doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Cylinder Choke - Your Thoughts

I took just under 1k scratch phez over years with a Mossberg 500 12 with a cyl choke tube. Later I was able to determine the constriction was, factually, .000. Worked to 25 yds any presentation, out to 35 yds on incomers. Crossers somewhere in the middle.

Most always I used Remington 3 dr #7.5 trap loads. I mention this b/c there is no way to approximate this performance with a subgauge with .000. I tried many different brands. The pattern board tells the story. Mostly, it's about payload and quality of best factory traploads. The rest is efficiency of the larger bore diameter.....I guess.

Have never played with a cyl 16 - maybe that would work. I know my cyl 20 and 28 are not good enough for anything but the 1st week of Oct on WC/grouse. If I use 1 oz B&Ps 20-22 yd shots are a very safe bet. I would never take them out for even planted phez.

However considered as a wordsmith, McIntosh was imprecise. He'd speak of "lightly constricted" as equivalent to "no choke at all" - whatever the heck either of those expressions mean. Well, the difference on paper between 12s with .000 and .005 is greater than the difference between 12s with .025 and .040. I think a 12 with a .005 bbl is very sensible. It's not that I won't get as many birds with a .015 1st bbl. I don't want to burgerize them.

Sam

You are spot on wham you say that the pattern board will tell the story. A 12 bore with open muzzles and properly regulated will throw very even patterns with the right ammo and I have been very surprised by the ranges at which I consistently kill with them.

Hi Monty:

I stumbled on an an old thread about Vena Contracta guns.

http://www.doublegunshop.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=308530

In that thread Daryl links to a GoogleBooks (old) book that had contemporary performance tests of Vena Contracta guns:

http://books.google.com/books?id=inQCAAA...0gun&f=true

Best,

Mike

Wow. The longer I live, the more I learn. Let's see . . . don't know anything about late season pheasants. Hmmm. Lived in Iowa most of my life, averaged 65 wild roosters per year from 1987-2006 (until Iowa bird numbers crashed). Included plenty of late season birds. One season when winter didn't shut us down early, I bagged 49 from Dec 1- Jan 10 (end of the season). And this Jan, with bird numbers lower than they ever have been in Iowa . . . hunted with one other guy Jan 3, for under 2 hours. Cold, strong wind, not the best weather for surviving roosters to hold. We put up 6 roosters, 2 of which were way out of range. The other 4 . . . all within 25 yards. One ended up folding to a longer shot, but only because my partner didn't kill him with the 1st barrel.

As for not knowing anything about spreaders . . . PA24, you're a real genius for sure. So you shoot nothing more open than mod. Well, yeah you do--if you shoot spreaders through your mod. You're opening the choke without reaming it. Amazing that thought never occurred to you. Choke is most accurately determined by pattern % at 40 yards. Shoot your spreaders at 40 yards, count the holes, then come back here and tell us what choke you were REALLY shooting.

Patterning your barrel/s is the only way to tell how it shoots and what choke it is regardless of what it says on the barrel or measures. Plus if you don't reload it means trying more than one shell manufacture to see which shoots best, and also if you reload to find which is the "right load" for your type of hunting or shooting.

As to patterning, I wonder how many know the correct way to do so.

Then you would really be surprised what you could do with the appropriate amount of choke. I say that tongue-in-cheek, Dig, for I feel certain you already know that. There is nothing magic about cylinder, there is nothing magic about choke. Choke will kill cleanly farther than cylinder, period. If your hunting never requires a shot over 25 yards, go with cylinder. My hunting encompasses a much broader range of distances. Cylinder is very limited in it's usage for me.

SRH

Hey, guys.....please keep it civil. This topic reminds me of a pickup stuck in mud and all the tires are spinning but the truck ain't moving. Time to back off and take a breath, smoke a cigar 'n maybe share a drink.

Thanks for the timely reminder, Joe. My above post has been deleted. Sometimes it just ain't worth it.

SRH

Agree that there is nothing magic about cylinder. And I would not go as far as McIntosh did in his article when he stated that choke was something we could "do without".

But I would have written, with firm conviction, that most UPLAND hunters tend to be overchoked rather than underchoked. I believe that's true for three reasons:

1. Most upland game is shot within cylinder or skeet choke range.

2. Therefore, using the more open chokes gives the shooter greater margin for error, while making it less likely the bird will be badly shot up.

3. Finally, it's sad but true that most hunters can't take advantage of tighter chokes, for the simple reason that they can't hit at ranges where modified or tighter chokes are necessary in order to kill cleanly. But those tighter chokes are quite appropriate for the relatively small minority of hunters who can take advantage of them.

"I guess we should add pet pheasant loads to the tenet of common wisdom that one should not criticize another man's wife or dog."
Michael McIntosh, in the Shotgunner's Notebook department of the Dec/Jan 1997-98 issue of Gun Dog magazine.
An article well worth reading for a more nuanced and balanced view of Mr. McIntosh's position on chokes and loads for game.