TargetTalk

I'm having a bit of a quandry here. I'm going to shoot a Winter bullseye league and I thought I had my pistol choice all locked up. I have been shooting a Ruger MkII Competition model with an Ultra Dot for years and it's a really nice pistol. The trigger has not been messed with and is decent (for a factory Ruger trigger). It has a bit of creep before let-off, but it's manageable. I do not have an official bullseye classification but I recall generally shooting 85-90 in slow fire and timed fire and 80-85 in rapid fire for a composite of around 260.

However, I recently obtained a High Standard Hamden Trophy 5.5" pistol and have been absolutely amazed at the trigger and my ability to hit with it. I have not shot bullseye with it but had it out the other day and was hitting a 1.5" swinger target 9 out of 10 times at 15 yards with open sights.

I'm now ready to do one of several actions....

1) Send my Ruger to Clark to have the trigger tuned.
2) Sell the Ruger to buy another High Standard (or other premium target rimfire pistol)
3) Attempt to tune the Ruger trigger myself with replacement parts from Clark or VQ.
4) Really go overboard and buy a European rimfire like Pardini, Hammerli, etc.

What would you recommend? I don't have a problem with spending premium money on a pistol and shooting it. I'll take good care of it and generally premium pistols retain their value over time.

Can someone give me the official "skinny" on the preferred bullseye pistol by the top competitors?

Chances are good that the improvement you have seen with the High
Standard is New Gun Syndrome. Shoot it for several months until you see whether your good shooting continues and if it carries over to standard targets. Don't be in a hurry to make a decision about a new gun. If you search the archives on this site you will find several threads that discuss the various merits of the different guns that are mostly used for bullseye. Trigger is not the only issue as to whether you might prefer one gun over another. If your goal is to shoot a full 2700 eventually, you might want to pick a 22 that is most like your 45. If you are just shooting rimfire league, the Ruger should do fine and if it does not have a Volquartsen trigger you can get a good trigger job by dropping one in.