doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Miroku OU for ducks: Open up chokes or tube it?

I recently bought a virtually unfired three-inch Charles Daly/Miroku 12 gauge O/U at my local gunshop for a really good price and decided I'd turn it into one of my duck guns. Figured it'd be cheaper and prettier than the Benelli everyone is always trying to get me to buy. The 28-inch barrels are choked full over improved modified right now. Obviously too tight for steel, so I'm debating either having the chokes opened up to I/C and modified or sending it off to have tubes installed (I think there's plenty of wall thickness there).
My question is for all the guys out there who duck hunt with older guns. What has been your experience as to which option you preferred? Any advantages really to one or the other? Having the chokes opened up would, of course, be cheaper, and there's not much that IC and Mod can't sufficiently cover for other bird hunting. I have a Beretta BL-5 12 with Briley thinwalls and quite frankly, I pretty much always keep the IC and Mod tubes in anyway.
On the other hand, I suppose with tubes you have a little more flexibility in playing around with different tubes to see which ones pattern better.

Any thoughts?

I'd leave it as is, and shoot TM or Bi.

I don't like tubes in old doubles, but that doesn't apply to your Miroku. If you like tubes, it makes the gun more flexible, as you said. The chokes on my Miroku sxs were opened from M&F to IC and Mod and work just fine with steel (which shoots tighter anyway). With lead, the gun is just right for doves. My vote on your gun,if I had one, would be to just open the fixed chokes...Geo

Nice buy! I think a lot of those old Mirokus. There's good arguments for both sides of the choke deal but I found the financial one compelling; I just opened the fixed chokes.

Thanks for the info so far. I don't have any practical experience with the old Daly Mirokus, but I really like this gun. It's a superior grade with not-half-bad wood and engraving. All my Benelli-toting friends rolled their eyes at my plans to make it a duck gun, but the $1,000 I saved over the price of a new Benelli SBEII will buy me a lot of shells and decoys.

+1

Just how many ducks are you going to eat any way ?

The money spent on screwed chokes would buy alot of Tunsten or Bismuth.

I would suggest that you do the choke tubes and the reasoning is that you may then use 'extended' chokes and by doing so will keep the constriction external to the bbls. My thot being only that I have seen several Belgian & German doubles that have been damaged in their choke areas [ringed] presumably by the use of steel shot.

And FWIW, my own pattern testing showed that you DO need choke for steel shot, or said another way the tightest patterns at 40 yards were produced using full chokes. That was with Remington, Federal & Winchester factory steel loads in shot sizes 3 & 4 and payloads up to 1.25 oz.

Here's the problem... the gun is tightly choked now, and the only pellet that really responds to open choke is TM. If you want an open choked duck gun for some reason (like you have the worlds best decoy spread, are a good caller, and have a private pond with no other blinds), then boring it out and spending $1.40/shell on TM is the perfect plan.

If you shoot ducks like most of us do (30 yards is a close shot, and a duck looks real big that close in), then leave the chokes as is and use TM anyway.

Steel through even a cylinder choke shoots at least a modified pattern, so the $500 choking job won't get you a much wider pattern - unless you feed it Tungsten Matrix.

500 bucks will pay the difference between two flats of steel and TM. 500 trigger pulls.

Your choice of course, since you know your hunting situation. I'd love to have the problem of ducks too close...

Isn't the Miruko just like the SKB's and the BSS... suseptable to ringing with steel. (Per Tom Roster's writings?

Jerry

You won't get ring-bulges with steel if you are not choked too tight, don't use very large shot (T or F) and don't have screw-ins. .020 has always been safe for me, but go with IC/LM if you want to be safe.

I don't like screw-ins in a hunting gun unless you just have to have a whole lot of flexibility, like "I want to hunt ruffs one day and pass-shoot ducks and geese the next."

If it was just going to be a duck gun and I wanted to shoot steel, I'd just have the chokes opened up to IC/LM.

If Tom Roster says that the BSS (a Miroku) can get ring bulges, then I think the screw chokes are a good thing. Hopefully there's enough meat to install standard tubes.

Any gun can get ring bulges if you shoot steel and:

- large enough shot;
- large enough loads;
- hot enough loads;
- wads with thin enough petals; and
- the gun has tight enough chokes.

And, of course, the less wall-thickness you have in the choke section of the barrels, the more likely you are to have a problem.

Screw chokes bring on a whole array of possible problems. They get stuck, they come loose and let gas get behind them, bulging the barrel. They get lost or bent out of round. It is true that all these problems are the result of mishandling, but I would say the same thing about shooting steel in a fixed choked barrel -- do it right and you will not have a problem.

P.S. That doesn't mean I recommend steel. It kills fine but is bad about breaking molars.

I shot a SxS Miroku for years with .010 and .020 with mostly steel BBs and #3s. Totaly unaffected.

Those are chome bores, right? Wouldn't that make it more problematical to just open up? I have one too and put tubes in it. Other than the factory boring, they are really good 'fowlers.

I'm with Shotgunjones and Postoak. I'd just go the TM and bismuth route. You'll get great performance - particularly from the TM - and I'll bet you net out in the black.

I purchased some Kent Tungsten-Matrix last week for $167 per hundred, and was informed (by Ballistic Products) that when their current supply runs out, the cost will be $310 per hundred, plus shipping.

After this season, I think I'll just maybe going back to steel shot. It just might be the time to boycott these non-toxic prices, as it just should not cost that much.