doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Mike Orlen...Businessman of the Year

I'm sure Mike Orlen is a great businessman and does great work. The chances of my ever using his services, grinding metal out of shotgun barrels, is about one in ten million.

Me too- I like tight chokes and 12 and 12 ga. 3" loads- and what the factory lads (shades of Master barrel man Burt Becker) put in back "in the day" works for me- I just use Poly-Wad spreaders for the first barrel over pointing dogs on game birds, and Hevi-Shot No. 4 for Classic Doubles in my Smith/Parker 12's when hunting waterfowl. And choke tubes- well I'm not a Clays Man-I'm a pass shooter on Tower released birds (fezzants and pigeons) also on Geese and sometimes mallards too- I like what my gunning Hero, T. nash Buckingham said- about big guns and taking tall birds and seeing them crumple up above- and Nash shot a 98/100 on skeet at the CampFire Club nack in 1929- with his first Becker masterpiece BoWhoopie" both 11 ga. barrels tighter than a Nun's purse- I'll betcha those clays were "dust in da wind" too-

Not all of us are good enough shots to just shoot full choke. Those of us that are, don't always like to make mincemeat of pointed game birds or decoying waterfowl. There's certainly a place for the tight patterns, like Fox said for pass shooting or turkey huntin' or something, but especially with modern shotshells, open chokes can make better game shots of all of us. Spreaders are ok in tight guns, but only effective at very short range in my experience.

Soon as I round up an appropriate box, I'm sending Mr. Orlen a full choke barrell from a Remington model 31 pump to drill out to IC, and a set of Scott sewer-pipe barrels to do whatever he can with and hopefully wind up with IC and Mod...Geo

The tighter the choke the lighter the game bag.

JC

I'll call bullshit on that one.

That's what I want to do. Go out and buy a good duck gun, remove the chokes and shoot quail with it. Next day I'll go out and buy a great quail gun, install screw in chokes, and shoot steel shot at long range ducks with it. After spending hundreds of dollars in guns, shipping, insurance, and gunsmith bills, I have two guns that are worth quite a bit less than when I bought them. What's wrong with this picture? The weirder thing is that about 99% of Mike's customers have a half a dozen guns in the safe with the very chokes he is grinding into the customer's barrels. I'm sure there is something in Mike's quiver for me, but it isn't screw in choke installation or grinding metal out of my shotgun barrels.

eightbore, the problem is, a 20ga Sterlingworth ain't a duck gun. And a whole bunch of them came choked pretty darned tight, in part at least because the ammo back then didn't pattern as tight as do today's shells with plastic wads etc. And since they didn't mark chokes on Foxes, either under Ansley or under Savage, who's to know--unless you track down a factory letter--what the original chokes were?

A lot of people here buy guns to USE, "100% original condition" be hanged. If the stock's too short, put on a pad. Too low, get it bent. Chokes too tight, get them opened. I'd be one of those people. I have a pair of Brit 12's, Army & Navy, by Webley & Scott. Still in original proof, and that part's fine. But the #2 gun came with .040 choke in the L barrel. I don't mind it being a little tighter than the #1 gun, which is choked 005/015, but when I shoot a 35 yard pattern and get like 90% of the pellets in the 30" circle, I ask myself to what purpose I would put that much choke. So I had it opened to .025, which for me is plenty tight for late season pheasants, and since it ain't a turkey gun, that's great. And since the Brits didn't mark choke constriction either, who cares?