My "coolest" (and most painful!) shooting experience was with a 4-bore muzzle-loading flint-lock elephant gun! This thing was made sometime in the middle third of the 19th century, IIRC. The soft lead ball weighed a full 4 ounces, and was powered by a powder charge measured in drachms rather than grains! The idiot - er, sorry, venerable old gentleman - who owns this beast offered me the chance to shoot it, and like a fool I accepted! He loaded it up, sat down in his rocker on the porch, and asked me to stand next to an oak tree in his front garden and fire at a target he had set up on a tree stump about 30 yards away. Unfortunately, I didn't look behind me before firing... next thing I remember was going base-over-tip into his cactus garden, to the sound of his triumphant cackling from the porch!
After digging myself out of the cactus garden (and digging the thorns out of my backside and sundry other portions of anatomy), I did some calculation of the recoil impulse of this beast (all the while rubbing my very sore shoulder, which still recalls the impact in rainy weather!). Turns out the recoil momentum is something over 220 foot-pounds, or somewhere between 7 and 8 times that of a typical .30-06! I've fired .577 and .600 Nitro Express rifles since then, but nothing has ever come close to that kick!
(If any of you ever plan to go hunting in South Africa, and will find yourselves in the vicinity of the town of George in the southern Cape, please contact me before you leave - I'll give you a letter of introduction to the owner of the beast, and invite you to have a go with it. He needs his light entertainment, after all!)
That I experienced a couple years ago!!....not good!
