Trigger freeze

[RobertBeard]

I don't know if this will help but it comes from my small-bore and air pistol target shooting. I never get trigger freeze with prone rifle using iron aperture type sights as the sight picture is usually rock steady so there is nothing to put the brain off allowing the shot away. It gets more difficult with telescopic sights as one can then see the rfile movement through the scope and the cross hairs float around the point of aim. Similarly with pistol one cannot hold the gun absolutely still and one has to accept a wobble around the sight picture. You have to train the brain to accept the wobble and then you can squeeze the shot away. Some nights the brain won't accept the wobbly sight picture and you get trigger freeze. This can tend to lead to gripping the gun more firmly which actually makes it harder still to squeeze the trigger and creates even more wobble in the sight picture thus more terrifying to let the shot away and have a bad score. With an Olympic free pistol in the hand which is shot at 50m it can really be terrifying to squeeze the trigger and record a miss! Clearly this all gets exaggerated in competition or other forms of stress or pressure. At the root of it all I think it is a fear of missing or a poor shot. The brain does not like the sight picture and won't pass the order to fire. In pistol target shooting one can unload and dry fire practice shots which helps. Clearly not possible in clay shooting! Most target shooters use a 2 stage trigger where you take up the initial tension and hold until you break through the second stage. A much smaller number use single stage or set triggers.

 

[Angelfire]

Usually trigger freeze blights me once or twice a round resulting in a miss by miles although sometimes lucky enough to still break the clay, although it does not affect my scores to much a lost bird is often the difference between first and second or even being pushed out of the prize money altogether, But today shooting a round at greenfields it happened about five times on various stands each time resulting in a miss lucky for me it was just a practice but equally frustrating. If anyone has ever suffered with this and managed to cure it please pass on anything you think may help...

As a tarp shooter who suffered from this malady and tried everything known to man to get rid of it, I can honestly say nothing I ever tried worked. I believe it is "uncureable" sad to say. My way round it was to go for the release/pull trigger, which I must say worked a treat on my old Krieghoff. I just wish I had found this release/pull trigger combination at the start of my shooting career, instead of at it's end.

Phil*