Why does "Sako" run cheap arsed, hard arsed solid rubber butt pads ?

I wonder if it's because some of the European hunting is driven type. With an emphasis on shooting standing and at moving targets?
So they're not designing for bench and bipod type shooting where their recoil pads are terrible. There's a big difference in placement of the rifle on a shoulder between standing and prone too.

I prefer no recoil pad, or a very small hard pad, for shooting standing and for quickly bringing up a rifle to the shoulder.
With heavy recoiling rifles I find a soft and thick recoil pad can be a liability. Can fetch up on clothing, too much movement of the rifle in isolation to the body on recoil so you're in danger of scoping yourself or smacking your cheek with the stock comb if you're a bit sloppy with check placement. Best to tense the shoulder and back slightly and rock back on recoil instead of letting the rifle and shoulder alone get pushed back.
I have a .375H&H Sako 85 with the standard hard red rubber pad and I think if I changed this to a limbsaver or similar it would improve shooting on a bench considerably (because it's a bit "lively") but make standing shooting worse without making the felt recoil much different. It's an advantage to move back with the rifle rather than have it move and compress a recoil pad (hurts your check and teeth if you have a checkpiece and it smacks you in the face).

The rifles I use for bipod and bench have nice limbsavers or similar for sure.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Philipo

Yeah ya probably right, it's all about the $$$ nowadays




Blahahaha




Yes my 2k Finnfire 17hmr came with a poxy plastic butt pad ( while recoil is not an issue with the mighty hmr ) it was a pain in the arse as if you lent the gun on any thing hard like a wooden floor it wanted to slip out in fall over

I replaced it with a Limb saver & the bonus was it lengthen the LOP which was great.





Probably a bit of "all of the above" hahahaha, you also forgot "boredom" , but thank you for taking the time out to ask how I'm doing :)







Recoil never really used to be an issue for me, but doing a Superman off my bike & fucking my collar bone in multiple places ( I have an enormous hump where the butt pad goes into my shoulder ) has caused me alot of annoyance & completely ruined my shooting accuracy, however I was going through some reloading gear this arvo & have found a Limbsaver I had on a 300WM carbon heavy I sold, so now fitted it.

There is a trick when fitting a LS to a Sako carbon stock as the stock has a lip running around the outside ( their solid rubber buttpad has a recess in it so they connect better ( the LS is fully flat ) so I make a template & cut a insert out bed roll foam to make the final fit better.

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Going to put a brake on the hmr as well? :)

Why don't you just learn to shoot off the other shoulder then?

Interesting article I saw about rifles stored in gun safes for long periods of time, the recoil pads that are soft have been known to change shape somewhat when rifles are stored on their butts for long periods of time. Apparently company’s make them harder to combat the need for returns and exchanges with mis shapen butt pads

I've had a couple of recoil pads go soft and out of shape but it takes about 20 years.

I expect most sako are designed for positional shooting, specially standing, which compromises a bit for pure bench shooting but its what makes them so good for NZ hunting.

Harden up flip flop.