheap to shoot. Great ballistics too.

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Originally Posted by ActionJackson017

All,

Many threads to be read discussing HBC's most venerable topic of "which calible to buy", but after going through a dozen or so threads I couldn't find much on recoil management. To skip to the punch, grandpa settled on and acquired a 7mm-08 for my son and we spent a day at the range yesterday conditioning the barrel and sighting it in amongst other fun endeavors. It's the Ruger American Compact bolt-action with synthetic stock and matte black barrel. Hell of a little rifle and I was quickly shooting reasonable groups at 100 meters as we sighted it in and conditioned the barrel in short order.

Having said that, my quick observation on the rifle was my 75lb 11 y/o son would *not* be able to handle it's recoil until he's a little older/heavier. In fact, I will go so far as to say my 30-06 is more comfortable for me to shoot. It was spitting Hornady 139 grain interlocks down the range and this morning my shoulder feels distinctly abused lol.

Considerations I would like others thoughts on:
-Easy place to start -- upgrade the butt pad. Sims Airpad 10824 would be an easy upgrade but my go-to sites don't appear to carry.. (@todbartell, can I order in through you if you see this?)
-Install a muzzle brake. Seems overkill on a 7mm-08 and not sure I want to go this route. But.. 3 gill? clamp on?
-Lighter load. Drop down to 120 grain?

Bottom line is my experience yesterday suggests in my mind my son is going to have to put on another 10-15lbs before he will be able to shoot this rifle well. What have others done for their youth and wives rifles?

Cheers.

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Had the same problem many years ago.
In a 30 cal. Barrel you could reload Shells with a very light Bullets like a 86Grain 308 Diameter (.30 Mauser) Bullet. Tradex sells them.

Recoil will be almost nil.

Cheers

To circle back on this thread from the fall, Grandpa Knute on the forum here took some time to fill the hollow stock with epoxy resin and add some additional weight to the equation, and we upgraded the butt pad to a Limbsaver as well. I took the 7MM-08 out to a cut block and put a few rounds down the barrel and my shoulder reports to me a significant improvement in recoil. :)

Now it's time to look in to hand loading.

Cheers!

Buy some Remington reduced recoil ammo and let him shoot it works well. I believe Hornady makes it also. I went this route with my son reduced recoil ammo hand loads bumped it up next year and full load 120 ttsx after that. Shoot me a pm if you would like some reduced loads that worked for us.