Cylinder is very useful for a lot of upland hunting over good dogs. Quail as well as grouse and woodcock (you may need more for late season grouse) come to mind. First barrel for pheasants . . . Dave, I agree that you don't need much choke--again, with good dogs--unless you're hunting birds that are unusually spooky. Cylinder is likely OK even for prairie grouse, early in the season. Later, when they're mostly in big bunches and hard to approach, you do need more.
Cylinder won't do everything, for sure, but it will do a lot. The late Bob Brister was clearly a fan: " . . . I do know that at 25 yards, a pure-cylinder barrel will throw one of the deadliest game-getting patterns you ever looked at, more efficient at that yardage than a full-choke barrel at 50 yards."
Re Lord Ripon, back in his day, driven birds were not long-range targets. (Nor are they today, unless you go to one of the places that specializes in ultra-high birds.) I had the pleasure of shooting driven next to a gentleman who was a very fine shot. He was shooting a long-barreled OU (more and more common these days on driven shoots). I asked him what chokes he was using. "Hardly any," he replied. Where I've shot driven, a 40 yard bird is unusually high, and you're a real hero if you make many of those shots. Most birds are well within 30 yards. They're challenging for most of us on this side of the pond (maybe less so for guys who do more dove and/or waterfowl shooting) because we're not used to that kind of shooting at pheasants. And the red grouse of Scotland and northern England are, in general, even lower. They're difficult for reasons other than range.
