I'll second the thoughts of many prior responses....I want an accurate load with less than full throttle recoil. While some loads in some of my guns give very good accuracy, I'll often settle for something a tad less in accuracy if I can have significant gain in recoil reduction. As such, many of my guns are shooting SR4759. The increased accuracy of a full throttle load means nothing if it causes me to fatigue before I get to the last 10 targets.

I don't care how much powder I use, or don't use. Other than matches I host, it's a 400 mile round trip to the closest big bore match, and given the cost (of gasoline, food, entry fees, possible motel bill, bullets, primers), a 2% reduction in the cost of gunpowder is much ado about nothing. Ignore it.

As for accuracy, I still shoot from my leg or offhand. When I started shooting half scale, I finally saw how much my heartbeat moved the crosshairs at 200m. Had to change my grip to deal with it. Makes me wonder how many full size rams I missed (inch under the belly) because I squeezed the trigger at the wrong instant in the pulse rhythm.

just my .02

Melvin I knew you would answer in simple form for my simple mind
And glad you brought up muzzle flash again my simple mind I include muzzle flash as part of Recoil
When I think of the term recoil I think of anything the gun does that affects my shooting being physical recoil
Noise or flash. Oh and part of the reason I was doing this was to help forget about what you just reminded me of

Rich good points and my statement about using less powder was not really to save powder it's more of doing more with less
I've always like being a more with less kinda guy. If I can get the results I'm after down range using less on the firing line it put a smile on my face. I feel like I got that bad boy dyno tuned

I have a little more to add based on my personal findings. I have many hours of range time with cast bullets and I know you have used them as well. As far as it applies to bottleneck cases I have found that powders that would be considered "fast" performed much worse than medium burn rate powders. Accuracy and lead deposits in the bore were much worse with the faster powders. With cast bullets SR4759 was among the worst for me. My best accuracy and cleanest bore came with H4895 and AA2015. At this time, I am using cast bullets in 4 of my silhouette guns. Both of my 7TCUs use AA2015 and my 7BR likes H4895. My 357 mag revolver gets 296. None of these powder choices would be considered "fast" for their application. Since I shoot Creedmore position, recoil is not nearly the consideration as it is with the Flop shooters but I do tend to favor load levels that produce no more recoil than is needed to topple the rams. I'm getting too old to get repeatedly beat upon by a hard recoiling gun.

I'am an old member 1984 seen a lot of loads come and go. This is a great thread new shooter asking great questions. Only advice I can think of is from the guys who I chased when I started " get a load get consistent sight settings then quit thinking and shoot till you know your gun WELL" thanks for supporting IHMSA