Gents,
May I tell you a cautionary tale? A few years back I was given an inline .50 cal ML as a Christmas present. I had never even shot an inline and all of it was a new experience over my sidelocks that I had hunted with for years. (To be honest; my wife got sick of me griping about mis-fires and bought it to shut me up
.) The new plastic stock was noisy as the devil and it recoiled much differently than my trusty straight walnut stocks I had grown accustomed to. Not to mention this baby could hold 150 grains of velocity producing mayhem! Well the recoil was a tad on the jumpy side for my taste so I load the butt stock with a heavy dose of saw dust and #8 bird shot. This definitely deadened the noise... See where this is going
?
The next weekend a buddy and I went hunting. It was a nice weekend to be hunting, good weather, good food, and good company. Saturday morning passed uneventful and we met at a designated area to walk back to the truck when two deer ambled out in front of us. Both deer were legal to shoot so we crept up and were going to drop them both at about 100 yards. We counted to three and pulled triggers, the next thing I know is he was looking down at me and laughing as I felt blood running out of my freshly squashed nose!
I hadn't shot the rifle since i had weighted the stock and it changed the balance and recoil characteristics of the gun so much it caught me totally by surprise and the scope smashed my snoot! Luckily I hit mine and my buddy missed when he saw my face cave in.
The moral of the story is, be aware that weighting may change the way your rifle recoils considerably. Shoot it several times before that moment of truth, it may save you some pain and embarrassment in the future.