The mention of comb shape suggests that recoil can create a little mouse on your cheek as well as a sore shoulder pocket. A sharply radiused or thin comb certainly doesn't do a good job of spreading the shock of an upward recoil component if you have your head (and cheek pocket) inclined over the top to get the correct backsight alignment. A lot of cast (3/8-7/16") gives a lateral recoil component INTO the cheek of the shooter depending whether it's "on" or "off" and the handedness of the shooter. Oddly, I have, and have seen a couple of additional, French shotguns whose stocks are shaped such as to provide cast at face but "return" or recurve to place the butt in fore/act alignment with the bores or at least with the rib centerline. I believe this "design" mitigates the lateral component of recoil. A little or a lot of positive pitch may be fine but lots of negative pitch is not so great IMO. Very short toes allow the butt to sheer upward in the pocket. Add downward barrel whip in a sxs and this combination feels to me like getting uppercut with a baseball bat. I don't think there's anyone who thinks that huge amounts of drop at heel don't produce an upward recoil component. Of course you can't cheek them tight the way you would a high and parallel stock or you'd have your eye behind the top lever so maybe the pain of heavy loads is mitigated to a degree by the upright head position. Even with light 1 oz. loads, I think there's a threshold of perceivable shock and discomfort associated with a gunweight approaching six lbs. When guns and shotcharge are similar wgt., there certainly have to be differences in stock geometry which produce recoil discomfort. I've never had much shoulder soreness with hard butts and 1 1/8 oz in 12 ga or 1 oz in 16. I would guess that a bad case of magnumitus changes the picture at the shoulder considerably.
jack
