Are they really necessary on hunting guns? The purpose of the rib is sight plane, but if the gun fits and wing shooting is it really necessary?

Just my opinion, but if you see much more than the bead, you're not focusing enough on the target. I also have always believed the purpose of a vented rib was to disperse the heatwaves from a hot barrel to the sides so as not to obscure the bead and target. That is not usually a problem, or at least I have never experienced it.

Champion shooter Matt Dryke advises focusing so intently on the clay that you can see the ridges on it. That seems to be the opinion of other experts as well.

Add the biological fact that our eyes cannot hard focus at more than one distance at a time and the conclusion is obvious.

No, top ribs are not necessary for good shooting. They can, however, make it easier to "come by", and IMO a top rib can help raise that level of skill with a gun. I believe that gun fit is important to achieving our best level of shooting with a particular gun. However, only a minuscule percentage of casual hunters and shooters will go to the trouble to fit their gun to them. Some will try to get the LOP pretty close and leave it at that. Cast and drop, among other things, will be left as is. The shooter will begin to shoot the gun with less than ideal dimensions. As he gets used to the gun's mount he will look down the barrel to check alignment, left to right. In the worst case scenario, the shooter will involuntarily check that alignment as he mounts on a bird, which guarantees a miss behind. The human body being the wonderfully adaptable mechanism that it is, he will make slight adjustments to his mount to get the gun to have the proper alignment when mounted. Muscle memory aids in this, and eventually the shooter will be able to mount the gun in a way that allows him to hit with a reasonable percentage. This will not be the ideal scenario, but it is what I've found to be the case in the majority of casual shooters I've known.

Where the rib comes into play in all this is that it delineates proper eye alignment quickly and readily, much easier than a bare barrel with a bead on the end. I began shooting flying things as a kid, with a S X S with a rib. When I was given a 1100 for my 16th b'day it had a plain barrel. I shot it well, because I was able to shoot so much that I overcame any ill-fit by adapting to it. But, as good as I got with it on doves and quail I never reached my best level of ability until I began shooting guns with top ribs. I not only prefer a barrel with a top rib, I prefer a wide top rib.

Back to the beginning ........ I believe the best shooting one could do with a ribless barrel would be vastly improved by proper gun fit. But, few people will have that done. There's not much chance of me getting "interested" in ribless shotguns. There are too many beautifully made guns with ribs for me to change horses in the middle of the stream.

jOe say....

Oppions are like A holes everyone has one....in reality only your opinion matters.

Thanks guys, I recently saw the Perazzi ribless game gun and really like the looks of it. Beretta has a few as well. It got me thinking about it. Thanks for your input.

It's also a biological fact that from a distance of about 25 feet and beyond the human eye is already focused at infinity. Therefore, it makes absolutely zero difference if the target is 20 yards, 40 yards or or even farther away. There is nothing, I repeat, nothing that one can do to change the eyes focus beyond this point. One can look very intently at the target and concentrate very hard on the target( mistakenly termed focus ) but you cannot change the focus of the eye that has already automatically been performed by your brain and eyes. This assumes one has normal vision or is corrected to normal vision....emmetropia.

I think an O/U without a top rib (even a solid one), just looks incomplete . . . of course that's just personal preference. I would also rather have a little extra weight on the barrel end via a rib as opposed to doing it via a longer barrel, but that's just the personal preference of someone who seems to make too many shots from deep in the bowels of a tag alder swamp.