About 2 years ago I purchased a 1903a3 Springfield to shoot at the occasional CMP event. The stock on the thing is straight with no sort of extended grip to grasp with the trigger hand, much like the stock on a Mosin Nagant. The trigger was a little heavy and really gritty, plus it had a lot of take up. After I got past the gritty part, it just felt mushy on the back end. I could literally feel the catch on the hammer roll over the edge of the sear instead of the nice crisp break we all love. As far as triggers go, it was bad.
Even though a trigger job on this type of rifle isn't horribly expensive, I didn't want to put any additional money into it. I mean, it's an all matching war time rifle I might shoot twice a year. Instead, I decided to roll with it, really focus on my fundamentals and just see how it went. When dry-firing, I noticed I had to be particularly careful with the sympathetic movement of my middle and ring finger as I did my best to pull it snuggly straight into my shoulder pocket, and squeeeeeeze the less that perfect trigger straight back.
As a bonus, extended dry-firing also helped take some of the grittiness out of the trigger. When I finally got a chance to go put it to work, I ended up shooting (for me) really well with it so I decided to take on a little experiment with another rifle...
From ItsanSKS's post in another thread....
Quote from: ItsanSKS on May 08, 2014, 12:08:47 AM
...When you perfect your trigger control with an 8# trigger, that doesn't go away. I could hand you a service rifle with a 3-1/2# trigger and you'll probably do better. The 8# trigger provides an obstacle for you to overcome, affording you the opportunity to become a better marksman in the process....
This almost perfectly mirrors the personal exercise I've put myself through for the past year. I took the RRA 2-stage trigger out of an AR lower and replaced it with a single stage GI trigger. Although I've never weighed it with a scale, it's definitely on the heavy side. With the safety off, I can actually lift a standard gov profile A2 rifle vertically off the ground by the trigger without it tripping.
I dry-fired it A LOT and I worked out a lot of little bugs with my trigger squeeze and my grip. Much like my experience with the springfield, my marksmanship took a big leap and I feel like I am a much better shooter today because of the necessity for me to really focus on the fundaments, and the work I put into it.
In my opinion, a light trigger can mask a lot of deficiencies for the type of field shooting we do. With a heavy trigger, I was forced to
really learn what "steadily increasing pressure, straight to the rear" means. I also learned after a short bit of dry-firing that I could fairly easily put 7ish pounds of pressure on it, stop if I needed (in standing for instance) wait for that wobble to settle just right, and then add the final bit of squeeze to release the hammer. At this point, the trigger no longer felt heavy at all.
I'm far from an awesome shooter, and know quite a few in my circle of friends who can best me at the drop of a hat. However, my goal at the range isn't to shoot better than them. It is to get better with any rifle I happen to pick up, learn something new, and improve upon where I left off the previous time at the range.
It seems the more experience I have under my belt, the more clearly I understand how focusing on the fundamentals solves the vast majority of marksmanship issues. Tweaking reloads, getting that equipment upgrade that's all the rage, etc is all well and good and probably has a place somewhere. But for the time and money spent, getting into position and dry-firing has an unbeatable return on investment, even with less than perfect rifle.
I also have a GI trigger in my AR. The only thing that really presented a problem for me was this. If you don't shoot it a lot and do a lot of dry firing (to build up muscle tolerance), it is very difficult to perform through an entire AS event without your wrist muscles getting very sore. I am not a slight human being. I work out almost every day, but when I took it to my first event, I actually had to stop dry firing due to how sore my wrist was from pulling that 9-pound trigger. I had to "save" my trigger pulls for the rest of the "grind."
I guess the point is that if you are not going to dedicate yourself to firing your heavy-weight trigger regularly, it might be a good idea to lighten it.
The thing I hoped to impress upon people is not that everyone needs to go put a heavy trigger in their AR just to go through the experience. Rather, that when an obstacle or challenge is in front of us, it is often more rewarding in the long run to find a way to work through it instead of buying an immediate "fix".
However, for some things, you can try and try and it's just not going to work out as you'd like. After an honest effort, it makes sense to me to find an alternate route to achieve your goal. At least then, like in your experience PaleRider, you really know exactly what you need that change and why.
I think this extends far beyond rifle marksmanship. We live in a culture of immediate satisfaction. It can be really hard to break out of that mindset. But every time I manage to do it, it is so much more rewarding.
This is an excellent thread. All too often people try to buy improvement. There just was a thread on things to "Improve" a 10/22. To which I responded get a sling on it and a scope or tech sites and shoot it.