Long-term review 

Brendan Jones – As published in the October 2026 issue of The Report

Looking for a fast and easily adjustable shooting rest for hunting? Check out this review of the Primos Trigger Sticks. 

Up for review in this article are the Primos Trigger Sticks Gen3 Tripod (Tall). They are a shooting rest designed for hunting, with the key point of difference being the speed of deployment and single-handed adjustability. 

Primos is an American company, which began with hunting calls in the 1970s, and now has expanded to all manner of hunting accessories. Primos’ shooting rest offerings include simple folding sticks to heavy-duty carbon fibre tripods and its line of Trigger Sticks. These are aptly named for the large trigger, or sprung lever, which is used to actuate the adjustment of the legs. Of these, there are monopod, short and tall bipod, and short and tall tripod variants available. 

The Primos Trigger Sticks Gen3 Tripod (Tall) weighs in at 1.35kg and, when compacted, measures 104cm long – from its toothed-rubber feet to the top of its Y-yoke. Fully extending the dual sectioned 20mm diameter anodised alloy legs results in a length of 168cm. At its tallest deployed shooting position, a height of 156cm is achieved and the lower is 98cm with the legs in the standard width. A minimum height of 60cm is possible by turning a sprung collar underneath the tripod head that allows the angle of the legs to be widened, making for a total vertical adjustment range of 108cm. The legs also have a rubber strap to cinch them together for transport. 

The tripod head is made of hard polymer, hydro dipped in a non-descript camouflage. It has a pistol grip shape and allows attachments to be quickly swapped by a push button, with a secondary safety switch that locks the button if desired. The trigger sticks come with a Y-yoke for supporting a gun fore-end that is 65mm wide at the top, 35mm deep, rubberised and stepped on the inside. It is also supplied with an optics plate with a standard ¼-20 thread. There are other styles of yokes available for purchase and even a two-point gun rest/cradle (the product is said to hold up to 9kg.) 

This leaves the trigger actuation lever. It is 50mm long, slightly curved, with jimping on the bottom part for grip and is 12mm wide. One or two fingers can fit on the trigger, which has around 25mm maximum travel. 

Testing 

As the name suggests, the heart and soul of this device is the trigger, or more accurately, what the trigger operates. A slight squeeze and hold of the lever actuate a mechanism that unlocks all three legs simultaneously. The legs could then be pulled out if desired, but they are able to extend rapidly under gravity. When the lever is released again, the legs lock at any position. This makes deployment of the Trigger Sticks extremely fast. In the case of a traditional tripod, you would need to loosen a collar or locking lever per leg section, pull the section out and then lock again. Potentially a total of 9 to 12 separate adjustments. 

Once deployed, adjusting is a breeze. To go from maximum height with a rifle rested, to minimum (kneeling) with legs at the standard width took an average of 2.5 seconds and 1.5 seconds to reverse from kneeling to standing. Your mileage may vary depending on your height, your knees and lower back health. Making small adjustments to height and angle takes mere fractions of a second and is instinctive, requiring zero thought processing. 

Even more impressive is deploying or adjusting on uneven ground, slopes or having one leg on an obstacle. This takes no longer than adjusting the device on flat ground. You just hold the trigger and push/pull/lean/tilt and then release to lock in. To adjust the device to its lowest end of the range requires the legs to be splayed out, which is achieved via the ring that releases them to a wider angle. This is slower relative to using the sticks in their higher range, but still fast. 

When in a kneeling or standing height, the sticks are easily steady enough for practical hunting ranges out to a few hundred meters, depending on size of target and shooter’s skill, of course. At the maximum height there is a bit of play where the leg sections join. Reducing the height by only 10mm removes that play and is then consistent throughout the range. This would only be noticed by users over six feet tall. The most unsteady position is when the legs are released to their wider angle and extended to almost maximum length. There is some flex and bounce in the legs at this position, but not unmanageable. If the user’s intention was mostly for sitting/kneeling shots, and standing wasn’t of interest, the short version would be lighter, smaller, cheaper and more stable at that height range. 

The rotating head pans smoothy and is good for tracking left and right for observation purposes or shooting moving targets, and the only slippage of the feet I experienced was inside on a tiled floor. 

In the field 

This review began late one night about three years ago. While watching Jim Shockey’s ‘Unchartered’ on YouTube I yelled, “That’s it!” at the TV, as Jim deployed these weird sticks he had been carrying to take an awkward shot up a steep incline. Some quick Googling revealed they looked to be the perfect solution for our nighttime thermal hunting escapades, for which we had been unable to find or make something satisfactory. 

85% of our use during the past three years has been night thermal hunting for pigs. In the tropics, the vegetation has dictated most of that is in the standing position. When thermal hunting, generally you have longer to observe a mob of pigs waiting for the right shot, which is where these sticks have proved invaluable. It is nothing to observe and trail a feeding mob for many minutes before the right pig is in the right position clear of obstacles, before a shot is taken. This is exacerbated when coordinating shots from two shooters. Another scenario is when calling pigs, where there can be a lengthy observation window prior to a shot. In both cases, holding a rifle topped with a thermal scope for that long isn’t feasible due to the fatigue factor. Secondly, the speed to deploy has proved crucial when the pigs are aware of your presence from the get-go. In such a scenario, there aren’t minutes spent observing, but seconds rapidly setting up to take a shot. In contrast, large traditional tripods with a gun clamp are slow to deploy and cumbersome to keep moving and adjusting. 

The Trigger Sticks have proved equally useful for more ‘traditional’ hunting in the daylight. Additional to pigs, they’ve been used to take wild dogs, deer, cats and rabbits. Switching out the Y-yoke for the optics plate, the sticks have also pulled double-duty as a tripod for photography or for glassing. While I wouldn’t advocate buying this product as a dedicated photography tripod, it is certainly more than serviceable when one isn’t at hand. 

Price, availability and alternatives 

All variants of the Primos Trigger Sticks Gen3 can be found at gun shops and in Australian online shooting retailers (Amazon will not ship to Australian delivery addresses). At the time of writing, online prices from Australian retailers for the tall tripod version featured in this article ranged from $399 to $499. 

During recent times, similar products and clones have been coming to the market, many of which having parts and components suspiciously similar to the Primos range. Most of these clones don’t allow the legs to hinge wider, therefore have a decreased range of height adjustment. Also, many don’t have the capacity to switch attachments. But if those two features aren’t critical to your use case, and if the mechanism works, the off-brand copies could serve your needs at a reduced price. 

Conclusion 

As the old road safety messaging used to say, ‘speed kills,’ and that is certainly the case with the Primos Trigger Sticks Gen3 tall tripod. The sheer speed to deploy and adjust makes getting into a stable supported shooting position at a full standing height on uneven ground remarkably fast. When the shot opportunity is being measured in seconds, and vegetation requires a standing shot, there is nothing I have come across that is better. 

At current pricing, I am not sure I would have bitten the bullet and bought them sight unseen. Now that they have become such an integral part of our hunting system, particularly thermal night hunting, I would buy a replacement in a heartbeat, albeit while whining about the price and lamenting not buying a spare earlier. 

All products in this review were purchased by the author.