On Target

There is often a lot of discussion on which recoil pads are the best. Some people define what the best recoil pad is to them in different ways since there are many considerations, but to me the most important is how effective a pad is at reducing recoil. Not only should perceived recoil be considered, but actual recoil and vibration should be measured as well. You will notice that every manufacturer has their own reasoning and even laboratory tests of some kind showing that their pad beats the competition. So how can you tell which one to go with? One simple way to test two competing brands for yourself is with a weight or a hammer. You can use what you have available, such as a standard hammer or some kind of metal weight of around 8-16 ounces. The test is to find out which one absorbs the force the best and which one just stores the energy and rebounds it back at you. You can either just drop a weight from a foot or more or hit it with a hammer or even just let the hammer drop on the pad by gravity. The reason this is a good test is that it shows how some pads actually absorb and dissipate the energy so it is gone and doesn’t push back but just rebounds softly back into its original form and some don’t. Most pads made with some kind of rubber tend to have a lot of bounce back. The leading brands do provide cushioning and soften the recoil, but if they don’t dissipate it effectively and quickly, they aren’t as effective as they could be. The brand that I believe absorbs and dissipates energy the most effectively is the KICK EEZ, which uses a polymer called Sorbothane instead of rubber. It does it with very little bounce back at all and also eliminates all vibration extremely fast. Of course, they will gladly provide copies of independent laboratory tests to show that they are as much as twice as effective at absorbing and dissipating both recoil and vibration compared to the next closest competitor. Since recoil on a gun can be subjective, I wanted to see for myself with this simple hammer test. I tried it with a KICK EEZ pre-fit pad and a comparable pad from a leading competitor which is supposed to be the closest competition. Well, the hammer test wasn’t even close. With the competing brand, the hammer bounced back with all the force it came down with. Even with a light blow, it would bounce back 4-6 inches. However, with the KICK EEZ, it just absorbed the blow and hardly bounced at all! At most it would bounce about and inch or so. The energy seemed to just disappear into the pad. This was a very telling test and showed that there really is a difference. It has also been recommended to use pads without much bounce back with any compression butt plate system. The KICK EEZ pads fill that bill perfectly.