Top Reasons I Don't Like Muzzle Brakes On Hunting Rifles

Affiliate Disclosure: This page contains affiliate links. We earn from qualifying purchases.

I still recall when muzzle brakes were the hottest new trend in hunting rifles. The benefit of adding a brake was substantially reduced recoil, and some companies claimed a 50% reduction in recoil energy with a brake installed. This meant that, with a brake in place, a .30-06 would produce recoil on-par with a .243 Winchester, and a .300 Winchester Magnum would generate less kick than a .270 Winchester. With such dramatic reductions in recoil, who wouldn’t want to install a brake on their bolt-action hunting rifle?

The claims of reduced recoil were true (although I don’t know that the 50% reduction promised was realized). However, the nasty truth about muzzle brakes was that they increased muzzle blast. As brakes became more popular, guides, outfitters, and PHs began to voice their consternation about these recoil-reducing devices, and they didn’t like the nasty whiplash of muzzle blast they received when clients carried rifles equipped with brakes.

Although I’ve never been a professional hunter or guide, I never fell in love with muzzle brakes. The increase in muzzle blast was pronounced, and it was especially miserable when shooting under a metal roof on the range. On a mule deer hunt in Wyoming, I was shooting a .300 Winchester Magnum with a brake. I was wearing hearing protection when I initially shot the deer, but I removed them as I approached the buck and, much to my surprise, he jumped to his feet and started to bound away. I put a final shot into the buck and he dropped, but the blast was so ferocious that I almost dropped, too. I still remember posing for photos with ringing ears.

While muzzle brakes do cut down on recoil force, that does not necessarily mean that they eliminate flinching. Our nervous systems are hard-wired to avoid pain, and when possible, we take precautions to protect ourselves against injury. Recoil force, measured in foot-pounds, can cause pain and discomfort and, as a result, we flinch. However, our body perceives extremely loud noise as pain. When a rifle produces excessive muzzle blast, the result can be a flinch that mimics the effects of heavy recoil. This is also why some rifles with brakes, especially those chambered for fast magnum cartridges, increase perceived recoil. Our body anticipates the loud boom and reacts accordingly.

The Crux of Consideration

For years hunters had to make a decision: shoot without a brake and bear the full brunt of recoil, or add a brake and suffer with dramatically increased muzzle blast. I preferred to take my licks with recoil. A solution, though, arrived in the form of century-old technology: suppressors. Suppressor ownership has risen dramatically in recent years, and that’s largely because companies like Silencer Central have streamlined the process of suppressor ownership.

Silencer Shop now offers kiosks in gun stores where customers can fill out the required eForm 4 to own a suppressor, and wait times for suppressor approvals are below a week in many cases.

Suppressors offer shooters a much more attractive alternative to muzzle brakes. Suppressors reduce noise and muzzle blast, and in many cases a suppressed rifle is hearing safe, so there’s no need to wear hearing protection. Additionally, the added muzzle weight of a suppressor also helps dampen recoil, making them a better option for hunters.

Admittedly, I was slow to jump aboard the suppressor bandwagon. Brandon Maddox at Silencer Central walked me through the buying process to purchase my first suppressor, and since then I have purchased four more silencers. I am just one of millions of new suppressor owners, and virtually every rifle manufacturer offers threaded muzzles on their new rifles to accommodate suppressors. Many rifles are now offered with short (16 to 20-inch barrels) that keep overall length to a minimum when using a suppressor, and today there are several suppressors that measure six inches or less and weigh less than a pound.

Benefits of Suppressors

By reducing the noise of a rifle, suppressors make life better for shooters, but there are additional benefits. When I’m hunting with a suppressor, I don’t have to carry hearing protection, and I can shoot my rifles at my backyard range without bothering the neighbors. I’ve also found that shots fired from suppressed rifles don’t panic game as badly as unsuppressed rifle fire. This is true of small and large game. While hunting squirrels in Kentucky, I found that I could shoot a squirrel in a hickory tree and, within minutes, other squirrels were feeding openly in the same tree so long as I kept still. On a hunt in Wyoming, I shot a pronghorn buck with a suppressed rifle in .308 Winchester and the rest of the herd seemed oblivious.

Don’t discount adding a suppressor to your rifle even if your gun doesn’t have a threaded barrel. Silencer Central allows suppressor owners to ship their rifle to the company to have the muzzle threaded, and the process is fairly inexpensive and simple, and this allows you to add a can to your favorite classic gun. If your gun is threaded but the thread pitch does not match your suppressor there are a variety of adapters available. So, whether you have an old or new rifle, there are few barriers to mounting a suppressor.

The primary downside for suppressor ownership is cost. Good suppressors aren’t cheap, but they do offer a number of worthwhile advantages. However, even if a suppressor is beyond your budget, there are ways that you can reduce rifle recoil. The process may be as simple as adding some with to the rifle or replacing the recoil pad, and there may be reduced recoil loads available for your gun.

Do I still own guns with muzzle brakes? I do, and I won’t discard those guns or the brakes. I prefer suppressors and feel that they are a superior alternative to muzzle brakes for hunters under most all circumstances, but if I choose to sell my rifles, I will do so with the original brake in place. For my personal rifles, though, it will be suppressors going forward, even on international hunts. There are a few destinations where suppressors are verboten (Canada comes to mind), but in much of Europe and Africa they are legal, and I saw suppressors in every gun shop I visited in New Zealand.

Once upon a time the choice was increased recoil or increased muzzle blast, but today there’s a single solution that addresses both issues. I think suppressors are a better solution than muzzle brakes, and if we encounter each other in the field, that’s what you’ll see on my rifle.

---