Shotguns: Going From One Trigger to Two

For years I shied away from two-trigger guns because I thought it would be difficult for me to switch back and forth from one to two. I inherited this belief from my dad, who was even more easily confused than I am. Dad never even shot pumps because he couldn’t remember to work the slide between shots.

I still don’t own any guns with double triggers, but shooting the Parker and the Fox while filming for season two of the The Gun Nuts TV show I adapted to two triggers without any conscious thought at all. I didn’t even dry practice with those guns, I just loaded them and took them hunting. A couple of times I had to make follow-ups and my finger went from the first trigger to the second all by itself. In the afternoon we filmed several segments with O/Us and semiautos, and my finger remembered to pull the single trigger twice.

What is interesting to me is that I had not shot a two-trigger gun since the picture above was taken in 2009, and that was on a one day hunt with a loaner gun (an Aya No. 2. Notice the articulated front trigger, which is jointed to bend forward so it won’t bang into your finger when you pull the back trigger and the light gun recoils). Before that I had not shot a two trigger gun since 2006, when I spent a two days shooting a classic double a lot, both at targets and birds. I think that is when I finally learned to be comfortable with two triggers.

Maybe learning to shoot double and single triggers is like learning to drive a manual and automatic transmission: once you learn how you never forget and you can switch back and forth without thinking. Thoughts?