Try to set your rest up so you are sitting up straight, this will let your body move back and ease the thump on your shoulder. Also if you have a sling on the rifle adjust it properly in the " Hasty sling" and shoot with it off the bench, this will make a lot of difference and give you practise using a sling as shooting aid.

Keep shooting the pain will eventually go away.
When I started with skeet I was in pain.
The next week it hurt less.
Now I feel very little even after firing 100s of shots.

Clearanceman,

I handload and in my opinion either or both, barrel or bullet weight, will lesson the amount recoil. I personally like the 125 weight for whitetails. Shot the 150s' for years. Here in Georgia we have a lot wild hogs and I have shot them with both weight bullets with great success.

But back to the recoil, the 125 would be my choice.

dog1

Thanks dog1,
So 125s in a 30-06 still might be slightly higher recoil energy than 117s in a 25-06 because of the difference in barrel diameter? Interesting. I have never seen such a test in a gun mag, I am sure they have done them. Just dozens of articles about the best caliber for whitetails [X(] That gets pretty old, a good article on how barrel diameter effects recoil energy would be nice.

Thanks for the suggestion Dog1, but as I said earlier in the post, I bought 10 boxes of that ammo and I am not changing till that is used up. I am hoping to get a dillon 550b over the winter and start reloading. Then I will work to find the most consistent load I can get.

Just thought I' d chime in here, being I' m a big 30-06 fan. Shot many different 06' s from Rem. gamemaster to savage to Weatherby all shoot differently. My fathers old Rem. gamemaster pump would beat me up somthing mean. Shot a lot of big heavy bolt action 06' s that felt like a 22. I shoot a Weatherby Mark V ultralight weight now it only weighs 6.4 pounds with the scope on it, Can shoot it all day without a care in the world. Technically speaking the 30-06 is rated as a moderate kicker but a lot of things go into that. bullet size, type of action, stock shape, weight, shooting postion, and even proper shooting stanz. I will say one thing I never shoot more than a 20 rounds in one shooting session " less rounds more often" will get you farther than shooting all day just before the season. I guess what I' m tryin to say is try several different loads and technices and you will get it. Practice, practice, practice.