FWIW, Hatcher described a rifle an inventor brought in for evaluation by the Army.
The rifle was a "blow-forward" gun, where the barrel went forward at the shot, extracting and ejecting the case, and then picked up a new round on its way back into battery.*
Major General Julian S. Hatcher was head of the small arms development section, and certainly had experience with all kinds of shoulder weapons, so he ought to know. He remarked that it was the worst-recoiling gun he had ever fired. He only fired one shot, which was enough for the General, and handed it back to the inventor, who said he was "used to it," and proceeded to fire several more shots with it, apparently without discomfort.
The problem, of course, was that the body of the rifle was not only recoiling from the bullet and the combustion gases, but was also throwing the barrel forward, taking the recoil from the barrel as well.
In addition, the mass of the gun, in figuring recoil, had to be reduced by the weight of the barrel itself, which normally is an integral part of the gun's mass.
Before arthritis got into my shootin' hand, I did not have much trouble with the recoil of a .44 Magnum in a single action revolver, although I did not like it particularly. The main problem with it was recovering from the shot to make a second shot. In a hunting situation, this (at least theoretically) would not be a problem, but for just range practice and shooting at targets of opportunity (tin cans, cowpies) it just was not much fun.
On the other hand, as noted in the above post, a 124 grain load out of my Kel-Tek PF9 is also very brisk and sharp, but the recovery time is a lot less for followup shots since you don't have to bring your arms down almost from the vertical and re-align your whole anatomy. This is not a "fun" gun, either, but the recoil, even though it is very sharp, does not throw you off so much for that all-important second part of the double-tap procedure.
I would agree with a previous poster that the .30-06 in an '03 Springfield is about the worst-recoiling small-arms shoulder rifle I have ever fired **, and the .30-06 in my lighter sporter in this chambering is even worse.
Certainly "plenty enough" to satisfy my inner gorilla.
The recoil from my 91/30 M-N with its pike-like 26" barrel is by no means as bad as the '03, and I have to kind of chuckle to myself when folks complain about it. And believe me, I'm no recoil junkie, and the hair on my chest is fairly sparse.
Now, I have never fired the lightweight, short-barred M44/M38 carbine verions of the Mosin-Nagant, but I expect that would indeed be pretty uncomfortable. So I'll pass on even trying one of them.
And gas-operated semis are usually, in my opinion, a lot "softer" in their recoil than the bolt versions for any given cartridge, even though the total recoil energy after everything settles down back into battery might be the same. I believe that, unlike the barrel being thrown forward in the "adventure" General Hatcher had above, the operating rods, bolt carriers and bolts, and what-have-you, are being thrown backwards on firing a gas-operating arm, compensating somewhat for the recoil of the bullet and gases themselves going forward. This, to my mind, spreads out the recoil and makes it feel softer.
Jes' ramblin'.
For what it's worth. Three cents, nowadays. Make that four.
--Terry, 230RN
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* REF: p 261 ff., Hatcher's Notebook
** I have no experience with anything with an "M" in the cartridge name except for rimfires. And I don't want any.
