doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Altering Chokes

You can indeed make chokes shoot tighter or looser patterns, and that's without stuff like spreaders. Don Zutz was a big fan of mod, because he realized it could shoot patterns ranging from IC to close to full depending on shell selection. Take a load of small shot with a cork or fiber wad, compare it to a load of larger shot, with a plastic shot cup. Maybe toss in buffering. You'll get some significant variations in pattern.

But McIntosh's point--although he didn't go into great detail--is that you can also make cylinder shoot IC or tighter patterns if you feed it the right ammo. But it retains the advantage of being able to throw true cylinder patterns without resorting to spreader loads. And per Mr. Brister--a fair hand at both game and clay shooting: "I do know that at 25 yards a pure-cylinder barrel will throw one of the deadliest game-getting patterns you ever looked at, more efficient at that yardage than a full-choke barrel at 50 yards." He also pointed out that Oberfell and Thompson found that cylinder patterns tended to be more even than those from guns with choke. When you add to that the fact that in some types of upland hunting, 25 yards is an unusually long shot--certainly true of grouse and woodcock!--the value of cylinder becomes even more apparent. It's obviously not the choice for guys who are shooting 50 yard clay targets . . . but then only a tiny % of upland hunters can hit 50 yard birds. And based on my own experience--using 3/4 ounce loads in a 20ga--you don't need any choke at all to break skeet targets consistently.

QUOTE By SAM
""[Regarding use of open/no/almost no chokes (whatever the heck MM meant by that) for everything, there may be a better way to guarantee you will never develop as a SC shooter...but right now I can't think of one. That was one of the most poorly considered pieces any shotgun writer ever put on paper. Using only open chokes is like betting against yourself, encourages such things as shooting twice at the close target, and provides fallacious input to the brain by way of misses on distant targets that were correctly pointed. You can groove and break a 40 yd target with a .005 12 ga often enough to convince yourself it can be done. But this is no way to develop in SC. Of course, to know this last part is true one would need to actually pattern at distance. I suspect MM did not pattern much, if at all. ""}





Sam, Let's clarify this here:
What you wrote above is absurd and I doubt if you even read the article.

McIntosh's article about open chokes was about "upland bird hunting" for the "average gunner". His audience for this was not us on this forum who are so anal as to analyze every minute detail about shotgunning.
Also, the article was not meant for sporting clays, FITASC, or goose pass shooting.
It was meant for the average upland bird hunter. This is the first thing to keep in mind when reading it.

The average guy, not us, probably shoots with too much choke from lore of years ago.
McIntosh's intent was to educate those folks who handicap themselves with too much choke and not enough skill.
It was also an article written to inform the reader of the technological advances of the shotshell.

Nowhere in the article did he ever say to use cylinder for every shotgunning situation!

Here is an example;
I shoot grouse, and quail over a pointing dog with a 28 gauge Arietta that has no choke, Cyl/Cyl.
It does the job with stone dead kills and no choke.
McIntosh also had a 28 gauge bespoke Arietta he had choked Cyl/.007.
I know because he told me. See, he used some choke ordered in his own gun!

When I was thinking of ordering a 16 he recommended to choke it .004 and .010 for it's intended purpose of pheasant and prairie grouse. He didn't advise to have it open bore and he didn't tell me to go full/full either.


Also Fyi, even though my grouse gun is Cyl/Cyl, my sporting clays Perazzi is fixed choked .023/.023.
However, if I could change chokes, I'd put in cylinder for 35 yard full belly in comers and battues. I'm sure that that would be OK with Michael too!

Vernal.

Based on research and testing that Oberfell and Thompson did, Cyl chokes offer the same performance at 25 yards that modified chokes do at 35 yards and full chokes do at 40 yards (70%). If you are comfortable shooting 40 yard targets (or birds) with a Full choke, then a Cyl choke should work just as well at 25 yards.

Doverham.

Thank you!



Vernal

Vernal,

Did you bother to read my followup post? I made a couple of points. First, I demonstrated that I did read the article. Second, I pointed out that cyl/skeet are not useless. As a matter of fact, the vast majority of upland birds I will ever shoot were taken with a .000 12 ga.

The thread has taken some different turns, some toward target shooting. The two McIntosh illustrations on those pages involved target shooting.

A cylinder 20 ga pattern does not have a sufficient core at even 35 yds for the type of targets McIntosh was describing.

Your last paragraph reveals you do, indeed, understand target presentations. That means you understand the targets he was describing are not suitable for your cyl/cyl grouse gun.

Thanks,

Sam

Sam--Maybe we're reading different articles, but in MM's piece in Shooting Sportsman, he scarcely mentions clay targets--other than saying that flyers are basically useless either on live birds or clays--let alone describing any specific target presentations. And while I agree that cylinder with a standard 20ga 7/8 oz target load is a pretty poor choice for a 35 yard clay, that might well change if the shooter decided to use a 1 oz load, or got really carried away and used a 1 1/8 oz short magnum load of 7 1/2's. Wouldn't be that much difference from shooting the same load through a 12ga with no choke.

Vernal,

Since you have some mystical "insight" to what MM's intent was when he wrote that article, which by the way, was in the Sept.-Oct. 2010 issue of SSM, I am going to include here two inarguable things printed therein.

The title of the article is "More Things We Can Do Without"

and

A quote from the article ........ "An upland hunter can do himself a treat by installing Cylinder bore tubes in both barrels and losing the others".

One question. Do doves, desert quail and wild pheasant fall under the category "upland birds"?

SRH

It seems to me a lot of folks tend to forget there are several degrees of choke between Full Choke & No Choke (Cyl). Several of them are in my opinion much more versatile than either extreme. I am not a writer so can't really say what I would have written if I were, but I don't think I would ever have made the statement MM did.

'Shotguns and Shooting' - Ch 13, 'Practical Chokes', pg 116: "Instead let's take the fact that it does work as a given, and talk here about practical application and the importance of choke to a bird hunter and recreational target shooter" (emphasis added).

Author goes on to exclude rigorous target shooters, and include relatively new shooters. What are they shooting? Hmmmm... His illustrations involve target shooters.

I have a group of kids who are eager to develop shotgun skills. Let's pretend I can choose either of Vernal's 20 ga guns for those 35 yd face-on battues. Which would a good coach select? I mean, let's assume I actually give a crap about whether they develop confidence and skill. The question here: which gun provides the more effective pattern at 35 yds on any target. That's right, I said "any target".

It's not even close.

Now lets talk about that over 50 yd, maybe 1/4 to 1/2 belly showing crosser. .000/.000 with a 7/8 oz 20, eh? "Absurd" is more like it.

Sam

Larry, Pretty much agree. The reason I was successful with my old .000 12 was I fed it 3 dram #7.5 factory traploads. My experience was I was fine on most any live bird presentations to 25 yds, crossers to 30 yds, and incomers to 35 yds. And, as you have noted, most of our shots at game are (or should be) under 35 yds. My issue, above, is that MM was most certainly not talking merely about game shooting, as quoted above.

Am also very aware of Miller's point. We could give MM a small "benefit" here, as we do not know what ("the heck") he meant by "little or no" choke. MM's lack of precision, really, is one of this nitpicker's complaints about his pieces. Obviously, I like him overall - as I've read most of his stuff pretty carefully. Just don't think every piece deserved to be bronzed.

Sam