I think you hit the nail on the head with the last sentence of your penultimate paragraph. Soft lead of inconsistent and poor quality, with felt and cardboard wads, meant that shooters and gun companies favored chokes that are overly tight by modern standards.
Even today, Remington Gun Club loads (which are better than the cheapest promo loads) have been shown to pattern with 5-10% less density at a given range than premium hard shot target loads (like Remington STS or Nitro 27s). I can only imagine that 120 year old shell technology would also give up at least another 10% in density.
So to achieve a full choke pattern (70% of shot within 30” circle at 40 yards), but with shells that would throw a 50% pattern (an Improved Cylinder pattern) in a modern gun that normally gets 70% pattern, they had to greatly tighten down the choke.
Or, it could just be that choke boring was relatively new and they accidentally specified it too tight.
Last edited by crazyquik; 02/19/19 06:42 AM.
