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" (Ľ 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 1Ľoz 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.
