I took the leap of faith this year and hunted pheasants with a prewar Merkel 200E 12 gauge choked Cyl & IC. I must not be as good as I thought I was because my Drahts brought back a higher percentage of dead birds from the first shot of that Cyl barrel this year then the past few years. I must have been fringing close birds with a tighter choke. I worked up a load for the IC barrel that patterns like a modified.
I believe that I just heard old Bob Brister, standing up in his grave and applauding. From "Shotgunning: The Art and the Science": " . . . I do know that at 25 yards a pure-cylinder barrel will throw one of the deadliest game-getting patterns you ever looked at . . . " If you figure that cyl will pattern 70% at 25 yards, which seems to be pretty much the standard "book" figure, and if you assume that your pattern % decreases by 10% for every additional 5 yards, that still puts you at 60% at 30 yards (same as mod at 40 yards). So if you're shooting something like 1 1/8 oz 6 shot, you ought to have one heck of a deadly pheasant slayer, at least out to 30 yards. And with good dogs in decent pheasant country, you should get quite a few chances at pheasants no farther out than that.
