OED notes trouble-hunting with the same meaning, and also in the field of telephony, is attested in 1882, some 23 years before the first attestation of trouble-shooter. I wonder if there was a change of the base verb/noun based on simple association of hunting & shooting.
Hey I checked World Wide Words on the offchance, and Michael Quinion has a more prosaic, but more likely answer...
OED notes trouble-hunting with the same meaning, and also in the field of telephony, is attested in 1882, some 23 years before the first attestation of trouble-shooter. I wonder if there was a change of the base verb/noun based on simple association of hunting & shooting.
I'll be interested to hear. This sounds like one of those well-worn folk-etymologies, but who knows