Trigger Faults - Need Coaching

[W.T.]

Well, wrung out the Ruger OM Vaq 45s today - shorty barrels & birdsheads - with 50 rounds each.   This was pretty much my first concerted attempt in years to use a revolver - or any handgun - at any sort of distance.

According to the 'correction chart' target, I am (at 45 ft) either a) applying too little finger, b) tightening the fingers, c)  jerking/slapping the trigger, or all three.  I really can't figure out just what 'too little finger' & 'tightening the fingers' mean.

Until I can hookup with a local CAS bunch & obtain coaching, can anyone point me at some tips for proper, uh, squeezing?

Not sure that this the correct forum for this query - please move if needed.

Thanks,
W.T.

ps - anybody got a source for authentic, tooled-leather, Old-West wrist braces?   Ouch!

[Guage Rod]

W.T.  Lots more experienced shooters out there than me.  I recommend getting some down loaded bullets (less than 1000 ft/sec) that have less recoil and that you start with the targets at 25 ft.  Grip the pistol tightly with your thumb and three fingers and dry firing to practice till your   squeese  feels natural.  If you are not flinching when you do not know if there is a shell in the chamber or not and there is no boom, you have a great start.  Lots of other great folks out there to give you lots of better advice or add to this.  Start slow and go with low velocity shells and short distance targets.  I also recommend starting with a smaller cal 22 to get your target skill up to speed, others may disagree but the folks I have trained all started with the small stuff and went on to the bigger cals.  Might not want to buy another pistola but for 100 bucks you should be able to land a passable single action 22 somewhere.  Best of luck.

Vaya Con Dios

[Arcey]

Thinkin' that's good advice from Mr. Rod.

Started my son-in-law with a .22 auto.  He figured out his grip 'n pull.  Learned the sight picture.  First time he ever had a Glock 23 in his hands, ten in the ten ring, six X on a B-34 at seven yards.

[Driftwood Johnson]

Howdy

I don't put a whole lot of faith in what those old 'correction charts' say. There are too many variables and the chart does not take them all into account. For one thing, does it even ask you if you are a righty or a lefty? It makes a huge difference.

I can't speak much for a bird's head grip, I don't own any. With a plowhandle Single Action grip, even the large grips of the 'old model' Vaquero, I always advise new shooters not to try to cram their entire hand onto the grip, but instead to leave the pinky curled underneath the grip. Any pistol teacher of the old school, will tell you with a 1911 style semi-auto to get your grip as high as possible on the gun. This keeps the center of recoil as low as possible, and helps minimize muzzle flip. With a Single Action revolver I always fly in the face of that convention and advocate holding lower on the grip, not higher. Holding lower allows a couple of things to happen. It allows you to curl your pinky under the grip, which helps control the amount the handle can rotate in your hand under recoil. It also opens up about 1/4" of space between the rear of the trigger guard and the knuckle of your middle finger. That 1/4" will protect your knuckle from being whacked by the trigger guard in recoil. Look at the 1911, or most any semi-auto. The design does not allow you to get your finger behind the trigger guard, so there is no knuckle whacking. Look at the oversized target grips popular with many Double Action revolvers today. Same thing. The wood partially fills up the space behind the trigger guard, keeping your knuckle out of there. The over sized grips also force you to grip a little bit lower on the gun. Holding a SA with my pinky curled under the grip I can shoot the heaviest recoiling BP loads all day and never get my knuckle whacked.

Finger position on the trigger is very important. The old thing about 'too much finger' or 'too little finger' has to do with how you contact the trigger, and how you pull it. There is a lot of lip service given to 'pulling' the trigger vs 'squeezing' the trigger. Really, it's just semantics. The inportant thing is, when you 'activate' the trigger, you want to be pulling it straight back, not presenting any pressure to one side or the other. The most comfortable, and most natural way to pull a trigger is to place the trigger in the crease behind the first joint of the trigger finger. Unfortunately, for most shooters, this is incorrect. Pulling the trigger with the crease tends to curl the finger in such a way that a right handed shooter will tend to rotate the pistol to the left when he pulls the trigger. That is the old definition of 'too much finger' on the trigger. Conversly, a shooter who pulls the trigger with 'too little finger' will tend to rotate the gun to the right if he is a righty. These definitions are reversed for a lefty. I usually advise new shooters to place the pad of the trigger finger on the trigger. Pulling the trigger this way allows most shooters to apply force directly rearward on the trigger, with the least tendency to rotate the gun. Try the different positions on your pistols and see which way allows you to pull the trigger directly back, with the least tendancy to rotate the pistol to either side. That will be the best position for you. It may not feel natural at first, and may require some getting used to.

Tightening the fingers means you are tightening all your fingers, including the ones holding the gun. You don't want to that. You should be able to move just your trigger finger independently of the rest of your hand. You can do exercises to practice this. Try holding a tennis ball firmly and just move your trigger finger without moving the rest of your fingers. You can do the same exercize with an empty gun too. Jerking the trigger should be obvious. It's a flinch. Your body subconsciously prepares for the recoil by jerking the muzzle down just as you pull the trigger. Many shooters learn to shoot with a flinch, and are able to compensate for it, and still hit the target. But it is best to get rid of the flinch. One good way is to leave a couple of empty chambers in your cylinder. Be sure you don't know where they are. Shoot the gun normally. If the hammer clicks on an empty chamber, and you catch yourself jerking the gun down, there is your flinch. The old saying is, you should not know when the gun is going to fire. It should be a surprise. If you don't know when it is going to fire, you won't flinch. This works great for slow fire target shooting, but once we are on the firing line against the clock, it usually goes right out the window. But if you learn the discipline of not flinching when you pull the trigger in slow fire, you should be able to transfer the skill to rapid fire.

The only other thing I'll say is, I almost never practice at much more distance than 25 feet. At least not for this sport.

[Jefro]

What Driftwood said. Any time I introduce someone to a hand gun I always slip in a couple of snap caps to get rid of the  jerk or flinch. All good advice  what Drftwood, Arcey and Rod said. Good Luck.

[W.T.]

Thanks, Gents.  Use of the finger pad in 'straight-back' pull has been my habit even in the more forgiving squeeze for rifle triggers, and I remember the high grip of the M1911A1 from qualification a bit over, uh, 40 years ago...

Gripped them fairly low (to my thinking) because I was looking for a bit of muzzle flip, but recoil seemed not especially stout & to come straight back (likely was, on the evidence of the soreness in the distal end of the ulna!).  I was crowding the grip with fingers, and probably bearing down to control the somewhat more insecure feeling of the birdsheads.  Hits were mostly straight to the left & just a tad low of the bull, between 4 and 8 inches off.  Likely not coincidently, the two shots I got off with my bastardo .38 quasi-conversion before light primer strike set in were a just a tad left at the same distance.

Reading Driftwood's post, I think I had those things in a death grip in anticipation of fighting to keep - or return - the front sight on target from a post-shot position above it, and was kind of 'leaning into' each shot rigidly (if thsat makes any sense).  That stuff about learning to move the trigger finger independent of a firm but not frozen hold sounds real good.

Guess I'll get my safe queen Nagant out of cold storage and burn up that pile of ammo I got for it.

I appreciate the thought and effort that went into your replies, Gentlemen.

Regards,

W.T.

[Driftwood Johnson]

Howdy again WT

Just as a humorous aside, I was bench testing a brand new Ruger New Vaquero chambered in 357 Magnum the other day. I was shooting off of sandbags, and trying to remember all that stuff that I told you about grip and trigger control and such. I was shooting light Cowboy 38Sp loads, since that is what the gun will usually be eating, and I wanted to see where the gun would print at cowboy distances. Since the recoil was very light, I was holding the gun very gently with two hands with it resting on sandbags. After I was done I thought just for fun I would put a few 357 Mags through it just to see where it printed compared to the light 38s. I had gotten used to gripping the gun gently in two hands and didn't think too much about it as I squeezed off the first 357. I don't remember exactly what the loading was of the 357s, they were some standard factory loading. When the gun fired, it dragged my right hand, my shooting hand, stright back and slightly over my left shoulder, the gun almost whacking me in the left eyebrow as it passed by. Luckily I was still hanging on with my right hand, the gun having wrenched itself right out of my left hand. I felt pretty silly and looked around to see if anybody had noticed, but I was alone on the pistol range at the time. I finished the cylinder off holding the gun a little bit more firmly without further incident.

We've probably all seen those videos where some guy gets whacked in the head by the recoil of a big 454 Casul or 500 Mag or something. I was really surprised the 357 had jumped so far in my hand. It is only a 4 5/8" barrel, but the gun is pretty heavy in construction. But it's not as if I had been shooting a 44 Mag or something. Anyway, it just demonstrated to me that 'grip' is a relative term, and what works for one gun, or load, might not always work for everything else.

[W.T.]

... the gun almost whacking me in the left eyebrow as it passed by. Luckily I was still hanging on with my right hand, the gun having wrenched itself right out of my left hand. I felt pretty silly and looked around to see if anybody had noticed, but I was alone on the pistol range at the time. I finished the cylinder off holding the gun a little bit more firmly without further incident.

Yep, I have gotten a little forgetful about proper cheek-weld with my old bolt guns after finshing a little rimfire session, and have been rewarded with a headache and a walnut hickey...