doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com To open chokes or leave them be?

Open her up and shoot the heck out if it. No point choked too tight to serve your needs.

Why not go with CYL/LM? Seems perfect for what you do and you have plenty of other shotgun options anyway.

Leave it alone.
JR

It's not as if you are painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa by opening up a $600 shotgun. It's a lot easier to hit birds inside 30-35 yards with an open choke than it is with what's in it already.

Might be best to just open them up and not tell us about it. This always strirs up those who feel original specs are not to be altered. The term "don't ask, don't tell" originated on a BBS like this one over a question like this. Not about gays in the service but altering barrel chokes or renewing case color. Original is everything to them.

I had a friend who was a retired two star general who was in favor of both females and gays in both the military and combat. He said that way he could say ladies first and not catch PC hell. He is extended female status to Gays as well. He never got into PC speak much. Hell of a guy to drink with while waiting for a big rock fish to bite.

Truth is that every gun maker would give you what ever you asked for and paid for. They choked 90% as M and F as a default setting. Not some complex reason. Any maker would open your chokes up if you returned it back to them. I've seen several high dollar Trap guns which had been opened up and had the Full crossed out and Factory Mod marking applied right under it. I had a Ithaca which had started out as 4&4 which were Full and Full but was returned to Ithaca where they opened it up to 0&4 and choke mark has been changed as well. I think it cost $3-4 to do that and about the same to change the front bead. Could not have been much more than that. My uncle was on the frugal side.

I have a sorta unusual approach for a Full-Mod 32" gun that recently moved in and took over. I had Toby refurbish a Woodward BLE pigeon gun with a thin, cut-to-26" barrel. My specs were for a spootin' clays piece. Toby did his usual fab job. Recently, I have been shooting more skeet than SC and I wanted to practice with this gun. So, I started feeding it 3/4 oz loads and thinking of it as a 28 bore. I confess I can shoot a wee bit higher scores with a M-21 Skeet 26", but when I do my part the JW makes impressive smoke balls of clays. This is fun shooting.

DDA

Back in the day when M/F was standard fare there weren't any plastic shot cups to make guns shoot tighter than they do now with plastic shot cups. Gil

I understand Larry. I wasn't thinking to start hunting something that's of no interest, but a few boxes of expensive nontox could easily be covered under the cost of barrel work.

There have been threads about the slick shooting honeymoon period with a new gun. What if a little bit of shooting with it loses some of that head over heels feeling? I'm still not opposed to the barrel work, but I don't know if it's always a good idea. There's a bunch of other choices to reach for.

Easier to hit them, perhaps. Kill them outright? Not so much.

But PLEASE mark the barrels after they are rechoked. I would not be interested in a gun that is opened up like that - not because of collector value. It just doesn't suit my hunting.

I've given some more thought to the matter, and decided that I already have a beautiful 1905 Lefever I Grade at Rod Gate's getting the chokes opened from modified and full to skeet and tight improved cylinder.

I think I'll leave my Benardelli alone, until I get the Lefever back, and shoot that awhile and see how I like those chokes.

My Bernardelli was never intended to be a target gun. It was made to shoot ducks and pheasants and long range birds with. It tosses round, even, tight patterns the way it is now.

Maybe it's good to keep one light game gun, with tight chokes, to go squirrel hunting or dove hunting with.

When you have a bushytail in the top of an big oak tree, or doves whistling around over a harvested field, no choke is too tight.

Besides, I've been wanting to try out Polywads, anyway.

My factory spreader loads are hot and nasty, and it might be fun to load a bunch of spreaders to shoot skeet with.

I just hate leaving a perfectly good gun, alone, and not trying to improve it.

But then again, I hate to mess with a perfectly good gun, and take the chance of messing up something that's good to start with.

I guess that's why I keep accumulating all those old shotguns.