I bumped into a neighbor who is also a rare item, a drilling guy. He's really into Meffords and we were talking about mine. He said it has a feature that decocks the rifle barrel. If my small brain was working better....., well, it wasn't. According to him, Mefford copied this from Merkel. He said it was activated by pushing the button on the selector and sliding it backwards. Is that how you make this work? How does it work?
Thanks
Bfly

Your friend is correct. I don't know whether Meffert copied the feature but on combination guns that have manual cocking on the top of the wrist, depressing the button will de-cock the rifle barrel. It is best to keep pressure on the thumb groove and let it gradually slide back.

DO NOT put your finger in the trigger guard as you perform this maneuver especially if you have engaged the set trigger. If you have engaged the set trigger, you will need to break the gun and use the release to disengage the set function...otherwise your right shotgun barrel could discharge unexpectedly through errant contact or vibration of the set trigger.

Drillings with an auto cock on opening of all three barrels have only a safety for the rifle barrel on the wrist. If you do not keep the master safety on, you can slide the wrist safety forward when mounting the gun and discharge the rifle barrel. If the master safety is on (side safety), this is not possible, because you must release the safeties in the proper order to discharge the rifle barrel.

There are variations on the whole safety theme with various German producers and oler guns can have some quirks. Its little wonder that the German study so long to pass the "grüner Abitur".

Here a picture of a small game drilling with just the slide safety for the rifle barrel on the wrist...the main safety can be seen on the side.

There is a button because the function is spring loaded in order to pop up the rear sight on the barrels. However as you can see the slide is smaller and there is no thumb groove as in this gun



It takes more effort to push this cocking device forward..the reason for the heavier construction and the contour for the thumb to fit.