My local Cabela's received a bunch of Sheriffs with junk triggers!
I don't want to burst anyone's bubble over buying a Remmy at the lowest sale price in recent memory, but I was sorely disappointed with the trigger quality of the 5.5" Sheriff models that were in stock today at my local Cabela's store. I was disappointed because none were good enough to buy, and I had gone there it buy several of them.
I called the store first and was told that they just got in a fresh batch of Remmy's which included a dozen or more .44 Sheriff models.
I went there and the first 5.5" that I held was already unwrapped from being previously inspected, and I turned it down for being terribly unacceptable.
No problem. The clerk opens another box, unwraps the new gun and the same thing. The trigger is mushy with slack, without a crisp or predictable release. I apologized and refused it.
So then the clerk opens another box and unwraps the new gun and hands it to me. Same thing, a trigger that's spongy, mushy or having a pull with a lot of slack or grit. I apologized again and said, this isn't working out, that trigger is just as bad as the other two. The clerk says well, they're all the same, they're only $200 dollar guns. And I told him that I didn't think that I wanted to even look at another one because I didn't want to waste his time.
The clerk was aware that I was interested in more than one gun, so he said that he didn't mind opening up another box. So I said okay, and he hands me the 4th gun and for a second I was slightly optimistic. But that optimism quickly faded as the trigger was barely any better than the other 3 guns. I had to cock it twice just to be sure, but by then I was positive that I would be unhappy and that it would be a waste of money and time to proceed any further.
I again told "Tim", the clerk, how sorry I was to not make a purchase, and that I was going back to the Gun Library instead.
I spoke to another clerk on my way over there and let him know how bad the triggers were on the new batch of guns that came in. And he said to me that Pietta's were not what they once were. I don't know if he had a reason for saying that or if he was just trying to be sympathetic.
But I suspect that Cabela's received a bunch of guns that they know may have quality control issues. And now are having fire sale prices to move them out the door as Christmas presents which folks tend to not complain about the quality of.
It's happened before with a batch of stainless Sheriff models that had bent and defective latch posts installed. Many were installed crooked and had obvious fitting problems. Yet Pietta sent them through to Cabela's anyway. And I can't recall seeing many stainless 1858 Sheriff models for sale at all ever since.
So I believe that it does and can happen. Pietta's employees may not be taking the effort to make the triggers fit acceptably, or the trigger parts are not up to specifications. I can at least say that the ones that I tried weren't acceptable to me. And I would expect that at least 1/2 of the triggers would be okay. But instead, all of the triggers that I tried were only 1/2 okay. That's 1/2 of a trigger less than I would expect.
I hope that folks understand the reason for my disappointment. I'm not going to purchase a gun that I need to have trigger work performed on in order to enjoy shooting it. Especially when I know that finding a good trigger is possible for the same price and that the model isn't in short supply.
Cabela's sells Heritage Rough Rider .22 single action revolvers for $129. I've owned one for years. And even though the trigger pull may not be very light, it's release is crisp enough to be perfectly acceptable enough to enjoy shooting it. Just because a revolver costs less than $200, doesn't mean that it can't have an acceptable trigger. But somehow Pietta can't manage to produce a clean breaking trigger. I'll bet that even most toy cap guns have better triggers than what I saw today.
Perhaps the 8 inch Remmy models are better, but I didn't check any of them today and now I'm doubtful.
Perhaps the .36 Sheriffs are better. They rarely go on sale for the same low prices as either of the base model .44's. Maybe I will look into one of them the next time that they have a special sale on them.
I figure that it must be either a bad batch of parts, an untrained group of employees, or Pietta management is skipping a step in the production process so that the triggers simply don't get fitted, as if to speed up production.
Maybe the Traditions guns have a different set of standards than Cabela's because of simply being a different production run.
I really don't know other than Pietta's trigger quality seems to be totally hit and miss.
I'm going on about it because I spent most my day there at Cabela's for the express purpose of picking up some .44 Sheriffs.
And I ended up buying a center fire pistol that was totally unrelated to why I went there, and which led me to spend even more time there waiting for the paperwork process to be completed. So while the Sheriffs were a draw that brought me into the store. I doubt that I will be spending much more time looking at that new batch of Sheriffs that they got in. Right now I don't care what the sale price is. I wasted my time by looking at a bunch of junk triggers when I could have gone to the shooting range instead.