seafires post on the 300 varmiter got me thinking about PD shooting again. Over the years i think i've shot them with about every kind of round you can imagine. Over time i've developed a recoil tolerance, but the concussion from shot after shot gets to my head. this is what puts limits on my shooting. I've found that I can shoot all day as long as i'm using mostly 223 or smaller rounds. My favorite swift or 22/250 and bigger stuff has its limits of numbers I want to shoot. After a couple hundred rounds of swift go off my head says enuf already. ear muffs are great, but when bigger amouonts pof powder is burned, the concussion goes right the bones. I guess i didn't notice it as much when i was younger, but it sort of sneaks up on you.

butchloc,

That stinks, very sorry to hear about your "condition". Are you referring to the basic shock wave from the muzzle?

Its a good thing you can use the .223, plenty of range for most sod rat shooting!

Butch, You are not the only volume shooter to experience this fatigue of sorts. Not a pleasant experience to be sure. One of the things which I have done to ease this effect is to go to longer barrels, and try to find a way to deflect the muzzle blast away when possible.

The 17 HMR and 204 Ruger are the prairie rifles I use the most . Loud muzzle blast also will put the P dogs back into their holes. When shooting a 243 Win Iv seen them go to their holes at 400 Yds.

A few things happening here...

Sound isn't just conveyed by the ear canal - it is also conveyed by bone conduction.

Physical concussion (impact) from the muzzle blast is not stopped by earmuffs - it impacts on the body whether or not you have hearing protection - one reason I avoid indoor or 'close roofed' ranges.

Recoil moves the body - even if the physical 'movement' itself is small, it's sudden, and 'jars' the body, and hence the nerves get 'tugged' if that makes sense (maybe 'stretched' is a better word - that in itself causes fatigue... if you watch a shooter firing a moderate recoil rifle, you'll see something similar to whiplash happening - small, but do it often enough, and you'll get fatigued...

As you (and I) get older, the body is less able to flex and absorb the energy - hence we get tired.

I've switched to a 223 for varminting - I can shoot it all day with minimum negative effect.

One year I took a .220 Swift and a .257 Ackley for prairie dogs. I would alternate the guns to keep the barrels cool.
Never again. After 3 days of shooting I was beaten up.
The .223 class and smaller is the answer for volume shooting.

For this very reason a .221 Fireball makes all kinds of sense.

I know its a bit involved to get a silencer in USA but worth the effort.

Those that havent used them say they are only effective with subsonic loads. Not so!

The sonic boom is there for sure but the muzzle blast is almost gone and you are much more aware of what is happening, can hear the shot hitting and other things.

No effect on accuracy.

View them as suppressors or sound moderators rather than silencers. Reduction is what you are trying to achieve.

We have always had them here off the shelf, no license needed.

Really adds to the enjoyment of shooting without the concussion. I am with Butchloc on that one and dont enjoy it.

quote:

Originally posted by 308Sako:
One of the things which I have done to ease this effect is to go to longer barrels, and try to find a way to deflect the muzzle blast away when possible.

Slowly my varmint guns are getting heavier and longer. The three latest varmint/long range guns that I've built weigh over 10 Lbs each and the last two have 26" barrels. (22.250, 223 and 6.5x284)

The lack of fatigue is another reason that I love blue dot loads... recoil is much less than most average 223 loads...

As Rugeruser was putting forth above.. a friend in Billings made me aware of a Federal Funded study being done in Montana, about shooting and hearing loss...

It revolved around varmint shooters, who shoot the most...

It also revolved around the material that was used on the stocks...

Of course heavier recoilers add dramatically to the hearing loss, which is not the ear drum but the area behind the ear, on your skull...this area is the area that the vibrations of the ear drum bounce the sound it hears off of...

I use to work with surgical correction of this when I was working in the medical field... this area can granulation with a lot of vibration to it, which results in the hearing loss...

The focus also on rifle stocks, showed that synthetic stocks were the worst ones you could use, especially as the recoil increased...

Sythetic stocks do not absorb any of the recoil vibrations... it passes them directly back and the stock is against your cheek, and it vibrates it back to your ear and the skull area behind it...

Wood stocks will absorb a certain percentage of this vibration, that synthetics pass right thru to your head...

Laminate stocks absorb this vibration much better than wood...Laminates are the best if you are volume shooting...Hogue's Rubber Stocks also get very good marks for recoil vibration absorbtion...

If you can take a shot where your cheek isn't against the stock, this helps even more...

High volume shooters with hearing loss is commonly only on the side that their trigger finger is on... not from the boom or the hearing protection, but from recoil vibration...

I have been wondering if that is why you see some shooters, with scopes mounted real high.. on stocks that have NO cheek piece...

But since shooting Blue Dot in my 223 loads and using pretty exclusively laminate stocks, and heavy barrels...I don't get those headaches, or ringing in my ears after a long day wearing out the barrel and my trigger finger, like I use to...

I am also learning to keep my cheek off of the rifle when I shoot...

I have done 500 shots with Blue Dot 223 loads in 5 hours and have not had a headache or the concussion that you speak of...and that was with Laminate stocks...

Regular 25 grains of powder loads, in 223 even, and a wood stock... 250 to 300 rounds will give me the headache from hell...it isn't the recoil, it is the stock vibration that is doing it...the heavier the stock, the lighter the powder charge, equates to the less the vibration and recoil...

Another reason I am a big proponent of Blue Dot for prairie dog and sage rat shooting...

That's revolutionary information.
It explains why my right ear is going to pot.

If it is recoil wouldn't a break help? It has drastically reduced the recoil of my 22-250.

Kiwi Vince; I see you are from New Zealand, but I was always under the impression that civilian in the US couldn’t own a silencer.
I always thought this would be great to have one, it wouldn’t only hide the blast from the pdogs but it sure would help me keep the rest of my hearing.

Silencers in Oregon are legal, evidently...

There are just some restrictions on their uses..

but as long as you can legally own a firearm in Oregon, which isn't that hard, passing a background check.. you can own a silencer...

you just have to pay the federal excise tax on them which is about $600.00...maybe someone else more in the know can clarify the Federal Tax on them...