TargetTalk

I learned to shoot pistol when I was a teenager in the late 1960's, starting with my dad's High Standard Supermatic. I was on the pistol team in college, and shot High Standards there as well. All of them had a classic American style single-stage crisp breaking trigger. After college, I had a Browning Medalist for a couple years, but couldn't get used to the 2 stage roll-over trigger pull. Switching to a S&W Model 41 gave an immediate improvement in my scores, and when I got another High Standard, they jumped again.

In the late 1990's, I bought a Benelli MP90S, which I set up with a single stage trigger. My best scores ever were fired with that pistol. Two years ago, I bought a Pardini SP New, and I left the trigger set up as a 2 stage rollover. After fussing with the grips & weights & working hard to get used to the trigger, I shot it in the local bullseye league this past winter. The season is over, and my average is down about 10 points. I've been doing lots of dry firing, exercises & practicing as much as time allows.

I occasionally manage to get into the right groove with the trigger, and approach the scores I used to shoot with the Benelli. However, I tend to go into autopilot in sustained fire, and my finger expects the pistol to fire as soon as I've gotten into the second stage. This throws me off, and I start yanking on it to finish off the shot & it all goes rapidly downhill. Dry firing single shots doesn't really help much.

I could probably lick this if I spent a couple years working hard at the rollover trigger. I like the concept of the rollover trigger, but I'm fighting over 40 years and a couple hundred thousand triggers squeezes of conditioning. I'm not sure I want to spend my shooting time fighting that battle when I could be working on shooting even higher scores with a single stage trigger. I also shoot rifle, and they and my air pistols are also all set up with crisp single stage triggers. Fortunately, the Pardini doesn't seem to have corrupted my performance with those.

One option would be to buy another Benelli (my daughter is shooting my old one, and has a promising future). The balance & grip suited me much better than the factory Pardini, but I think I've mostly fixed that. Another option would be to readjust the Pardini trigger to a single stage. Or, I could throw myself back into mastering the 2-stage trigger.

I think I have given this experiment a fair try, and I'm ready to move on. Comments & suggestions are welcome.

Thanks!

I thought the intriguing part of your question was when you flick to auto pilot you revert to your old methods.

I tend to find flicking to auto pilot causes harm in many other ways too things like loss of focus and concentration on sight alignment all go off.

Maybe you should work on not going off to auto pilot and keep working on smoothly press the trigger to the rear.

But there's no law that say's you must use a 2 stage trigger. Go with what works for you.

Good luck

Stop thinking about whats happening with the trigger.

Just squeeze it back until it comes up against the stop and notice that at some point during the process the shot is released.

The bumps, grinds and clicks which happen during the process are irrelevant.

The obvious answer is do what works for you. In my mind, the whole shooting process, like any physical activity, should be on autopilot.

Big Ben doesn't think about what he has to do to hit his receiver, he just does it.

Unless you think that changing and working on that change will result in a marked improvement in scores, stay with what is working.

Out of curiosity, does anyone know what type of trigger pull the top standard & rapid fire pistol shooters use? I was under the impression that the rollover trigger was preferred, and as I said, theoretically, I like the idea.

If all I was shooting was slow fire, I think I am close to being able to concentrate on constantly and smoothly moving the trigger to the rear. Dry firing is good practice for this.

The trick for me is sustained fire. I can't dry fire multiple shots, and even shooting an LP50 with the heavy trigger isn't the same because I can't adjust the trigger to be particularly close to the Pardini. When sustained fire was going well for me with the single stage trigger, it was all automatic. Turn the brain off, and shoot a bunch of tens.

Even with lots of practice, it's a very rare event when I can get a sustained fire target that looks anything like the good old days.

Nobody has come forward with a convincing argument that the rollover trigger is sufficiently superior to a single stage that it seems worth continuing the fight. I think the biggest argument for me is that all my other pistols & rifles are still set up as single stage.

I still think the experiment was worthwhile. It forced me to focus on, and work at, my trigger squeeze more than I have in years, and I hope some of that will carry over going back to the single stage design.

A friend who was on the US Shooting Team told me that you can't think, you just have to do. I think that Yoda borrowed some of his ideas from my friend, "There is no try, there is only do or not do."