I wish .458 Win. "Phil" could shed some light on what trigger problems he has seen on his fall brown bear hunts. About the only trigger issues I have had information on were Rem. 700 triggers. How much of that is real or a result of negligence and incompetence is beyond me. I have several friends that swear by their older Rem 700 rifles and hunt with them every year. They also maintain them and pay a gun smith to adjust or work on their triggers.
Our nations military has used lots of armorer tuned Mod. 700 rifles in adverse conditions. That's also the same group that generally gets their stuff from the lowest bidder.
Back in the 60's during some of the winter moose and caribou hunts we always degreased our rifles bolts and triggers with gasoline and left them out side on the snow machine or in truck until the hunt was over.
I could be wrong but I think with the changes we have seen in the hunting fields of North America most rifles don't see the hard use and neglect they saw from years gone by. Shorter seasons, seasons catering to a certain type of weapon, etc., especially in the lower "48" where many do day hunts and are normally not to far from civilization.
I consider the trigger the most important part of a rifle, it has to be 100% reliable all the time.
Phil wrote an article on his .458 "Old Ugly" for our quarterly on-line magazine, RIFLE LOONY NEWS, in 2011--partly because we'd become acquainted with it in 2008, while opening ptarmigan season with him, and fishing with Phil, Rocky, Tia and Taj--among a BUNCH of brown bears. In the article described how he modified the Mark X Mauser for his uses, including changing the scope mounts to plain old Weavers from Pilkington Leupold-type rings, which wore out pretty quickly.
Anyway, he never mentioned changing the original Mark X trigger, which is a typical modern enclosed model with its own safety. Maybe he has, but if not he's apparently never had any difficulty with it.
My personal experience involves a lot of hunting in various places, and the only time I've had any problem with an enclosed trigger was on an tent-camp elk hunt in the mid-1990s, where moist snow fell the first day, and that night the temperature dropped below zero. The trigger (not a 700's) froze up, but a few minutes next to a wood stove solved the problem.
Have seen far more enclosed triggers "frozen" with WD-40, which required far more time and work to get going again.
