There's something about shooting the big-boys. Even if it's just once or twice. That thing about being able to say 'I've done that'.

I had the opportunity to shoot quite a few different rifles in large calibers, mostly for function fire testing. Some rough sighting in.

Off-hand function fire was definitely the preferred method as far as I was concerned!
But it was fun, the ammo was free (to me) and the sessions were short of course.
Kind of like being able to drive the customers expensive sports cars around for a test drive before being returned ..
Actually we did that with most any of the guns repaired in any of the shops I worked in. Live fire tells the real story after all.

One particular .505Gibbs remains tatooed in my mind as the most miserable to shoot.
The others were 'kinda-fun!' at the time. Getting beat up by a nice rifle and laughing about it seemed to go hand in hand for some reason..

I have a John Rigby, hammer gun in .500 x 3in BPE, SxS that is not all that bad to shoot.
A nice 9.3x74R SxS German made rifle from the 30's that can be brutal after a few shots because of it's trim 7#+weight.

The last one, a J. Tolley .470 N/E hammerless DR is not too bad to handle because of it's heavy weight. But after about 10rds of plinking,,that too can set in the rack to 'cool down'.

Range toys, that's all they are to me.