I agree, recoil is something one has to learn how to deal with. I have found that a synthetic stock has a lot less recoil felt than the pretty wood stock. If you don't believe me I'll put the wood stock back on my model 70 - 30/06 and it hurts like heck after 3 or 4 shots. With the synthetic stock you can shoot all day with it using 150 or 180 gr loads. The same with my 375 H&H. I'm not convinced that those charts & statistics on the felt recoil is correct!!