I always thought that the old American guns were choked pretty tight. Today I was reading a copy of "The Art of Wing Shooting" by William Bruce Leffingwell,1895, he mentions in the chapter titled "Cylinder, Modified Choke, and Full Choke" that... "What is known as an improved cylinder, is in reality a choke in a slight degree......A gun constricted to the extent of five thousanths of an inch is termed a "modified choke"; a full choke is constricted to twenty or thirty thousandths." These are much more open chokes than the old American guns that I've seen.
When did the American gun manufacturers start to make the chokes so much tighter?
And how can we refer to chokes as Cylinder, modified and full anyway? The chokes vary in dimensions so much that what would be skeet to one manufacturer is improved cylinder to another and modified to still another. When we say I shoot skeet with an improved cylinder choke, it doesn't mean much, it could be anything from five thousandths to eighteen thousandths.
What are your thoughts on this?
Pete
