^ Thanks for that very detailed insight, rnbra_shooter, and I see you kind of got my point when you said that I tried to "force" the shot between heartbeats, cuz that's pretty much exactly what I wanted to do. I still find it puzzling as to how to make it subconciously break in between though.
It's hard to explain exactly how to get there. But at least you now know what was wrong with how you might have been trying to make the shot, and you also know what you are trying to achieve - training yourself so that your subconscious handles the details associated with the last 10% or so of the trigger break.
Obviously, it's pointless to apply 85% of the pressure needed to fire the trigger, and then just sit there looking at a pretty sight picture, and eventually watch as your vision goes fuzzy from staring and holding your breath. You want to GET ON WITH THE SHOT, but you're not trying to do something along the lines of "wait for it... look, there it is... quick, snap at it!!".
Once you've done the SET UP for a shot, and you're in the final stages of the trigger pull, you want the shot to FIRE. Perhaps a good way to start training to turn things over to your subconscious, is at this point to increase the trigger pressure at a measured, deliberate rate, with the intention of the trigger breaking in about 2-3 seconds. I.e. don't "snap" or "jerk" it, but basically proceed with "making it break, flawlessly, without any disturbance to the rifle". You're going to make the rifle fire, but you're trying to accomplish this in a certain WINDOW of time, not at an exact POINT in time.
I've never liked the term "surprise break", I never found that it helped me very much to either make good shots, or to fix various problems that I had developed (from time to time, I seem to teach myself how to flinch, and I have to spend lots of time teaching myself to not do that anymore!!) But I can understand why people use the term "surprise break", the idea is that you DO KNOW that the rifle is going to fire, and pretty darn soon (the next 2-3 seconds), but you're DON'T KNOW, and for that matter DON'T ACTUALLY CARE if the rifle fires in 1 second, or 2 seconds, or 4 seconds. All of those are acceptable outcomes.
Once you can mentally "let go" of your worry about controlling precisely when the rifle fires, you can direct all your efforts to producing a good steady sight picture over the next five seconds. And since the rifle will fire at some point during that interval, you're going to get a good shot out of it.
A certain amount of this can be learned while dry firing - so do as much of that as you possibly can. Learn your trigger, and how to control it. Learn how to make it go off deliberately, reliably, with neither delay nor hurry. EXPECT to hear the click happen, at precisely the "right" time, when the sights are just right.
I don't shoot standing, since my rifle is too front heavy (especially with the Parker Hale bipod... it's like 1.5 pounds!). I was shooting with the forend supported, sitting, with the elbow on my knee, not on the bench.
Well, that will give you a wobbly enough position, to really reward you for getting things right, or penalize you for getting things wrong. You might find that it takes an incredible amount of self discipline to cause yourself to accept that you want to fire the rifle DURING AN INTERVAL OF YOUR CHOOSING, and that you are not going to try to fire the rifle AT A POINT OF YOUR CHOOSING.
If you ever do any bench or prone shooting (off of bags, bipod, etc), you might find that these steadier position(s) makes it easier for you to get yourself into the right frame of mind to learn how to release the shot subconsciously.
Or do you shoot benchrest?
