doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Will a 6 lb. 2oz 20 ga. be unpleasant to shoot ?

The lightest 20 i have is a 5 lbs. 4 ounce Fox and i shoot 3/4 ounce Vintager loads in it with no recoil problems! Brownells sells the London Guns recoil pads. Bobby

Bobby, the last time I checked Brownell's for the London Guns pads, they only had the thick ones.

6lb 3oz Parker with original type pad handles 1oz loads without discomfort. 5lb 9oz 16ga Sempert-Kreighoff and horn butt plate handles 7/8oz loads without discomfort but the 1oz loads get painful quickly. 6lb 2oz 20ga B.Rizzini with checkered butt is fine all day with 7/8oz target loads on sporting clays. So it depends on what weight load and velocity you choose. I hand load 3/4oz 20ga loads with 7 shot for desert quail and find they are indistinguishable from 7/8oz loads as far as taking game.

T-Stick, Mine a LC/20, pre-13, 6/lbs., Shoots mild pressure [7,000] handloads, and Win, Australian made Super X, 7/8 oz, and all a pleasure to shoot at clay games or birds. Randy

T-Stick -- My AyA 4/53 20 is 5 lbs 10 oz. Simple checkered butt. I use 1200 fps 7/8 oz loads or thereabout on wild birds, and I sometimes go to two and a half dram equiv 1 oz. loads. There is no pain in the field. I'm not a big guy.

On the skeet field I shoot std. factory and handloaded relatively hi-pressure 7/8 oz skeet loads (1200 fps 7/8 oz). After a while the gun can punish you, but it isn't bad. I won the 20 ga. skeet champ with it at the Vintager's event in Northbrook IL in 2005. If you shoot 4 or 5 boxes you'll be fine. Taking a break in the middle of your shooting makes it even better. I've put in a 250 round day with it at skeet, and it does tire me out more than my skeet gun. But I won't do that a lot, and there's no great reason to. Are you really going to shoot 10 boxes of skeet or sporties with it every day? It's a field gun. Get the gun fit right and mount it right and it'll never bother you. If you simply must shoot it all day at the gun club, put a KickEez pad on it.

Think about those guys with the 6 to 6.5 pound 12's shooting American 1.125 oz shells! That's much worse. Go through the recoil math -- that 12 gauge example at 6.5 pounds shooting 1.125 oz. kicks like a 5 pound 20 with 7/8 oz! Try a nice 1.375 oz 1295 fps load in that 6.5 pound 12 -- good for going through back-bones of long going-away pheasants -- Hooo Boy!!! Make sure you hold on to the gun. You can feel everything flex -- in you as well as the gun! Now doing that all day is nonsense. You can get away with it a half dozen times in a day, or maybe in your life. Going to the "standard hi-velocity load" in the 12 (1.25 oz and 1330 fps), which a lot of people do all day is only 4 percent less recoil than that wicked 1.375 oz load!

The 20? No sweat.

Have Fun,
Tony Lowe

Part of the equation is how much shooting will you be doing with what size loads? Lighter loads for the sporting clays and if you need heavier for upland should work fine considering you probably won't be shooting near as many rounds when actually in the field. Also, good pad = No problem.

I regularly shoot two 16's that weigh 5-11 and a 12 that weighs
6-1 using 1 oz. and 1-1/8 oz., respectively, on doves, quail,
and pheasants. These are factory game/target loads and as long
as I make a good mount and stay focused on the bird, I never
feel the recoil and my shoulder is never sore at the end of the
day. Good shooting. John