wonder how well an even lighter trigger would perform on a prairie dog rifl e. This wondering grew after acquiring a modest collection of German hunting rifl es, ranging from pre-World War I to post-Y2K models. Germans really know how to build
The rifle chosen for the test was a Remington 700 Classic in .221 Fireball, a perfect rifl e for prairie dog hikes, where shooting positions aren’t always rock steady.
for pulls lighter than two pounds, most- ly Jewells and Timneys. They all worked fi ne, even when adjusted as light as one pound, but over the years I’d started to
rifl es, partly because they’ve been mak- ing them ever since they developed the rifl ed barrel 500 years ago. But Germans also are incredible engineers, and even their factory rifles often come with triggers that have very light but safe triggers. These come in varying forms: double-set triggers (most common on older rifles), single-set triggers, and even triggers with a little outside lever on the rifl e’s action to change the pull. Thanks to my collection of German hunting rifl es, I’d gotten used to pull- ing triggers that were often too light to register the minimum eight ounces of my Timney gauge. Then one day the editor of The
VARMINT HUNTER Magazine®, John Anderson, told me he had a 2-ounce Jard trigger for the Remington 700 that needed testing, and he simply didn’t have time. Would I like to try it? Does
One potential problem with installing Remington 700 triggers (shown here) and some of their replacements is the sear lever and spring coming loose. It helps to install the front pin fi rst, which holds the lever.
a prairie dog dig holes in the prairie? It took a couple of days for the trig-
ger to travel from central South Dakota to southwestern Montana, giving me time to consider the problem of exactly which of several Remington varmint rifl es would be the lucky recipient. In the end the Jard went into a Classic in .221 Fireball, since it’s the 700 that gets shot the most. The Remington trigger mecha-
nism is held in place by two steel pins, and one of the pins also happens to hold the front of the sear lever. The Jard trigger was fairly similar in design, but with a much lighter sear spring. The only trick in installing either trigger is in not letting the sear fl op around loose, allowing the spring to escape. The Jard comes with short pieces
of light wire twisted through the two pinholes. I untwisted the front wire while holding the trigger together, and just about had the trigger in place when the other wire spontaneously untwisted, and the sear lever and spring escaped. Luckily the spring didn’t escape
into that parallel universe fi lled with loose scope-mounting screws, and I managed to put the trigger back to- gether. It then took only a couple of minutes to pin the Jard into the action, then refi t the factory bolt-release lever. (If you’ve never installed a trigger on a 700 before, it might help to take a digi-
Page 114 October — December 2011
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