hunting

I need advice about shooting high powered rifile on same side as device is placed.
Does anyone know if there is a recoil pad or harness that can be placed over device to keep it from having the leads getting
damaged.

Any ideas?

12 Comments

hi

by pacergirl - 2013-12-07 09:12:03

Hi, I shoot (targets) on occasion but I am right handed and place my shotgun into my right shoulder. My pacer is in the left shoulder. I have not considered what to do if I had the pacer in the left.... Have you googled it?
Good luck with your hunting.

damage

by Tracey_E - 2013-12-07 09:12:07

It's highly unlikely you will damage the pm but you might end up bruised. Our skin isn't nearly as tough as the titanium pm is. You could try a pad, start with something low recoil and see how it goes. My pm is on the left and I shoot right handed so this is just a guess.

Gun experts

by Theknotguy - 2013-12-07 10:12:25

Yeah, thought about that. I shoot left handed and my PM is on that side. It's exactly where the gunstock would be placed while shooting. I was thinking I'd have to give up shooting but I haven't done it for about 40 years so it wouldn't be a big loss. However....

For the lighter recoil rifles I'm thinking you could go to a shooting jacket or vest. They have a semi-hard leather pad that would dissipate the recoil. That would be 22, 25 caliber, air rifle, and such. The pad would fit over the PM and the recoil would be dissipated over the shoulder and chest.

For heavier caliber such as 222, 30-30, 30-06 and up I'm not sure what you would use. We put a recoil pad on a 30-30 and the damn thing kicked like a mule. It was worse than the straight stock. The semi-hard leather pad wouldn't work as the shock would be too great.

It's not so much the PM, but the possible damage to the leads. The PM would take the shock but each recoil could possibly tear the leads. No gun is worth tearing out the leads.

If you subscribe to some shooting magazines, I'd send letters to the editors. I've seen articles over the years about rifles and shotguns being modified for people with one arm, etc. Possibly a letter campaign? I also remember seeing recoil forks on WWII 50 caliber machine guns to help dissipate the recoil on them. So a search through the history books might be in order. I've also seen some unusual stocks on the esoteric rifles advertised for the gun shops. A little research in that area might yield a solution.

Bench shooting might be another option. I'm thinking some of the bench shooting solutions allow you to sight the rifle but have a bench stop to take the recoil. I'm thinking this was for 50 caliber rifles shooting at a target at 5000 or more feet away.

Of course, going with a pistol or hand gun would be a solution too. Some of the hand guns written about in the gun magazines were 1) equivalent to a heavy caliber rifle, 2) fitted with esoteric hand grips that would dissipate the recoil. Some of the hand guns used at the olympics were really out there as far as hand grips were concerned. I also remember seeing some of the hand guns having an arm grip to dissipate the recoil and make a better sighting platform. (Skeet shooting with a 410 shotgun handgun?) A possible solution for you.

If you do find a solution, please mention it on this site. I quit hunting over 40 years ago but still would like to do target shooting if the opportunity arises.

The two things I feel would be a detriment would be 1) the recoil on the PM itself. That might be really painful as you only have a thin layer of skin over the PM and no natural padding. 2) Even if the PM takes the shock and you don't have any pain, I'd be concerned with the recoil tearing the leads. I like shooting but don't really want to die doing it.

Hope this helps.

Theknotguy

Recoil Protection

by donr - 2013-12-07 10:12:36

Your PM is on the wrong side.

Too late to do anything about that.

Tracey nailed it for the PM & your tissue between it & the butt of your weapon. The real problem comes w/ the leads. If you manage to get the butt right over them, you could wind up pinching them between a rib & the collar bone.

Recoil shock can be pretty sharp. I remember my days on the rifle range back in 1956 - the M-1 rifle had quite a recoil shock. I wound up w/ a rather hefty bruise after several days launching .30-06 bullets down range. (For the Metric world, that's 7.62 mm)

There are shoulder pads that can ameliorate the problem - w/i reason. BUT - & every answer has a BUT associated w/ it. You have NOT defined "High Powered Rifle," Relative term. To the average US hunter, that means .30-06 or 7.62 NATO. To a professional hunter in South Africa, that means something that will stop a charging Rhino at 50 yds. Totally different colored horse - that means what we in the south of the US would call a "...big ol' honkin' magnum round..." as made famous by Weatherby or the like. I've stood next to a man zeroing his rifle in preparation for an African lion hunt. So help me, that cannon he had at his shoulder sported a muzzle brake to reduce recoil. Just watching, it was obvious that his shoulder was taking one Heck of a beating (as were my ears behind muffling ear protection).

My solution was to convert to a smaller caliber round w/ less recoil but equal effectiveness. There are now a lot of .223 family (5,56 mm) cartridges available that will take down reasonable sized game, like the US whitetail deer. The hidden gem is the .257 Roberts. W/ a suitable shoulder pad, I suspect you could fire that all afternoon at targets w/o discomfort on your PM side.

Totally different story if you are after bigger game - moose, grizzly bear; back bear, mule deer, bighorns, Alaskan brown bear, etc. They require a bigger cannon because of longer ranges & bigger bones to penetrate. Here, you pay yur money & take your risk - All hunting goods dealers have shoulder pads that can reduce the shock, but NOT remove it completely. At these calibers & powder charges, you don't shoot targets - you fire enough to zero & be syure that you can pull the trigger w/o flinching, then go out & fire for effect in the wilds. Reduce the probability of damaging your PM by firing fewer rounds. Gotta be your choice.

Shotguns? try 20 gage as opposed to the venerable 12 gage, but there you sacrifice a lot of effectiveness in the projectile.

Don

A Moments Silence.............

by Tattoo Man - 2013-12-07 11:12:10


....................................for all those beautiful creatures that Man can only quell by using weapons with ranges that put the 'Hunters' well out of reach.

I will accord the greatest respect to those who can kill animals on equal terms..mano a mano..

Donr..did your Lion Slaying Pal eat its flesh,..indeed was he that hungry ?


Indeed, how many are feeling hungry right now , reading this ?

TM

Don't Do It

by J.B. - 2013-12-07 11:12:12

My vote is don't do if the gun has a sizeable "kick" to it. Like others have said the PM will not care, but those leads will not tolerate much in the way of sudden movement. From my viewpoint, movement that could be the result of a kick from a gun.

But I'm no expert, although I would offer the suggestion that you check with the dr that implanted the PM for an opinion.

Ethics & morality of lion hunting

by donr - 2013-12-07 12:12:31

I reported facts of a situation I witnessed, not the relative morality or ethics of the situation when I mentioned a man firing a rifle in preparation for a lion hunting expedition..

I would not hunt lions for the very reason TattMan mentions - I would not eat the beast. If I kill it, I eat it - like the deer. All my neighbors subsist on deer meat for a good portion of the year out here in rural North Georgia - but they do not poach during non hunting seasons.

Here in the US, we have a wide spectrum of situations with respect to the interactions between humans & wild animals. Three hundred yrs ago, when Europeans first arrived on our shores, there was a balance among the various mammals living here. There were predators & prey. The predators included the native homo sapiens (Called Indians by the new arrivals). At the time, there were relatively few humans contributing to the demise of the prey animals & there was a good balance among & between the various populations.

The predators included Humans, cougars, wolves and bears. Believe it or not, the humans were at the top of a very flat pyramid of predators because at the same time they were predators, they were prey for their companions of the predator world. In the eastern 2/3 of the continent, the whitetailed deer was the principal prey animal. Since they were necessary to keep the predator population alive, they bred like fruit flies.

A doe was born in April or May, was pregnant by December and if she survived, had a pair of twins every year she lived. You can imagine how much predation it took to keep that herd controlled!

As the years went on, the Europeans eliminated the other predators from the populated areas, but NOT the prey. We wound up at the beginning of the 2oth Century w/ essentially zero predators of the four legged variety & unfortunately a very reduced number of prey animals. We got smart & started conservation programs for the prey, but NOT the predators. We are starting to figure out what it takes to create a herd that is "typical" and "Normal." Limitations have been created to ensure that the largest & best animals are permitted to grow to maturity. One way of doing that is a restriction on minimum antler size for hunters. That has become common & where enforced. the herds are becoming more "Normal."

It took a while, but by the 1970's we had healthy prey populations again, but the predator populations just did not grow. OTOH, who wants to share living space w/ wolves, cougars & bears? Certainly not the residents of north Florida, where a black bear killed a woman last week. Certainly not me & my neighbors, who have started having Black bears wandering through our yards at any hour of the day or night. I live in the verge of civilization, where prey & predator come in contact. We have black bears, coyotes (for the European, that's a canine that looks similar to a wolf or German Shepherd & weighs in at about 35 lbs - 17 kilos -max), feral dogs & cats, wild cats & some rather nasty snakes of the venomous varieties.

Whereas humans & other predators have changed a lot, the breeding habits of the deer have not. Consequently, we are finding some areas that are overrun w/ deer. So much so that the beasts have exceeded the ability of the habitat to support them. There are significant issues when this happens.

Where the whitetail has become more abundant than the habitat will support, they start changing in some not so subtle ways, that will eventually lead to their extinction or biological modification in such a manner that they become grotesque. The outward manifestation is usually mal-formed antlers. The hidden manifestations are susceptibility to disease, very reduced size, & genetic disorders leading to death.

There is the very famous deer herd in New Jersey (near New York City) where there was no predation for many generations of deer (a generation for deer is about 5 yrs, compared to 28 yrs for humans), leading to a hideously deformed herd of creatures. The only solution was to allow human predators in to cull the herd down to a size that the habitat would support. Whereas healthy whitetails can grow to 200 lbs, plus (80-90 kilos), these barely made 100 lbs.

About 35 yrs ago, I became involved in managing a herd of deer on an Army installation of about 20,000 acres. The deer population had grown to over 5000 animals (by actual count from a helicopter) & the limited hunting that took place showed that the herd was slowly decreasing in average size & antlers on the males were becoming more & more deformed. (Deformed antlers are the first signs that a herd is getting in trouble from habitat limitations) We had good data because every animal killed on the installation was weighed & examined by a deer biologist who worked for the state. Further, we knew that all the does were producing twins every year, so the herd was exploding in size at an exponential rate.

Since none of the farmers living in the area would support the re-introduction of cougars & wolves into the area, humans had to become the principal predator.

The interactions among the wildlife are very complex- some of them adapt to living among humans - like the coyotes, who have adapted so well that they are becoming numerous in some very urban areas. We provide food for them, very unwittingly. Our garbage contains edibles that they love. Ditto for the black bears. we also raise dogs, house cats, chickens, ducks, etc that the 4 legged predators really enjoy. (Our son lost a cat to coyotes in an urban area in Colorado) In Colorado Springs, CO (Colorado straddles the Rocky Mountains, so its pretty wild) we have seen mature male mule deer wandering around front yards in densely packed sub-divisions of housing, nibbling on the rose bushes. Again, the residents of Colorado Springs don't want cougars & bears introduced to the area, so they have grown to tolerate the deer. Unfortunately, since we are providing the deer better habitat than the wild, their population will grow till the interaction w/ humans is less than amicable.

Large antlered animals are NOT friendly when they have adapted to cohabitation w/ humans. They start out shy, develop familiarity w/ sounds & human activity & wind up aggressive & dangerous, especially during breeding season.

The same is true for black bears. Recall the bear that visited our house. He was a shy animal & took off running at the sound of a "Click" in my front door when he had his foot on the operating lever. We discovered that our neighbor was inadvertently feeding the bear by throwing fish guts into the woods behind his house. Now that bear was in the never-never land between shy & afraid of humans & comfortable w/ them & aggressively dangerous.

Face it - city dwellers & rural dwellers have different attitudes toward wildlife. The attitudes cover a spectrum from complete bans on killing our 4 legged companions at the top of the food chain & the prey animals all the way down to wanton killing for no reason other than a perverse joy. Humans & wild life are going to have to live together on this planet - it's the only one we collectively have, so let's make the most of it.

Don

Hunting

by vbilbrey - 2013-12-08 02:12:09

There is some type of padding that I've seen in gun stores and I believe even Academy carries it. I've never tried it, though as I primarily shoot pistols and when I do shoot rifles it's on the opposite side of where the PM is located. But I imagine it would help...

Oh.. I almost forgot! I did come the Pace
guard not too long ago and I think there's another post somewhere on this site about it.. This might be what you're looking for.

http://www.paceguard.com/about.html

"This device has the potential to reduce the risk of direct trauma to implanted pacemakers. Thoughtfully designed and innovative!"

Zvi S. Marans, MD


My My................

by Tattoo Man - 2013-12-08 02:12:31


...................this posting is, for a UK based person, not under a day to day threat from life threatening wild animals,..quite possibly,..well ..quaint.

Don, as in my Cyber Pal...............

You put forward a good, well founded case for defending your territoties from marauding predators,..that,..If the truth be said,..be a bit of an incovrnience,..particularly when I lived in Walton Street Chelsea,..when non standard pets were frowned on, ..even if accompanieid by Oscar Wilde

But that is another matter.

Hunt on..

Take that bead......
Carefull now..........
Tender finger on the trigger.....be soft..
Take that vital life.............as fleeting as your very own

Tattoo Man...alive and kicking, courtesy of no gun-toting predators ( for the time being )


Told my cardio which side to put PM!

by JerryG - 2013-12-08 03:12:09

Living among the Big Five I have to be able to shoot in certain situations which could arise (and have done a few times in the past). These days my 'heavy' rifle is a .375 H&H Magnum which even with factory loads has a sharp, heavy recoil and my handloads are pretty hot which aggravates the recoil. I had the rifle magnaported quite a few years ago which took the 'bite' out of the recoil but even with its thick rubber recoil pad, the recoil is still heavy. Consequently, when my cardio said he had to implant a PM, I told him he could only do so if he put it on the left side as I am right eye dominant and shoot right handed. Just as well as the PM under my left collar bone is exactly where the lower end of butt would be if I shot left handed.

I also use my .270 quite a lot and at one time used to assist a friend with his annual springbok cull where I had to shoot over 200 shots in two days and despite the recoil being fairly tame, I still damaged the fluid sacs in my shoulder joint the first time I did it. I then had the rifle magnaported and the recoil has almost gone.

We have a major rhino poaching problem in our area and the poachers shoot immediately if they are confronted. I have an FN FAL 7.62x51 assault rifle which fortunately has tame recoil as it is semi-automatic and a lot of the recoil is absorbed by the reload action. I maintain the same 'shoot on sight' policy as the poachers!

I was lucky enough to have opportunity to explain to my cardio why my PM had to be on the left, but outfitter16 already has his PM on the 'wrong' side so he will have to look at solutions. I suggest you consider not only perhaps going to smaller calibres for non-dangerous game but also magnaporting the rifles you have and fitting thick rubber recoil pads to them. Magnaporting (spark-eroding small slots in the barrel near the muzzle) makes the rifle very noisy and the large calibres have major muzzle blast but the process takes the 'bite' out of the recoil and changes it to a 'push' rather than a 'kick'.

I agree with those who say the titanium case of a PM should stand a fair amount of impact but impact on the device could well pull the leads which would be a potentially serious problem. I shudder to think of the pain it would cause me to shoot even my magnaported .375 H&H on top of my PM!

JerryG

Not necessarily on the "wrong" side

by vbilbrey - 2013-12-09 01:12:50

I'd just like to comment that it's possible outfitter's PM may not be on the "wrong" side. I say this because I know shooters who are actually left handed but shoot right handed. It's just how they do it. So if outfitter is a lefty but shoots with his right hand or vice versa then his PM will be on the correct side per the MD, but would on the "wrong" side in terms of shooting.

Try using a hand gun

by fishfighter - 2013-12-10 07:12:27

I go thru this problem often due to the fact I have a hickman line in the right side of my chest. Every time it is replaced, I have to wait 4-5 weeks for it to heal up before shooting a long gun.

If you hunt big game like I do, I use a .44 mag Blackhawk with a 10 5/8" barrel. The range is good out to about 100 yards. I do have a 2 power scope mounted of it.

Now, for those that don't hunt. If it wasn't for the hunters and fisher persons here in the USA, there wouldn't be any wild game left. We, as hunters pay a lot of money in license and taxes on everything that has something to do with sports(hunting and fishing) that goes towards buying lands and protecting wild game. I been a hunter all my life and had seen first hand the increase of wild game 10 folds over. Regulations, seasons and limits work.

If hunting was shut down for just one year, wild game would over run it's range which in turn would put people in danger. Besides that, what I kill, I eat. 10 times better for you then any store bought meat.

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