RRookie,
I went to the range this morning to take a couple of sighters with three 30-30s I have. Two of them are vintage Marlin 336s (1953, and 1964 manufactured), and the other one is a pre-64 M94 (made in 1955). I shot my pet load in all three of them, of which uses a 150 grn. bullet.
One of my Marlins is straight stocked, with factory open barrel sights, and weighs 6lbs., 12.3ozs.
My other Marlin has the pistol grip along with a 4x Leupold compact scope (Standard 1" Weaver rings and alum. picatinny base), and weighs 8lbs., .02ozs.
The Winchester weighs 6lbs., 10.7ozs, and has open barrel sights.
The two open sighted rifles, though near identical in felt recoil (and amazingly close in weight), left the Winchester just slightly easier on the shoulder than the open-sighted Marlin. I would just say that the felt recoil on both rifles could be described as a sharp little buck; not anywhere near what I'd call harsh whatsoever (IMO). I shot all three of these rifles wearing just a hooded sweatshirt over a light weight fleece vest. None of these rifles had any kind of recoil pads on them, either; just the typical flat, factory, shotgun style butt plates. The Winchester has a metal butt plate, and the Marlins have the synthetic material type.
The 8 lb. scoped rifle had just a mild little buck, and no sharpness to it, either; could've shot that one all day, no problem. Actually, I found none of them offensive regarding recoil (BTW, I'm 5' 10" tall, and weigh 170 lbs., and for whatever that's worth...).
Marlin offers their M336 with a scope package. I have a good bud that bought one of those packages a couple of years ago and said it's a first rate, accurate 30-30. I think he got it for around 450 bucks, but that was a couple of years ago. Point here is, if you're shopping for a rifle, you may want to consider the scoped Marlin deal. I'm fairly sure that you'd find shooting that rifle with the 150 grn. bullet loading not bad on the shoulder. And at 50 yds. (and farther), you'd have a rifle quite adequate for a black bear (IMO).
Hope this might be of some help in your decision on a rifle purchase. Good Hunting!
www.marlinfirearms.com/lever-action/model-336/model-336w-wscope
If interested, and if you'd shop around, I believe you could get that rifle package for considerably less than the MSRP.
And for my handload using the 150 grn. bullet (Speer flat point) I use a charge of 34 grains of Varget propellent. That's 1/2 of a grain short of what Hodgdon's site shows for a max. charge in a 30-30 for that weight bullet. I would imagine the felt recoil from my reloads might compare with a factory loading's recoil (IMO). Only guessing, there...