You still don't get it, Larry. They WON'T get better, at least not to their full potential. Tightening up patterns has proven to work for shooters to improve their shooting. I plateaued at sporting clays until I quit trying to match the choke to the distance and presentation and shot nothing but modified choke at everything. My scores immediately began to improve and I began winning. There is nothing special about my experience. It works universally. There are just entirely too many huntress who are not willing to put in the effort necessary to learn to shoot better, so they use no, or very little, choke as an excuse. Nothing wrong with matching the choke to the game bird and the situation, heck, that's the sensible thing to do. But, don't expect your game shooting to get better by shooting open chokes all the time. Going through lots of shells only takes you so far.
SRH
So Stan . . . that explains why the really good skeet shooters shoot modified chokes? In fact, it only makes sense to match your choke to the TYPICAL shot you're going to take AND are capable of hitting, whether you're talking hunting or target shooting. McIntosh understood quite well--as a fairly well-traveled instructor in Fieldsport's wingshooting schools, and as a participant in a number of hunts involving a broad cross-section of hunters--that most hunters are over-choked. Either for the shots they're getting or for the shots they're capable of making. Or both.
We've previously discussed the "effort" necessary to improve, which--if you're going to shoot very much, and especially if you don't live near any gun clubs, or are maybe limited to trap--can also involve a fair amount of expense. Sometimes I think people with enough money to buy relatively expensive guns and burn a lot of ammo, and with a sporting clays club or two in fairly close proximity, think everyone's in the same boat with them. I sometimes wonder whether a lot of people slept through the last several years' worth of the American economy. Prices have gone up while middle class income has remained stagnant, which means--for a whole lot of people--they're going just as fast or faster than they used to, while falling further behind. At our club in Wausau, if you're a member--and membership is cheap enough that if you shoot very much at all, you're money ahead--you can shoot 100 sporting clays for less than $17. On a typical Monday evening, we probably have 12-15 shooters. Where I lived in Iowa, I had no sporting clays facilities in close proximity. The nearest trap and skeet club was about 25 miles. Which meant that while I shot a fair amount of skeet, most of the SC shooting I did was when I traveled somewhere for a sxs shoot.
Not that much of the above has a lot to do with the use of cylinder by upland hunters, who were McIntosh's target audience in his article. Clearly not aimed--for the umpteenth time--at target shooters. Which you can tell because he doesn't talk about target shooting.
