I bought an HK USPf .45 as my first pistol when I turned 21 in July of 2011. With the first couple boxes of ammo I couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. I thought that this might be because it just needed to be broken in, but after a few hundred rounds I realized my inaccuracy had a lot to do with trigger pull (I grew up shooting rifles and shotguns and never really became very familiar with pistol shooting). After studying my HK and reading some things online I found that when the USP’s hammer is fully cocked back there is a lot of slack or “creep” in the trigger you have to pull before you get anywhere close to getting the hammer to fall. I was told this creep or slack is typical of SA/DA pistols designs and there isn’t a whole lot that can be done about it except for maybe getting a match trigger installed, have it customized/polished, or get used to it. After I learned this I started pulling that slack before getting ready to fire and my accuracy greatly increased because apparently before I was somewhat slapping the trigger because of that slack and it was throwing my shots off. I was actually able to put most of my rounds on target while standing from about 25 yards but I felt it still wasn’t grouping like it should be. A few weeks ago I decided to try shooting my HK from a bench rest at about 25 yards to really make sure that it was just my inexperience with pistols and not something wrong with my HK causing these accuracy issues. Turns out I, nor anyone else that shot it could produce better than 6” groups at 25 yards FROM THE BENCH! I’ve seen sub-compacts shoot tighter groups than that at 25 yards… I’m going to buy another two boxes of ammo and try letting a friend of mine who has a Stoeger Cougar shoot my HK and see how he does from the bench and Im going to shoot his Stoeger to make sure I don’t just suck. If I cant get it to produce better groups, I will either have it sent to HK, trade it in for an FN Five-Seven or a nice 1911, or maybe a new barrel (EFK Fire Dragon?) and HK match trigger might fix the problem? It still might just be me and my inexperience with pistols but I’ve been shooting rifles all my life so I don’t really know what it is I could be doing wrong at this point. Any insight on the matter would be greatly appreciated because I want to love this pistol and be able to feel confident with it.
P.S. I was using Winchester (White Box) .45 Auto 835fps 230gr FMJ and some cheap Monarch (Red Box) .45 Auto 230gr FMJ but neither shot better than the other.