doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Choke in a Bird Gun

One of my grouse and woodcock guns a 26" 16 gauge PH Parker is choked cylinder/right and full/left just like it left Meriden....perfect.

I have a 20 gauge, 28" barrels, Winchester M 23 choked IC/IM. It is excellent for pheasants, dove and quail. Would also made an excellent grouse gun.

Last year I bought a high grade english boxlock SxS made by Edwinson Green. It appears to have been factory bored CYLINDER and FULL. Not a bad combo for upland birds....

I would never have ordered a SxS choked in this manner, but am surprisingly pleased with it.

JERRY

Joe:
The pages I have from Army & Navy (three years of small bores) show almost all the guns were cyl in the right barrel. Not sure on 12 bores.

My grouse gun is a 16 and choked .001 and .011 and I would say it is a great choice for the gray ghosts. Buzz if the shot is over 25 yards then you are probably hunting in cover that is too open. Late in the season, from time to time, I will see a shot over 25 yards and then I use the back trigger. That's whey they give you two.

If your barrels are oriented the other way with a single trigger then you have created your own monster.

Give me at least some choke. I've shot quail, doves, ducks and woodcock for over 50 years and I've got no use for a cylinder bored gun. I am not saying I couldn't kill a lot of quail or doves with one, or even woodies coming into a beaver pond at first light, but, for me it is not the best thing for the job.

Never hunted grouse but, if he is right and 23 yards is the average, then, by definition, average means there were some longer shots. Maybe a few much longer. Nothing is as frustrating to me as being afield in a situation where choke is needed and not having any. I have no problem biding my time on a covey rise and letting the quail get far enough out for a IC to do it's thing, and it'll knock down one a whole lot further out than a cylinder. I despise seeing a quail drop a leg, because he wasn't hit hard enough, but fly so far that he is probably lost.

I took McIntosh's opinion to task years ago when he wrote that, and I still strongly disagree today.

SRH

I read something by a fellow that makes cast bullets, not that that has much to do with shotguns, but he was saying he uses cylinder choke with great effect, then said he used 1&1/4oz shot. So on those effective open choke guns for grouse and woodcock- how much shot are you throwing? Thanks

Like Dave's 16ga Parker, mine's Cyl/Full from Meriden and, as others said, I would never have ordered one with those chokes but they have served me well in the field and blind over decoys. My son made a 35-40-yard shot on a black duck 30 years ago with the right barrel that still has me scratching my head. On his first hunt, too.

Isn't the answer affected to some degree by what you are shooting - 1 1/8 oz from a 12 ga provides a lot more pattern density for a Cyl choke than a 3/4 oz from 28 ga.

Anybody making their way through Sporting Shotgun Performance by Dr. AC Jones? Being neither a statistician nor an inveterate pattern tester, I am finding it heavy going at times but it seems to challenge some widely held beliefs about what happens after the trigger is pulled. In Chap. 16, the author looks at optimal chokes for skeet. His tests for pattern diameters for Cyl, Skeet and IC chokes at 23 yards indicate that the average pattern diameter for Cyl choke is only 2" wider than Skeet (ie only 1" on each side). The variation in diameters for the Cyl and Skeet patterns used for the average was 4" - in other words, in some instances the Cyl choke threw a pattern that was tighter than the Skeet choke and in some instances the skeet choke threw patterns that were more open than the Cyl pattern. This would suggest that, shot to shot, the difference between Cyl and Skeet chokes at 23 yards is not meaningful.

He also concludes that when balancing the need for wider patterns for close targets (17 yards) with the need for downrange pattern density for the longer shots (27 yards) the skeet choke is the best compromise.

I have three smallbore Syracuse ejector Lefevers with 26" barrels and all are choked right cylinder and left barrels full. Bobby

I have no use for cylinder choked guns.

The only cylinder choked gun I own I had fitted with 20 ga. Briley tubes. For hunting dove, duck and turkey I keep an Improved modified choke in both barrels.