Overtravel is the rearward travel the trigger keeps moving through after the sear has released and the shot has already fired. The work is done at the break, so any motion beyond that point is purely extra, and if the finger surges hard against the backstop it can jar the rifle while the bullet is still in the bore. For that reason many target triggers include an adjustable stop that arrests the blade almost the instant the sear lets go.

Tuning overtravel out makes the trigger pull feel like it ends in a wall rather than a fall into empty space, which encourages a steadier follow-through. It is the mirror image of trigger creep, which lives before the break, and it works hand in hand with a positive trigger reset for fast, repeatable shots.

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