After serious injure to my right shoulder I no longer can do my football work-out. I will say this though for swinging a hammer verus traditional pumping of iron. You develop more power pumping iron i.e. physical strength, but you will acquire far more practical endurance swinging that ol' hammer.

Besides, it pisses off the yuppie neighbors who just cannot stand the sound of a hammer ringing off those wedges. It is music to my ears though.

Sorry for the highjack of your thread.

Back to the original subject. With the big bores, weight is your friend. Carry as heavy a rifle as you can. At the same time, you must balance the rifle's weight so that it is nimble and quick in the handling department. This means you do not want the rifle's balance point to be just forward of the magazine box, at least not in my opinion. It is better to have a 12 pound rifle be slightly butt heavy. That way the rifle will set into your shoulder and the muzzle will be counter weighted, and therefore quicker to point and aim. This is a good thing when one may have to shoot quickly.

Scott

Anvil63,

I weigh exactly half your weight, and have been using a rifle that weighs about 9 pounds for many years.

Sometimes I have carried it on my shoulders for up to 13 hours - I don't like slings, so it is either on one shoulder, the other, or both.

Walter says as you are twice as heavy as I am, you can carry an 18 pound rifle quite comfortably.

HI,

I just talk to MR. Brockman the other day as he is almost done with my rifle cz action, 416 Rigby. I wanted to keep the weight around 9 pounds and he said it will be around 9.I guess I will find out the recoil, but I know it will not be as bad as my 9 pound 50-110,Kev