Does anybody use a coach gun to practice using double triggers and reloading?

I had thought about getting one just for that purpose. I hear that alot of double rifle owners pull the front trigger twice in the heat of the moment. I have very little experience with SxS guns or double triggers. Shotshells are certainly cheaper than .470 ammo.

I think most of those coach guns have extractors don't they. No problem on a DR with extractors as it simply takes a flick of the wrist to empty the gun, but with a shotgun, you have to pull the empties from the chambers. So I'm not sure they are good trainers for reloading a double rifle.

What I did to get my muscle memory down for double triggers and reloading is to use two sets of snap caps. I have one set of 500's from Trader Keith's (Kynoch I think) and a set of 470 A-Zoom that are perfect replicas of the cartridges (470 and 500 use the same rim). I start with the rifle loaded with the Kynoch, A-Zooms in my reloading belt, then just go through the motions of snapping, ejecting, reloading, snapping again, then ejecting. Always ending on ejecting. I don't do it as often as in the past, but at one time, I'd do this in sets of 10, several times throughout the day while hanging around in my trophy room. It really helped getting the muscle memory set for both triggers and reloading quickly.

After that, if recoil is an issue, take that same sequence out to the range with some reduced Trail Boss loads, interspersed with a few full power loads. Give that a try and see if it doesn't help establish your pattern.

Cheers.

I regularly hunt with double trigger SxS's and load in the same manner too. I also shoot skeet or clays fairly frequently, and almost always with a SxS, and shot very frequently when I was younger.

In fact, the reason I bought a double rifle for dangerous game was because I was familiar with the tang safety, the double triggers and loading.

JPK

I have a coach gun from Stoeger. At some point I'll probably use it for DR practice purposes but as Todd points out it has extractors and you need to pull the shells out as opposed to the ejectors on my VC which really launches them.

Kind of along the same lines here. I've got a pair of W&S BLE shotguns. One is a 12 the other a lovely little 28. I hunt birds exclusively with them. They are both BLE and the muscle memory training is perfect for double rifle shooting. Especially the quick trigger work and reloads are pretty close too.

I grew up shooting SXS shotguns with double triggers. And I maintain that muscle memory by continuing to hunt and shoot the same. If I were looking to buy a practice shotgun for double rifle work. I'd buy a shotgun that operated identically to my double. You can find SXS double trigger ejector guns fairly cheap.

A SXS, double trigger, shotgun can be a useful tool to practice with. Although most SXS shotguns have auto safeties it would not be hard to have most modified to a manual safety.
Lots of good quality German shotguns available used for a fraction of a new made Turkish gun of lesser quality.
Examples...
http://www.757arms.com/m-1-sauer.aspx