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

Within this discussion there has been much said about the pattern percentage improvements with "modern" cartridges. This was apparently the gist of the article by MM (haven't read it).

My question is, who has measured the implied differences? And if so how significant are they?

From memory Andrew Jones reckoned that a plastic cup wad delayed the opening up of the pattern by about two yards; which isn't very significant. A BASC study some time back comparing "modern" fibre wad shells to"modern" monowads with the same shot load found no difference at all. The variation from shot to shot was much greater than people imagine, certainly more than two yards worth. Does anyone have any numbers?

On the general premise of open chokes for hunting JEM Ruffer recommended true cylinder and Brit No 7 shot for all game shooting. I don't think he was much of a wood pigeon shooter, when I tried it I put a lot of birds into the bag, but no more than any other combination and as has been said I needed (and had) a good dog. Changing up to quarter choke and No 6 made a significant improvement in birds clean killed. This was over a number of seasons and some thousands of pigeon.

The lesson drawn was the same as others have stated; that the nature of the quarry trumps all theory.

Eug

Mr. Stan
Thank you for sharing your bird season hunting routine.
It sounds like you are enjoying your retirement properly. Hope I'm fortunate enough to do the same in a few years.

Obviously with a 410 a tight choke in required.
In fact I'd say that the choke selection in your game guns are"just right", for you.

Best wishes,

Vernal

Great post Mr. Brown
MM gets accused of just being a writer with no clue as to what he's doing, like Mr. Hoggson intimated.
McIntosh would shoot up to 20,000 shells per year at clay targets in his younger years and probably that much later in life at live birds. And coached hundreds of novice students and studied every aspect of the sport. I'd say that's enough experience for him to know what he was writing about.

Also, Do you think he saw just a few guys show up at a lesson, or attend one of those bird hunting excursions with a full choked model 12 or Parker and struggle to hit anything? It is likely that those shooters were his intended audience, not an experienced gunner who is adept at killing birds with a full choked 410. That is a rare level of skill not shared by many who take to the dove fields on September 1.


Vernal Pike

And to you as well, Vernal. One minor correction, tho'. I ain't retired yet. I still work everyday. I do take a long weekend occasionally to go to a sporting clays tournament. We're taking the Fourth and the rest of this weekend off, and I'm gonna shoot some clays to get ready for a tournament next weekend.

All my best, SRH

Not to mess with this thread; but re-reading this thread this morning I see where I said Michael Murphy when I meant McIntosh! Oh, Wow......I am getting fuzzy! This has been a most interesting thread with some really good opinions.
Again, I am sorry for using the wrong name in my first comment, and to think, McIntosh's writings have been read by me extensively.
Sam Ogle

Wondering if Fox had this choke thing figured out well over a hundred years ago. The early The "standard" chokes for a Sterlingworth Brush were cylinder and modified. Someone figured out even back then with no shot cups that no choke was needed for hunting upland birds in that first barrel. Believe all the "Brush" models came with 26" barrels.

Looking again at the McIntosh article, I don't think his first sentence (assuming the reference is to the "Choke" section of the piece) was an attempt to stir the pot at all. Rather, it was in anticipation of the strong reaction he'd get from those who didn't agree with him. And we can see in this discussion that there's no shortage of people who disagree when it comes to straight cylinder.

But if you're mainly a duck and dove hunter, you're not his target audience anyhow. Pheasant, grouse and woodcock, quail . . . I've already addressed pheasants--which, at least in my experience, require less choke (and, for that matter, lighter loads) than most people use. A lot of people go to South Dakota and end up hunting the birds in very large groups. Group hunts tend to make for longer shots than if it's just a couple of hunters following a good dog or two.

Grouse and woodcock: I doubt anyone who's hunted doodles much would disagree with cylinder for them. But Steve Smith, in an excellent little book called "The Whispering Wings of Autumn", which he and the late Gene Hill did for the Ruffed Grouse Society, refers to the average distance at which he shot woodcock over several seasons: 13 yards for first barrel kills, 19 yards for second barrels. Smith hunts grouse mostly in Michigan. Veteran outdoor writer Nick Sisley hunts them mostly in Pennsylvania--thus covering the two major regions of the country where ruffs are hunted. Smith's average distance to grouse: 22 yards first barrel, 28 yards second. Sisley, reporting on a season in which he bagged 33 grouse while shooting 78% (which he admits was unusual!) gave his average kill distance at 23 yards. That was with a Franchi AL-48 20ga auto with the barrel cut off to remove all choke. Those distances line up well with the range at which we break skeet targets, which should not come as a surprise when we recall that skeet was a game invented as off-season practice by William Harnden Foster and some of his grouse hunting friends.

Quail . . . it's been too long since I've encountered good numbers of wild birds. But I did have a couple good trips to TX, back before the weather went to heck and their birds crashed. While I didn't measure the distance to dead birds, I'd be surprised if I killed many any farther away than 25 yards.

So while not all of us can live without choke for all of our upland hunting, I think quite a few of us can. The Fox Sterlingworth 20ga I plan to use for grouse and woodcock is already quite open, choked close to skeet 1 and 2. And I'll use spreaders in the right barrel to open it even more. Early grouse and woodcock are typically "shoot close or not at all" because they're quickly out of sight in the heavy leaf canopy, and--liking to eat both--I don't want to blow them to pieces.

There is still plenty of shot in the center of a 25 yard cylinder pattern to blow a bird apart.

For me, shooting a two trigger double, cylinder and mod, will do for quail, pheasant, huns, sharptails, and dove.

Gough Thomas / GT Garwood wrote that the plastic shotcup and plastic wad, compared to fiber wad system, had the effect of tightening "one degree of choke" in the tighter chokes. I took that to mean in the English system of 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, and 4/4 chokes that it would make 3/4 choke shoot 4/4 and 1/2 choke shoot like 3/4 and 1/4th choke shoot like 1/2. I have assumed that 4/4 is about 40/1000ths of choke.

The most fun I had shooting decoyed dove last year was with Parker Repro 28ga with 30/1000 and 38/1000 chokes. But I would have been more effective with cylinder and mod.

I have never hunted roughed grouse or woodcock.

When hunting wild pheasant with my Brittanys I would be perfectly happy with cylinder and mod even though the wily bastards will sometimes flush at 40 yards as I am walking up to the point.

For NSTRA field trials I prefer cylinder and mod.

Even though they aren't I consider skeet and cylinder equivilent.

?? "Happy with cylinder and modified, wily bastards sometimes flush at forty yards??" What range do you normally shoot those forty yard flushes with your cylinder barrel?

I love this semi-friendly discussion. . It is probably the longest running debate in the history of firearms. By my reckoning it began around 1875, which means its going on 140 years with no consensus yet! I think the Brits came to the most logical compromise--often one barrel was cylinder and the other full. Offered a little something for everyone. I guess you could average the two and say "well, on the whole it's modified."