As a lady, should I use a 12-bore to reduce recoli?

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As a lady, should I use a 12-bore to reduce recoli?

A heavier 12-bore will help reduce recoil.

By John Bidwell

Wednesday, 01 February 2012

My husband bought me a 20-bore shotgun when I took up clay shooting last year, but I find it kicks quite badly.

I’ve spoken to other women who shoot and they use heavier 12-bores to get over the problem.

Trouble is, my husband won’t listen to me changing guns because, he says, the 20 is a lady’s gun. What do you think?

CLAY SHOOTING
John Bidwell
12 and a 20-bore are pretty much identical when it comes to performance but the lighter gun can tend to recoil a little more with 28gm competition cartridges.

This might not be too much of a problem on a game shoot but the effects do become noticeable if a fair number of cartridges are fired in quick succession, as at a clay shoot.

What you need to remember is that recoil doesn’t have to be excessive to bring about a drop in performance, missed targets and tiredness – the cumulative effect of firing, say, 100 cartridges even with ‘average’ levels of recoil in a day will produce the same result.

In really bad cases recoil can also cause a shooter to start flinching and create triggering troubles.

Despite what your husband might say, a slightly heavier 12-bore will help protect you from the evils of recoil and probably bring about improved scores along the way.

Just make sure the gun is stocked to the correct length and has sufficient cast at toe to avoid bruising.