The purpose of a beavertail profile is not to help tame recoil, it is to keep your fingers off of hot barrels, IMO.
It seems to me that if the purpose of a BT is to protect from hot barrels, then instead of being quite rare on British game guns, they'd be much more common. A very active drive is certainly one place you can heat up your barrels. As for gripping a BT tighter than a splinter, I'm sure not everyone does that. But the BT makes it easier to grip tighter than does a splinter, simply because there's more to grab onto.
