Many competition shooters of skeet, trap and sporting clays have forcing cones lengthened in their competition guns in an effort to improve patterning and decrease perceived recoil. Personally, I have always stayed away from this with my guns because I believe it harms value, but more importantly I feel it may reduce bridge pressure, thus allowing some gases to escape around the wad, thusly reducing a guns ability to 'shoot hard'. In pigeon shooting, the guns that have lengthened forcing cones seem to be 'feather blowers' and don't seem to kill as well as guns with tight forcing cones. I have no scientific evidence to base this on, just empirical observation. Does anyone know of any scientific evidence which proves the theory that lengthening forcing cones is a BAD idea? or, conversely a GOOD idea?
