Every serious rifle shooter knows that the three critical elements of a rifle's accuracy are bore, bedding, and trigger. The only point where the shooter actually interfaces with the system is the trigger.

New and improved mechanisms from six leading rifle makers herald a modern renaissance in trigger quality.

No matter how "mechanically accurate" a rifle may be, if it has a stiff, crawly, inconsistent trigger pull, it's not capable of consistently accurate shooting, even in the hands of a champion shooter. Nonetheless, for about the past 20 years, the trigger quality on the vast majority of rifles from even the most famous mainstream brands has been--in a word--awful. Oh, you could get a rifle with a really good trigger if you wanted one from a pricy custom-rifle maker or by installing one of the many precision trigger mechanisms available from aftermarket suppliers for most any popular rifle model. But get a reliably precise trigger on a store-bought gun? Forget it.

Why? Simple answer: blame ourselves. I'd like to blame the lawyers, but actually, they're just feeding on the situation. When it became a national pastime for anyone acting stupid to sue the manufacturer of the product they used--from lawnmowers to McDonald's coffee--all manufacturers of all products had no recourse but to protect themselves by offering items ever-more-difficult to misuse, to the point that some shooters have wondered if gun makers really want us to even fire their guns.

This situation is changing. We are in the middle of a trigger renaissance. It began about five years ago, when several of our leading sporting-rifle makers finally began to listen to the discontent about the overall quality of their triggers and started serious R&D programs to develop new-design trigger mechanisms that are user-adjustable, as clean and light as custom triggers, and also--dare I write--idiot-proof.

The first major introduction to appear from this movement was the revolutionary Savage AccuTrigger, introduced in 2003. Its immediate success, and the following surge in Savage's share of the bolt-action rifle market, was apparently the final motivation needed.

In just the past 12 months, all other leading U.S. rifle manufacturers have also introduced or announced significantly new trigger mechanisms for their regular-production guns. All are intended to finally answer their customers' long-standing complaints about trigger quality and, just incidentally, to win back some of the dollars that Savage has been taking from their pockets. They're worth a quick look.

Browning Feather Trigger
The heart of Browning's new X-Bolt rifle is the innovative, all-new Feather Trigger System. It's a three-lever design that offers a crisp, clean pull with no take-up or creep and minimal overtravel. The trigger is screw-adjustable from 3 to 5 pounds and is factory pre-set at approximately 3.5 pounds. An alloy trigger housing contains hard-chromed steel components that are highly polished on all critical surfaces.