I haven't really fired anything i would consider bad recoil. a few years ago when i was much littler i found every centerfire to be heavy kicking but i also was 120 pounds and 14. I would psyche my self out thinking that the gun would kick to hard and then when i fired it , it wasn't to bad. Now that im older and bigger i find all of these guns that i thought were bad to be really not hard kicking at all. Thankfully for me i have sort of gotten over thinking of recoil. But anyways i think the heaviest load i have fired was a 320 grain 45-70 lever evolution round. I wouldn't consider that a hard kicking gun though.