Home Forums Birds & Dogs Shotguns Double Barrel Trigger Sequence Questions

I recently inherited a hammerless double barrel shotgun and have questions about which trigger you use for intended results. Please forgive my ignorance of the proper shotgun jargon.
I have been told conflicting accounts of the results of trigger shot sequence.
The first thing I was told is that if you pull the front trigger first the most open choked barrel fires and then when pulling the rear trigger shoots the tighter choked barrel.
The next thing I was told was that if you pull the rear trigger first then both barrels will fire.

So could someone enlighten me of the true results of what trigger does what and can/should you fire both barrels? That sounds dangerous to me but I really have no clue.

Thanks guys!

If you pull the rear trigger first and both barrels go off, get the gun to a gunsmith...

The right ( front) trigger is for the open choked barrel, the left (rear) trigger is for the tighter choked barrel.
The concept is to give you an instant choice of chokes, depending on the shot offered.Pull the applicable trigger.



Its not rocket surgery.

if your gun is a sxs the front rigger will fire the right side barrel which usually is the more open choked of the two the rear trigger fires the left barrel.....on a two trigger o/u the front fires the bottom barrel, the rear trigger fires the top barrel..

What these two guys said. I will add that there are a few double triggers that work like a single non selective trigger in that you pull the trigger once and on the second pull the other barrel will fire. As mentioned above you can select the first barrel to fire by selecting the appropriate trigger. It simply saves you having to move to the second trigger. Having said that these setups are rare .
There is no real protocol as to which barrel to fire first you select to meet the occasion. On out going shots I frequently choose the open barrel first followed by the tighter barrel since the bird will be getting further away. On incoming birds as I. Pass shooting doves I frequently shoot the tighter barrel first as often the bird will simply fly past you as opposed to flaring off. The best option is to choose the. .Appropriate choke and don't miss most important don't get caught up in choke selection and lose your concentration on the target. As Ingwe said it isn't rocket science.

The above advice is spot on, in about 90% of the guns out there.

Once you get used to it you should be able to pull the front trigger and instead of letting go of it with your finger and re-inserting the finger back into the trigger guard onto the rear trigger, just slide it off the front one smoothly back onto the rear one. Handy for quick doubles, such as doubles on skeet station 7, or simo pairs in sporting clays. That's why the front trigger is often given a soft radius along the length of its right side, to allow the trigger finger to easily slide off and back.

Factories back in the day would special order odd ball choke arrangements in doubles. Ie: the right barrel being the tight one. (Not to mention the abundance of choke reamers out there, and guys who know how to use them.) So don't automatically assume the right barrel is open and the left tight- the pattern board is your friend when you buy a new gun. More than a few discerning guys wanted them choked that way. (Admittedly that is rarely to be found in hardware store-grade guns though.) Then there were the guns that were choked identically in both barrels- usually guns meant for waterfowling and choked full and full, or open-and-open for close quarter bird shooting. The "name" factories would also special order (at no small expense) triggers set up for left handed shooters, with god knows what choke combinations.

Yep, just pick which trigger-barrel you want to shoot for that particular shot. Tighter chokes for longer shots and more open chokes for closer shots. Just don't put two fingers in there. I did that once as a kid thinking I would just shoot whichever one I wanted. When I pulled the first trigger, it made the second one pull too. It will get a kids attention.

While it is "generally" true that on a double trigger SxS shotgun that the front trigger fires the right barrel (usually the less tightly chocked) and the rear trigger fires the left (tighter chocked) barrel......there are exceptions.

Some older shotguns (at least two L.C. Smith's that I know of) are set up so that the front trigger fires the LEFT barrel while the rear trigger fires the right. I know this from experience....a really bad experience.

It normally makes little difference as these older guns are in effect chocked full-and-full. However when I was maybe 15 it cost me to assume that every shotgun had triggers set up "normally".

In those days it was quite common (at least where I lived) for many to hunt through the woods "meat" hunting for any game that might appear. When deer season was open, we would place a buckshot load in the right (front trigger) barrel and a squirrel shot load in the left. If a deer (or rarely a hog) came along....he got the right barrel loaded with buckshot. If (more commonly) a squirrel, rabbit, quail or duck was encountered.... the left barrel loaded with squirrel shot put meat in the game bag.

I had hunted for years like this. Then one morning I borrowed my father's L.C. Smith. He had only owned this gun for a few months and neither of us had noticed that the triggers were reversed (front trigger firing the LEFT barrel).

Just before daylight he dropped me off near a small creek that I intended to hunt along...hoping for a mixed bag of squirrels, rabbits, ducks and maybe (if I was lucky) a buck. Just as it got light enough to see, a 6 point buck came walking down the creek to within 20 yards of me. I raised the gun and let go with the buckshot loaded barrel (I thought).

At the shot the buck "humped up" and ran a circle around me. I could have easily have shot him again, but I "knew" that barrel was loaded with squirrel shot.....and the buck was obviously hit hard and would soon die.

As the deer went out of sight I opened the breech to reload....and the "empty" slide very easily out of the chamber.....a little too easily. I looked down and saw I was holding an unfired shell loaded with buckshot. When I pulled the shell from the left barrel I found a fired hull that had been loaded with #6 shot.

I was sick, but thought at such close range I might still have killed the buck (at 20 yards squirrel shot CAN kill a deer size animal at times)...but no such luck. My father and I followed a very skimpy blood trail for more than a mile before the blood quit and we lost the trail.

After that I habitually checked the triggers of every double shotgun I owned and maybe 10 years later came across a second L.C. Smith with the same "reversed" triggers. I have no idea why these guns were set up that way, if it was a normal factory option or if someone (two someone's apparently) had custom ordered the "reversed" triggers.

I have never seen that arrangement again in more than 35 years, but I still always check every new gun I hunt with. Just be aware that (at least rarely) the front trigger doesn't ALWAYS fire the right barrel.