I've seen lots of both failures. The damndest things will cause trouble with them, as well. My Father had a spiffy pachmayer pad installed on his Beretta Silver Snipe, circa mid 1960s. The single trigger, an inertia style unit, suddenly became unreliable, with any load. Dad proceeded to discover that most automatic shotguns (Notable exception being A5s, in our experience, they typically seem to go off when the trigger is pulled) really, aren't automatic, in the next two or three decades, during which time, the installed pad on the little used Beretta, became a lot harder. Bingo. The trigger now works, well, again.
I did strip and clean the Beretta, several years past, and discovered that some Italian gun worker thought it needed good sized gobs of grease applied, which had fossilized in the time since it was built. Double triggers are less sensitive to this, sadly, not unusual treatment, in my experience.
I've come to view single triggers as just so much bling installed on a gun, a heavier, even more unreliable form of bling in the case of selective single triggers. Much like the automatic bail that was installed on Mitchell spinning reels in the 1960s, which made it possible for handicapped individuals to cast, they actually are a handicap for able bodied individuals in use. You have complicated, and, typically, lost the ability to select the better choke from your double gun, for the presented shot with either form of single trigger. Mr. McIntosh got this one EXACTLY right.
If you hand is cold (the most common excuse for a single trigger) handwarmers are cheaper, and much more reliable.
Best,
Ted
Mr. Schefelbein,
You and these "good gunsmiths" and manufacturers you're hob-nobbing with do know that the single trigger is here to stay and its popularity continues to grow among both target and field shooters alike? You do know that Beretta, Browning, Winchester, CSMC, Ruger, Rizzini, Guerini, Blaser, Zoli, Perazzi, Krieghoff, Kolar, Fabbri,and a dozen other lesser brands have made and continue to make thousands of guns with single selective triggers that NEVER malfunction through milllions of rounds fired? The shooters buying and shooting these pieces, including me, aren't sheep; they're as knowledgeable and experienced, many times moreso, as any self-professed internet expert typing on some discussion board, no offense intended. Dismissing single selective triggers as nothing more than "bling" is outright denial of fact. A couple of anecdotal stories can always be called up to justify a claim. They're few and far between.
You do know that the biggest money game in the world among shooters, live pigeon shooting, where reliability is foremost, is done with shotguns with single selective triggers?
Heck, there was even an article written recently in SSM about the most archaic single selective trigger ever made, L.C. Smith's infamous Hunter One Trigger, which showed that they were utterly reliable unless some ham-handed "gunsmith" had screwed with them. The Parker and A.H.Fox single selective triggers were very reliable as well.
Michael McIntosh, God rest his soul, was wrong about at least two things in particular: chokes and choke tubes, and single selective triggers, but he wrote well enough to make many believe his opinion was fact.
Double triggers are a throwback to tradition. They're fine for those who insist on traditional game guns with splinter forends and straight grips. Many shooters enjoy that style. I encourage them and urge them to continue to use and enjoy them. I do with my Parker PHE 16, but I would like it even better if it had a Parker sst.
Double triggers are no more reliable than the modern, perfected single triggers on the above mentioned gunmakers products. When you've had a few guns with two triggers double on you, you soon realize they are not the be-all, end-all of reliability, and are no better, and many times, not as good, for the purpose of firing a two-barreled gun, than a single selective trigger.
JR
