doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com OK, put this in the dumb question department!

On a western arms (Ithaca)shotgun with double triggers which trigger fires which barrel?
Haven't got a chanvce to fire off the new/old girl yet and it's been along time since I've messed with a SXS.


*See I said it was dumb!

Front trigger fires right and back fires left.

Loren

Not dumb at all. Generally the front trigger will fire the right[and normally more open] bbl.

Some guns were purpose built to be reversed, i.e., for the front trigger to fire the left bbl first. That configuration was usually reserved for pigeon guns and I would find it most unusual on an American two triggered gun. I have an old Bonehill 'pig' gun, a 10 bore Brit. hammer gun, that was so built with the reversed firing. I think those thots went out of vogue about the time that the 12 bores took over the ring games or shortly thereafter. It is discussion and questions such as yours that keep this site lively and fun.

BTW, my own first experience with a two triggered gun at a rather young age involved placing two fingers inside the trigger guard .. a major error in judgement, that. Experience can be a harsh teacher. I learned.

Any time I want to find out which trigger fires which barrel, I take either two empty hulls or snap caps and put a small piece of masking tape over the primer- fire one and see if it works the way it is supposed to. Works for me. Good luck.

Wb yOu wana see dumb...read closing a gun.

WB: In the case of real and genuine questions, there are NO DUMB QUESTIONS. However, sometimes there are dumb answers (but none on this topic/thread).
I once examined and passed up a Brit SxS game gun in which the front trigger fired the right TIGHT barrel, and the rear trigger fired the left OPEN barrel. I've read that some Brit game guns for "driven birds" would be so choked. The idea was that the incoming/approaching birds (usually Brit partridge or pheasants at a formal "shoot" with shooters standing in long established "butts", over which the birds would fly after being "driven") would be fired on with the TIGHT barrel, and the second shot, with the birds much closer now, would be fired with the OPEN barrel - and the shooter used the normal front then rear sequence with the triggers.
In North America, our maunfacturers of SxS shotguns traditionally have the more OPEN barrel on the right (front trigger) and the more TIGHT barrel on the left (rear trigger). However, some maunfacturers of more expensive guns offered choking any way the buyer wanted it to make the sale.
Hope this helps.

An easy way to tell is to look closely at the triggers. The "front" trigger is actually the right trigger. The "rear" is on the left, corresponding to which barrel they fire. JL

Well, the front trigger could be on the left, if it were left-handed. But the easy way to know, as Jim points out, is that the right rigger, whether the front or the rear, fires the right barrel.

Look at the trigger slots, there is a left and right slot. In a perfect world you could change the triggers from slot to slot and have it either way, however most triggers are bent inwards ever so slightly so that they line up below the slots. I learned this when I tried to reverse the triggers on a gun and had the reversed triggers noticeably sticking out from the sides of the trigger guard.
Steve

I had a English Gun with the left trigger in front for a left handed shooter and also as someone said another with the tight choke on the right and open on the left. You never know sometimes.