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The Quest for the Perfect Women’s ShotgunMarty’s quest illustrates how far many women must go to find a shotgun just for them. Women who struggle with an off-the-shelf men’s shotgun know the price they must pay: bruised shoulders, face and ego.
That’s because an ill-fitting shotgun heightens felt recoil. If you’re unable to properly press the shotgun against your shoulder and face, the felt recoil could hurt like crazy. Longer term, you could develop flinches, when the subconscious anticipates a jolt of pain at the pull of the trigger.
The cumulative effect is more than a patch of black-and-blue. Low self-confidence sets in as more and more targets are missed over time. Many women feel it, but what they may not articulate is that the female anatomy is simply not suited to men’s shotguns that populate the shelves.
For example, women’s breasts are not necessarily limited to the fleshy stuff confined in a bra. They continue over the clavicle to the shoulder, which is your body’s notch for your shotgun.
So when a woman mounts a men’s shotgun, the toe of the stock gravitates to the soft breast tissue. For most women, that hurts. And that means most women tend to mount the gun in the wrong place (or inconsistently) to avoid the discomfort.
