types of butt pads??

S

shrewd

New member
i was checking out a few different sellers of butt pads. i'm still looking for one for my old ithaca 37 12g.


pachmyer has plenty to choose from it seems, but i see lots of different styles. there's upland, sporting clays, and trap styled pads.


can someone help explain the difference to me? i'm new to the shotgun sports, having only shot 50 or so clays at wobble a few weeks ago and Loved it.

but my only scatter gun is an ithaca featherlight and 50 is about all i'd like to take without a decent pad on there. cant afford another shotgun at the moment.

so, for the general purpose just getting into clays shooter, which of these pads is the best style?
 
Other than fitting dimensions, there are three major factors to consider when selecting a butt pad: Recoil reduction, shape and adhesion. Obviously, most folks want the most bang for their buck when it comes to recoil reduction. But shape and adhesion are a different story. These factors determine how the pad fits your shoulder and how well it stays there. Pads range from smooth and straight to fully curved and sticky. The stickiness can be achieved by the nature of the material used and/or its profile.

Why the differences? Because of the various shotgun applications. A pad that comes up quickly in the field may not meet the needs of a target shooter who wants a rock solid gun mount.

The target games can be roughly divided into two camps, mounted-gun and low-gun. If you shoot a mounted gun, then you don't care if the gun will easily catch or stick on you clothes when you mount it quickly because you won't be mounting it quickly.

Look at a typical low gun shooter: He'll have a smooth vest and a smooth pad so he can mount quickly without snagging. But, the pad can slip off his shoulder just as easily as it went on. To counteract this, his pad may have vertical ribs that give him some lateral stabilization without sacrificing mounting speed.

If you envision how the guns are handled in various scenarios, the variety of butt pads will start to make sense to you. With pads labeled "Skeet" can be misleading, they may be intended for mounted gun or low-gun. NSSA Skeet is shot high and International is shot low-gun. Originally, they were both shot low-gun. The rumor has it that a prominent NSSA member contended that low-gun was unfair to buxom women. Wasn't the game about breaking targets, not bouncing bust lines? The NSSA changed to a mounted gun.
 
Here is a link to a variety of "Kick Eez" brand recoil pads...and some of the way they describe the shapes of their products for intended fits....

but in the end, it depends on what you want...

http://www.brownells.com/.aspx/pid=7401/Product/RECOIL-PAD

I doubt you'll find a "pre-fit" pad for the Ithaca. You'll need the butt pad dimensions ...and will have to "fit" a generic pad to your gun. Its pretty easy to do ...mark the outline of the stock on the pad...and then using a belt sander...sand it to fit the stock. Most gunsmiths offer the services as well...
 
What Z said.
The Trap pad for a mounted gun is more shaped to the shoulder while a low-gun mount is more rounded on the top so that it does not catch the clothes and supposedly provides for a faster mount on targets.
I have more than one gun with the Kick-Eez pad on them. The pads on some of the older 37's hardened to a degree that you would feel like you were shooting a steel recoil pad.
Charlie
 
Like my friend, Charlie, I have Kick-Eez pads on a few guns, too. Something that I haven't seen discussed is the life expectancy of some of the earlier open-web (Pachy-style) recoil pads. Does the material harden with ago and/or exposure to the elements? My oldest Pachy pad is over 25 and it's still quite elastic, but it's on a gun that doesn't get out much.
 
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