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

If most of your shooting is far, you need some choke; if most of your shooting is close, you don't; if you're not sure what you'll need get some screw in choke tubes...Geo

LORDY,LORDY,LORDY.I sure didn't realize I was openong up such a can of worms!Didn't know this was such a contentious issue.I,myself,don't care one way or 'tother.I knoe I wouldn't like to take a 1st shot at a quail w/full ch.Don't like eating lead.Finding 1 or2 shot w/teeth proves I shot game.Re-assembling a bird to cook seems to defeat the purpose.To the fellow who remarked Jamart was around a long time-what do you know about them?I dearly love mine,but differ w/you on choke.I figger mine to be both bbls skeet/ic.Then again the word skeet wasn't around Belgium in those days.I may be mistkn.Sure have enjoyed all the discussion.Thanks ya'll

There were several Jamart's in Belgium. Lacking pictures or any other info, I can only assume the gun was made by Jamart & Co.rue St Leonard 395 1924-1930 (A really nice location facing the river.)
Jamart Brothers 1930-1931,
Jamart Brothers & Co rue des Bayard 67-69 1931-1936, the site of the old Pieper factory.
Jamart Brothers 1936-1945 and finally
Jamart & Co Societe Annonyme 1945-1958.

The company held 5 patents dealing with the lockup of barrels.

Pete

How am I not being told when I McIntosh wrote what he did? He did not qualify his statement. Am I somehow excluded from his statement that in this day and age choke is obsolete?

SRH

I don't believe you'd ever read much Brister or McIntosh--or Brown, for that matter--without coming across statements advocating more practice with a shotgun. However, reality is reality. I've spent most of my life in Iowa, and I was fortunate enough to live there when, more years than not, it was the #1 pheasant state in the nation. On the other hand, to my knowledge, the entire state has one club that throws registered skeet targets. There are a few other clubs with skeet (although not all that many), and a lot of small clubs where they shoot trap on a single field. But which would have been far more likely, given those circumstances . . . a resident of Iowa who hunted pheasants or a resident of Iowa who shot skeet?? Where I now live, in northern Wisconsin--a less densely populated area than the one I moved from in Iowa--there are significantly more opportunities to shoot skeet, 5 stand, and sporting clays. Which makes practice, at games other than trap, a whole lot easier here than it was down there.

I think we're also encountering a couple different approaches here when it comes to hunting. For many hunters, myself included, bird hunting isn't only about the difficulty of the species being pursued as a target. Rather, it's about the challenges the bird in question presents to the hunter. Actually, to two hunters--one human and the other canine. If I were to poll the readers of Pointing Dog Journal, the magazine for which I write a regular column, I have absolutely no doubt that I'd find most of them telling me that they could leave the gun home and still spend a fine day afield, just with their dog, watching it handle birds. Most of us with dogs do a lot of our shooting for our canine partner. If Spot handles the bird well--solid point or hard flush, hup to flush or maybe steady to wing--then we look on it as our half of the task to reward Spot with a retrieve. Makes no difference if the shot is hard or easy. And, per the doctrine of fair chase, we also understand that it's our responsibility to kill as quickly and cleanly as possible. That means we don't intentionally seek out the most challenging shots, because--by definition--those will potentially result in more crippled and perhaps lost birds. Rather, we hold our fire for those opportunities where, based on our experience and ability, we have the greatest chance of making a clean kill. As Brister points out, a more open choke is just another way of reducing the possibility of missing. If I'm a baseball player and have more trouble hitting a slider than a fast ball . . . well sure, I should work on hitting sliders. But if the game's on the line and I can wait for a fast ball, why not do that? On another board, a poster who shots lots of pheasants--like I have--works as hard as I do at trying to convince people that if you're in good pheasant country with a decent dog, you really don't need to be able to kill roosters reliably at 40 yards (something that relatively few hunters can do). You will get sufficient closer opportunities, although it may mean you have to hunt a bit longer. Right now, Iowa pheasant numbers are way down. Yet my hunting partner and I, alternating a couple experienced pheasant dogs, put 6 roosters in the air in under 2 hours, all inside of 25 yards--in the middle of December, when conventional wisdom holds (with some accuracy) that late season birds will be far more challenging. So while some might look at using a more open choke as a crutch, I look at it as using the right tool for the task at hand, given the kind of shots I've experienced over a very long career chasing roosters. And I can turn that statement on its head, and say that spending a lot of time learning to make 40 yard shots might better be spent learning to be a better hunter or training a dog better or giving it more experience on the birds in question, at which point you're far less likely to need to take 40 yard shots.

I am not one who agreed with the late Mr. McIntosh that choke is obsolete. But given the shooting inabilities of the average hunter, I'll stick with my belief that the average hunter is likely better off with less choke than he's shooting, and maybe no choke at all--depending on what and where he's hunting. Where I live now, where I can chase grouse and woodcock literally right out my door (as opposed to the pheasants I used to chase right out my door, in Iowa), it's even easier for the local resident to find good public land on which to hunt grouse and woodcock than it is to find a place to shoot targets. And learning to shoot well requires an investment of time and effort that some people really can't make, and others choose not to make. So while I'll encourage them to practice more, I'll also suggest that they'll do better on grouse and woodcock with no choke at all than whatever they're shooting now. The fact is, both that advice AND practice will result in reduced misses afield.

You didn't open a can of worms, Swampus. Differing opinions and anything contentious was more from different experiences. I've been here 10 years. Your "can of worms" opened up new knowledge for me. That's why "I'm glad to be here."

As usual, well said King Brown!

It has been my experience, perhaps more limited than some, that modern shells do not drastically reduce the size of the killing circle for a given choke, but obtain their higher percentage by bringing fliers from outside into the inner circle. Thus if your gun is putting too many shot in the pattern circle, reduce the shot load. I find a light choke, on the order of the Quarter Choke to be a very versatile choke which by load selection can produce a much wider usefullness than ever possible by a Cylinder.
Choke effectively obsoleted the cylinder bored shotgun, I personally do not believe anything has changed that situation.
Most who bad mouth choke seem to conveniently forget that a choke does not have to be "Full Choke".

The mild chokes in my opinion are far more versatile than either a Full Choke or a "No Choke".
One of the guns I shot the best on upland game was an English Damascus 12ga having .010" (� choke) in both 28" bbls. I of course feel that the gun had a particularly good fit to me which had a lot to do with it, but it certainly was not handicapped by those mild chokes. It killed mostly quail, some woodcock & a good number of rabbits hunted with beagles. I loaded an ounce of #8s for the feathers & an ounce of #6s for the fur.
I never did a lot of waterfowl hunting, but all the ducks I ever killed were shot with a 2 3/4" 12ga bored .012R & .024L. With 1�oz of either #5 or #6 shot ( this was when lead was still legal) it would kill ducks as far as I felt comfortable in shooting.

As so many of the older guns I like were bored full choke a high percentage of the guns I own are so bored & will for the most part remain unaltred. I do tend to use those for my hunting which are choked no tighter than Mod in the "Tight" bbl. I do not currently have a using gun in cylinder bore & feel in no way handicapped by that fact.

Can someone explain to me why I can shoot my SBE at sporting clays with a XXX Full (Comp n Choke) turkey choke better than I can with any of the more open factory chokes ?

The SBE thinks it's turkey hunting??