doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com CHOKE ?

I've never shot a wild pheasant in my life, over a dog or otherwise, but have hunted wild bobwhites for many years over pointing dogs. When they tend to flush wild, as I have heard pheasants are prone to do as well, you darn well DO have to sneak up on them, whether or not you have ever heard it said that way or not. Quail hunting here is one proper application of the more open chokes in the field, at least for the first barrel.

It is my decided opinion that tighter chokes, when used in clay target games, can make a shooter a BETTER shooter. I further believe that using open chokes to the extreme can HINDER that progress. Not everyone is, or can be, a "champion trap or SC shot", or even want to be. But we can all better ourselves.

Note, please, that I am NOT referring to practicing on live game. But, for those of us who truly want to better ouselves as wingshots, clays are very good practice.

SRH

Mike, I use IC/M in the blind. My 16 and 20 cylinders, Parker and Elsie originals, are upland guns. Waterfowling here is mostly birds coming in than passing or going away. Not likely mangled that bird if I had pulled the IC trigger. No apologies because of risk of losing cripples; I have a superb dog. Doesn't happen. (Well, almost doesn't happen. I've lost three birds over the last 25 years. A dead bird penetrated and slid under ice that Jake couldn't reach. I called him in twice in breaking water where I feared he'd drown chasing bluebills a couple hundred metres from shore.) Gunnng around here is no stroll in the woods.

The Field Oct. 20, 1888 �A Shoot On The Moor� by Thomas de Grey Walsingham

On August 30, when I killed 1,070 grouse to my own gun in the day, I shot with four breechloaders. No. 1, a gun made in 1866 by Purdey, subsequently converted from pin-fire to central principle, to which new barrels were made last year. Nos. 2 and 3, a pair of central fire breechloaders, made also by Purdey, about 1870, for which I have likewise had new barrels. No. 4, a new gun made by Purdey this year to match the two mentioned above, but with Whitworth steel instead of Damascus barrels. The guns are all 12 bore, with cylinder 30 in. barrels, not choked. My cartridges...contained 3 1/8 drs. Hall's Field B powder to 1 1/8 ozs. No 5 Derby shot...

The legendary Voodoo Barrel that not only defies reason but the best accepted laws of the physical universe. And I thot that the music people had some wonderful alternatives to Newtonian physics! Not that you folks can equal them, not by a large margin, but you are a total hoot to read.

I've been thinking of writing a text book of alternative physical laws/universes that are conjured by special (special ed?? hahaha) groups to sell in the mid-west since science there is a way fluid topic.

have a day

Dr.WtS

mid-west...science...is a way fluid topic.

As the educational victim of an inferior midwestern Land-Grant school, I would most appreciate being instructed by an intellectual superior as to exactly what that means. Thank you and please use words with less than 3 syllables.

Larry,
To your first point I'd respond that anybody who has seen more than a handful of mangled birds isn't exercising enough restraint. I don't shoot pheasants inside 25 yds, and locally that means a rooster getting up at 20 yds often has an opportunity to live another day. On my western hunts in open terrain I'd have considered it absolutely unjustifiable to shoot one inside 25 yds. Thus, while I've seen a very few pheasants mangled, I haven't done it myself. And every time I've witnessed it I've said to myself, and sometimes out loud, "Really? was that necessary?"

These many mangled pheasants you've seen, what choke under what conditions accounted for that? and do you believe the shooter error was one of choke selection and not poor judgement in taking the shot?

Regarding your second point; in killing these 1300 roosters where an IC would have sufficed, did you never see one "escape" with every indication of a clean miss only to fly several hundred yards and drop dead? I've seen it many times myself. I had the rare opportunity once to see a ruffed grouse "missed cleanly" then fly 300 yds and drop dead. Experiences like that taught me to question whether there was anything I could do to up my odds of making a clean kill. Things like picking my shots, chokes and ammunition to err on the side of a more-than-adequate shot pattern and practicing my wingshooting on ten or twenty thousand clay targets a year.

Seems we're prone to only count those birds brought to bag and that is somehow validation for whatever was used. If it involved a cylinder choke and a good dog running down a cripple...well, I guess some people count that a success. To me it's an embarassment.

Back before the drought I would hunt the same forty or so covies of Bobwhites over and over and have seen a similar phenemenon many times. The targeted bird falls dead and is put in the bag. We then head in the direction of the singles and the dogs find another dead bird, sometimes after twenty yards and sometimes two hundred. In Montana this Fall I knocked down three Huns out of a pointed covey rise at about 25 yards. Cylinder choke and 1-1/8oz of #7-1/2s. That is not what I wanted to happen. Collateral damage is not what I am looking for.

My current theory is that for me, when I hunt Bobs, a tightly choked gun shooting 3/4 or 7/8 oz. of #9s is probably the best combination The tight chokes narrows the pattern and the #9 shot runs out of penetration sooner.

As fare as putting birds in the bag I would go with open chokes every time.

I have to admit I have wounded and failed to bag pheasant, flushed from the nose of the pointing dog, with a tightly choked gun.

Best,

Mike

Mike, our differing opinions of efficacy and conservation may be a generational thing. It would be unconscionable for me and those I gun with to wait for a pheasant or any bird to get 25 yards away before shooting at it. We prefer birds within 25 yards, jinking and flaring, for sporting and effective shooting. Slow and deliberate shooting, arbitrarily riding out a bird, is as good a way I can think of for losing it.

Jinking and flaring, sporting maybe, but EFFECTIVE? How so?

SRH

You guys that like the open chokes.... That's fine with me. To each his own. What I don't like is when they take a nice Win. 21 or Parker w/ 32" barrels, and open it to skeet/IC. Shoot your little short barrel guns. I shoot lots of my birds in a fenced circle. Long live .025/.035!