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Joined: 20 Mar 2008 Posts: 18 Location: washington

Can anybody recomend some good light factory loads for teaching new shooters? I'm teaching my girlfriend to shoot my 16 and she is a little recoil shy.

Guest

I would recommend any new shooter to get introduced with one shot via a semiauto due to the reduced recoil. While a fixed breached gun will have the same recoil as an auto, the recoil duration with an auto is spread out over a longer period than a fixed breached gun. I would probably start a new shooter out with a Beretta 390 or 391 auto in a 20 gauge. Shooting some 1140 fps at 7/8oz load will be nicer than an higher velocity with a larger payload. Check out on the Internet for formulas on recoil to come up with a decent shooting combination. If your female friend has shorter arms, you may look into getting a youth/woman stock fitted for that gun. That's why the Beretta autos are a good choice because of the availability of those stocks. If you make it fun, it'll give them a reason to come out and go shooting with you.

Good luck...

Join our Low Pressure group. There's plenty of 'girly' loads. Razz

I'd look at RST 1oz or 7/8oz. They are a little spendy, but recoil is very manageable with these loads. The Winchester SuperX 1oz loads have very manageable recoil, too.

Reload or beg someone else to reload for you , 3/4 OZ in the ball park of 1150-1200 FPS and you will have a shooting partner , shoot heavier and you might as well flip a coin as to whether she will shoot with you or not in the future.

I loaded the 3/4 OZ for my girlfriend and she loves to shoot , I give her the 7/8 OZ and she gave me an ultimatum ( If I have to shoot these I just wont shoot , they hurt me , the other shells doesn't hurt and they are fun to shoot )

This is what she killed her Pheasants with this past fall in the Dakota's , and looking forward to going this fall as well.

Regards Charles

Light weight, low recoil loads put the "fun" back in shooting for fun. They are also ideal for serious practice as well. They do less damage to our central nervous systems and to our shooting performance over the long term.

Having been a long term competative trap shooter, I can varify that continued exposure to recoil has an accumulative effect. It results in an involuntary reaction called flinching. Nobody, even the biggest, toughest folks we know are immune. They too can and will eventually develop a flinch if they continue to shoot the heavier recoiling loads without doing something to mitigate and limit the effects.

Recoil pads, padded cheek pieces, and recoil reducers are common to most serious target shooters' guns today. Others use release triggers or triggers with heavier pull weights to try to control an acquired flinch. Still others have been forced out of competative shooting due to an uncontrollable flinch.

Some of the older trap shooters I used to shoot with liked to refer to light weight, light kicking loads as "ammo for women." they'd laugh at the guys who had gone to light loads and call them "girly men."

Almost invariably, these self-proclaimed tough guys claimed that only sissies developed a flinch but not them. Oh No!! However, occasionally, one of these "heros" would have a failure to fire and nearly fall off their shooting station from the flinch they didn't have. Being the curmudgeon I am, I'd just have to say something like "nice job of not flinching." The rest of the line would usually convulse in laughter, and we'd then get on with the business of finishing that line.

This Tom foolery happened at least a couple of times each season, and it was always a hoot. It also always proved to the wiser folks among us, that recoil is something to limit or avoid. Nobody is immune.

Shooting is a game of skill and finesse, not a test of strength or toughness. The proof of this is the number of women and adolecent competators who can regularly kick 99% of the men's butts on the line on any given day. Use the lightest loads you can get away with for your practice and your fun shooting. You will be much better off in the long run.

16GG certainly hit the nail on the head , no one could have said it any better .

LOWER RECOIL = BETTER SHOOTING .

The only pellets in a pattern that matter are the ones that hit the target !!!!!!!!

LESS RECOIL = MORE PELLETS ON TARGET.

Regards Charles

*Last edited by ckirk on Sat Mar 29, 2008 8:16 am; edited 1 time in total*

16gg,

I agree with your view that light loads are not just for women and children conveyed in the previous post. I do have a question regarding a statement you made. You said (relative to light loads)...

Joined: 01 Jun 2006 Posts: 268 Location: Meridian, ID

Look for some Winchester Super X low brass at Sportsmans Warehouse. May not have them at every store. 16ga selection is limited to begin with, so buying that perfect load off the shelf will be difficult.

Make sure your girlfriend is mounting the gun properly and the gun fits reasonably well.

16gg,

I understand your point about the conditioned flinch response due to recoil and I whole-heartedly agree that lighter is better.

I was probably reading too much into your original statement. My colleague and friend studies traumatic brain/spinal cord injury resulting from numerous activities (football/hockey collisions, heading a soccerball, and boxing to name a few). We are always on the look out for verifiable instances of traumatic brain injury for case studies. The "publish or perish" world of academe makes one go on fishing expenditions from time to time. Sometimes these fishing expeditions prove useful; otherwise, "The average graduate thesis is nothing but a transference of bones from one graveyard to another" (J. Frank Dobie).

Thanks for the reply.

Chris

Chris 16GG is right on that though , look at me I ( KNOCK KNOCK ON WOOD ) I am building a 16 ga wad mold , see what shooting can do to you !!!!!

To put the jokes aside , when I was shooting so much , I had severe Cervical problems associated with the recoil as did some others at the time , if you went to the US Shooting Team and inquired a bit I think you would turn this up as a past problem .

If you recall back years ago , it was Bob Brister that went to Ballistic's Products to solicit the birth of a light load of small shot at HIGH VELOCITY'S for game and clay's called ultimatly the KILLER BEE'S , for a detached Retina , This was the approximatly along the same time I was involved with my UPPER CERVICAL region problems .

This is why I am a HUGE BELIEVER IN LIGHT LOADS . For instance Mike Jordan of Winchester cannot hardly even pull a trigger today from the recoil of just MILD TRAPLOADS due to the EXCESSIVE FLINCH developed over the years from shooting .

Trust me folks you think that light loads are SISSEY ?? Well these loads are your FUTURE , IF YOU LOVE TO SHOOT . I

If shooting is not a HUGE PART OF YOUR LIFE it makes little difference then .

But if you want to shoot as long as you live then I suggest that you LIGHTEN THE LOADS UP !!!!!!

Regards Charles

Chris,

Look in this months Shooting Sportsman magazine. There is a nice article in there about recoil and the effects on shooting.

Brian