I take no offense.
Very good as surely none is intended. This subject is of great interest to me. Unfortunately, I find many shooters resistant to new learnings and offended when they are presented.
My views are largely uninformed and are simply based upon my experiences with different SXS's and how they "felt".
I suggest that you develop a habit of focusing first on how the weight feels. Then refocus on how the weight distribution between your hands suits you --- this is what balance does. Third, make swings left-right and up-down with the gun unmounted paying careful attention to the effort needed to start a swing, change direction, and stop a swing; this is unmounted swing effort. Last, mount the gun and make left-right and up-down swings, again paying attention to effort needed to stop, start, and change direction mid swing. Early on in the gun handling experiments one wag noted that low swing effort guns (whippy/wand/etc.) started in a wink, changed direction in a wink, and stopped in a wink.
My LOP to a front trigger is 14 3/4. Thus, there is a lot of wood weight to the rear (even if holes are drilled and a pad is used. Shotguns feel whippy to me if there is more weight to the rear than in front of the action. I think of this situation as being "Unbalanced"
Remember that balance is an individual preference with no optimum beyond individual preference.
A "balanced" -for me-shotgun has "enough" weight forward such that the shotgun isn't "whippy"-a smooth swing is easy. Obviously, multiple factors are at play: wood density and stock size, forearm type (splinter versus beavertail), barrel thicknesses and length, action weight, etc.
You feel weight forward or rearward only in balance. You can't detect where weight is located in swing efforts.
DDA
