Shooting with a Busted Shoulder
Gunning after Surgery
Going in for a shoulder replacement, it never occurred to me as a lifelong shooter to ask the surgeon about “Now what?” Following surgery, “Now what?” turned out to be a lot more challenging than I had ever anticipated. Soaking up a lot of recoil and shock on an artificial shoulder joint was just not in the cards but with a little bit of ingenuity and months of retraining my mind and muscles, my joy of shooting is steadily returning. It’s a story worth sharing.
Looking through the gun safe, the first thing occurring to me was the racks held a lot of hard-recoiling beasts. I have always favored heavier bullets and heavier payloads for hunting. Yes, I’ve been ribbed for hunting the diminutive Arizona Coues deer with a Remington .338 Ultra-Mag pushing a 210-grain Partition at 3,160 fps, but I’ve never lost one. There were the hard-pushing .375s, .458s, a 7mm-300 Weatherby wildcat, .45-70s, 3.5″ 12-gauge magnums, .44 Magnums, 45ACPs plus an assortment of snappy recoiling 7mm and .30-caliber magnum rifles.
Changing Times
Looking in the mirror, I had to admit pursuing dangerous and heavy big game and high-flying geese were no longer on my menu. Instead, I could turn to .17, .22 and 6mm centerfires and pistol-rifle calibers for a majority of my big game and varmint hunting, and transition to the 28-gauge and the .410 for upland and decoyed waterfowl hunting. I could also load down the big-booming handguns or get just as much of a handgun challenge shooting mild-loaded 38-caliber wadcutters and .22 Long Rifles.
Accepting and living with those honest conclusions was lesson number one. With blood in my eye, I said goodbye to a lot of old, hard-kicking friends and hauled them off to the local gun store. Surprisingly, it was a liberating experience and gave me a rational excuse to go shopping for some nice low-recoiling replacements. It was mature “downsizing” with just a little bit of a different twist. Even my dubious spouse kept her thoughts and comments to herself.
After the bloodletting and buying spree, my “new primary battery” looked like this — a Model 700 Remington in .17 Rem., a .22 LR Winchester Mod. 52 Sporter, an Anschutz .22 Hornet, a Ruger LC Carbine 5.7×28, a Springfield Armory “Saint” AR in .223 Rem., a Winchester Model 70 in 220 Swift, Model 1892 Winchesters in .25-20 and .32-20, a BSA 243 Win. and a Mannlicher-Schoenauer carbine in .257 Roberts. Rounding out the shotgun stable were a 12-ga. Browning Citori fitted with Briley 28-gauge tubes plus a Winchester Model 42 and a TriStar semi-auto in .410.
The handgun bin really got pared down to an old bull-barreled S&W Model 10 in .38 Special, a S&W Model 60, a Ruger Bearcat .22 LR, a S&W stainless Kit Gun .22 WMR plus additional S&W wheelguns in .32 S&W, .32 Magnum and .32-20.
Relief Sought
As I was soon to learn, with a repaired right shoulder, even light-recoiling pieces became uncomfortable during extended range sessions so I went searching for solutions. There were two significant ones. One was introducing a mechanical device to block that kick, the other was to transition to shooting with my opposite shoulder and hand. The mechanical device solution was easy, while retraining your muscle memory from decades of shooting from the right to left is a rough road. This transition is still a transition-in-progress.
When it comes to recoilless rifle and slug gun shooting on the range, the king is the Caldwell Lead Sled, now offered in four different configurations. The top-of-the-line Lead Sled DFT is a massive, nicely finished shooting rest with a built-in shelf to accept shot or sand bags to increase the weight to over 100 lbs. Even without added weight, the DFT model hits the scales at 24 lbs., is totally adjustable for gun length, sports a dial-adjustable front rest for windage-and-elevation and soaks up recoil like a sponge. In fact, it can “stop” recoil entirely. I only wish I had bought a Lead Sled 10 years ago. It has become the quintessential tool in my post-shoulder replacement kit for shooting sessions.
Before the days of Lead Sleds, we found a variety of ways to reduce recoil that are still highly practical. Adding weight to the gun works. One permanent alternative is to rout out a trough in the forearm and neatly fill it with shot and epoxy. Of course, muzzle brakes and suppressors work to moderate recoil and are increasingly common as manufacturers now routinely offer models with threaded muzzles.
Harnessing the power of inertia to moderate recoil, tubes filled with mercury (C&H Research) or mechanical pistons (Dead Mule) are readily available to insert into buttstocks. There are also recoil-reducing replacement stocks available.
Picked up at a gun show, one of the products I like is a fabric sleeve that wraps around the buttstock of a long gun. Filled with shot or sand, it adds pounds of inertia to the gun. It’s useful on the range, trap or skeet field or from a blind.
The downside to adding weight to a firearm is balance. It’s easy to throw off a firearm’s natural and dynamic balance if it’s being used in a field situation so experiment and go slow.
Padding Up
An old trick that didn’t work is placing a sand or shot bag between the butt of your gun and your shoulder. The effect was mildly painful but I found gel pads of varying thicknesses worked very well.
The PAST strap-on ambidextrous shoulder pad is currently offered by Caldwell. It’s been around for decades, so that says something positive about its popularity. It features a large pad of nitrile butadiene rubber available in ¼” to 1″ thicknesses. I own one but I find it hard and bulky. Similar pads are offered by Browning and Limbsaver. I haven’t tried them but they look more comfortable and flexible.
Padded shooting vests in a variety of styles are readily available from several makers as well as sport shirts designed to accept slip-in recoil pads. Check out Browning, Orvis and Cabela’s for starters.
Next are buttstock recoil pads available for rifles and shotguns. Some are pre-fit replacements while some have to be fitted by a gunsmith. The handiest pads are the slip-on models and I particularly like the Limbsaver brand along with Limbsaver, Pachmayr and KICK-EEZ.
Handguns also need some attention and there are a lot of rubber recoil-taming replacement grips available. Pachmayr even offers a slip-on, recoil-absorbing, soft rubber sleeve fitting over the factory grips of a variety of semi-autos.
Placing a recoil-absorbing glove between your hand and the grip also really helps. Roy Huntington, former editor of American Handgunner, recommends the Boyt Harness Company plus he likes padded golf gloves with the trigger fingers cut off.
The Big Switcheroo
In short, there are a variety of mechanical means to reduce the impact of recoil on your new shoulder replacement. Transitioning to the alternative shoulder and hand is an entirely different world. I’ve been working at it for several months and I still feel like a klutz. Here’s what I’ve learned so far trying to transition from a right- to left-handed shooter.
First, I wanted to shoot a lot and not just go through the dry-fire motions of learning to shoot from the left side. The answer? Airguns. I dug out the old Daisy Red Ryder and then went out and bought a Crosman 357 pellet revolver that looks and feels ever-so-much like a 6″ Python. I also purchased a Crosman model CFAR1, a BB-firing AR fitted with a factory red dot. It is a selective-fire model with all the right switches and buttons where they should be. The realism of the Crosman models is simply remarkable.
The first and best exercise, recommended to me by a friend who had lost the vision in his right eye, consists of placing squares of 2″ blue painter’s tape throughout the house on the walls and furniture, high, low and in the middle. The exercise consists of walking through the house and mounting your gun and taking aim at each piece of blue tape as it comes into view. The objective, through constant repetition, is to build up muscle memory on your alternative side as well as training your alternative aiming eye. Shooting with both eyes open is important. Moving through rooms and down hallways and changing target tape locations and heights really help to keep practice sessions interesting.
Transitioning to the outdoors and actually making the shot is the next step. Now, you’re in live-fire mode with BBs and pellets. Manipulating the safety, pressing the trigger and having a safe backstop come into play. For targets, I’ve used everything from leaves on the ground to swinging tin cans. The positive feedback from successfully hitting a target — from a position that will feel awkward for months — cannot be over-emphasized. It’s a mind game, you know, as well as a physical challenge.
The most important lesson from a shoulder replacement? Don’t let it interfere with your shooting life. Plan ahead. There are a multitude of solutions available to you so grab your favorite smokepole and get cracking!