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

This may have been posted here before, but Terry Wieland and Gil/Vicki Ash put together a very interesting graphic display of how various chokes perform at various distances. My takeaway was the two most versatile chokes for most upland game scenarios were SK/MOD.
Choke Performance

Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey was an ardent defender of cylinder bored barrels, but his comments were primarily directed to incoming driven birds.

Cylinder Barrels

This is picking nits but I have shot more game and clay targets with a 16 gauge Fox choked Skeet 1 and 2 chokes than any other combination but when I start getting sloppy on quail I go back to a full choked Savage 220 .410 single. Gets me back on track quickly.

I read that article by Michael McIntosh and I tried shooting long stationary targets with cylinder chokes.
After that I took anything that Michael McIntosh said with a grain of salt.
Just check and see how many trap shooters use cylinder chokes for their relatively short trap targets.
If you have any doubts try it yourself.
Pete

I find that I do better on a skeet course with full choke than I do on a distance challenging clays course with cylinder chokes. I definitely prefer a little choke in my gun

Depends on what kind of shooting we're talking about. Here's what Bob Brister had to say about cylinder in "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, more efficient at that yardage than a full-choke barrel at 50 yards." In fact, if you look at pattern percentages listed for various chokes at various distances, cylinder is typically credited with 70% at 25 yards--which is, of course, the full choke standard at 40 yards.

If we're talking upland hunting, most birds are shot--not shot AT, but killed or knocked down and retrieved--within that 25 yard range, or not much farther. Which makes it a very useful choke for upland hunters. And the fact cylinder opens quickly helps make up for aiming errors average shooters might make at close range with tighter chokes. Or badly mangled birds, if they center them too close with too much choke.

To properly engage targets beyond 25 yards with predictable efficiency, especially live birds which require multiple pellet hits to humanely kill, choke constriction is required. Yes you can regularly bust clay, but not when the difference between winning and losing on a clays range is one or two targets.

Cylinder chip breaks will cheat you of the practice that should result from consistent move, mount, shoot. It will give you false confidence.

Yes close skeet targets can be taken, but even great and skilled skeet shooters use some choke.

I shoot the same choke on clays as on birds which is 5 & 15 points of constriction, that has worked well for me. You must find what works best for the type of shooting you most often do. This includes matching the load speed even when you change from one weight of load to another ( say 7/8 to 1 oz) . I find that the key to success is to pick out a velocity, say 1150 FPS ( i know one shooter who fires 1300 at everything) then stay with that load speed and choke for a while.

Your brain and body develop muscle and brain memory from consistency that will do far more than playing with opening the choke.

This will help your shooting more than spreading the pattern for cheap, but inconsistent target success.

Cylinder guns killed a great deal of game before choked weapons supplanted them. Our forefathers figured out choke was better than choke, they were right.

McIntosh got paid by the word.

So did the late Charley Waterman, at least by Ed Gray when he ran GSJ--

Yeah, but I am a pass shooter- tower birds, storied Limey Shotgun Meister George Digweed how his 12 bore Perrazi O/U is choked. I'll bet you a pint and the Ballz and Bullcocks Pub that the old weed-digger prefers tight chokes- you don't crumble crows and wood pigeons at extreme yardage as he does with ease- with cylinder boring- None of my 12 bores, whether M12's or side-by-doubles, have anything more open than a Mod.--

First, cylinder is not choke. It is the absence of it.

Second, Anybody who champions cylinder for all wingshooting should join me on a late season dove field. They will be quickly embarrassed, and/or go home empty handed.

Third, McIntosh loved to stir the pot. Not for one second do I believe he really thought that. I challenged his statement on this very board, where he used to post occasionally, right after he wrote that, and he vanished. He never came back and posted again. I didn't want that at all, I wanted him to discuss it and provide evidence for his postulation. I guess he knew he couldn't.

Lastly, the ONLY place a cylinder is appropriate for me is shooting woodies in a tight little beaver pond at first light with steel shot. Any shot there over 25 yards is through the trees and can't be taken anyway, and steel will pattern much tighter than lead out of a cylinder barrel.

It was, and is, an obscenely irrational statement, IMO. I lost a lot of respect for him as a writer when he "said" that.

SRH