Most rifle shooters don’t think much about their firing hand grip. If you’re shooting from a bench or prone with a bipod, you’re not really supporting the rifle with your firing hand. It is easy enough to just position your firing hand such that the pad of your trigger finger lands at 90 degrees on your trigger, so what is the big deal? Turns out there are, in fact, several big deals.
First off, without breaking your shooting position to look, when you put your hand your firing hand on the rifle, where does your trigger finger land and does it always land the same place? This is a big deal because when shooting, your firing hand moves whenever you change positions and also every time you run the bolt. You move it all the time and, often, especially with unfamiliar and different positions, your hand will not land back in the right place. Before molding my own grip, my hand often landed a little off and I needed to readjust my grip to have proper trigger finger position. This is not so with a molded grip. Because the fit is perfect, I feel where I need to go as I slide into position and therefore always end up exactly where I am supposed to go quickly and repeatably.
But, wait – there’s more! How much muscle tension do you have in your firing hand and trigger finger? In positions where you can load the bipod, tripod, or bag, you really shouldn’t have much tension. Certainly, you don’t want tension in those little muscles that hold your hand open or hold your finger back since that causes tremor, fatigue, and inconsistency. I often did have my trigger finger and firing hand unnaturally held off of the rifle stock with tension in these muscles, though. No longer: now my hand is fully and comfortably supported even out to the first knuckle on the trigger finger so that I always press and never mash or curl the trigger.
Finally, what if your shooting position dictates some support from your firing hand in the form of rearward pressure from the non-trigger fingers or partial support of the rifle? With a poor grip, you will now find muscle tension in all different parts of your hand going all different ways trying to hold the rifle in position while holding the trigger finger correctly, all with few actual contact points with the machine. Good luck doing any of that in a controlled and repeatable manner. Mold that hand into the rifle and you will only have tension where you want it. You can even mold an index line into the grip along the center of the rifle if you really want to be sure that you keep the direction of the force you apply in line with the barrel when you are in a position where you pull the rifle into your shoulder.
When it comes to grip, the saying, “you don’t know what you’re missing” is probably the operable phrase. I certainly didn’t know what I was missing. Before I tried a molded grip, the grip fit of a stock was well down on my list of important stock geometry. Now, it is #2 behind cheek weld. I am excited to see that stock makers are finally coming out with some models that fit an average hand better, have replaceable grips, or have adjustable grips. This is a real win for shooters. What I like best, though, are stocks like the new MDT XRS that have a place for me to easily mold on my own. I don’t think I can ever go back.
