Soon after Greener wowed the public with his winning of the 1875 Field trials for choke bored vs cylinder bored guns a large part of the shooting public went mad for choke - the holy grail of being able to pull off long shots and kill at greater range caught the wider imagination and gunmakers were filled with oredrs for the new guns.

After a few years went by it occurred to people that they actually did not shoot most of their game at extreme ranges and a vert tight pattern made them miss more than they hit at normal game ranges. Also, they found they smashed alot of birds at these ranges and spoiled the meat. Nobody likes to see bird explode I the air and nobody wants to eat 'winged pate'.

Tight chokes stayed the norm for wildfowlers wh were likely to be shooting long range more of te time. For game shots an open first barrel and a bit of choke in the second was soon found to do nicely. for walked-up shooting an open first barrel and a tighter choke in teh second gave a good kill at 30 yards as acovey flushed and abetter one at 40 yards when the second going-away shot was taken. Holds true today.

I would not hesitate to open the chokes if that makes the gun work better. The log 'fowling barrels are best left tight in my opnion as theya re good for nothing else but no problem opening the other set so they work for you.

Choke is a personal thing but I like I.C and 1/2 in a game gun (actually I prefer light I.C - say 3 thou of choke, and a bit tighter I.C - say 7 thou of choke, if truth be told for driven birds). your choice I really do not see sensible game borings affecting the value unlesss you take all the choke out of both barrels. Nobody will have any idea what the original chokes were anyway - they could have been anything.

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