Shotgun Chokes

What would you consider to be the best all around shotgun choke for shooting clays and pheasants?

Improved cylinder. I don’t even use any other chokes in my shotguns anymore.

Probably improved. Maybe modified, if you’re shooting a little farther. I’ve got a skeet barrel that helps my odds with the clays.

There’s a lot of different angles to the “what choke” question, but I think the first thing to address is how much does it really matter?

Chokes give you inches. When most shotgunners miss, they miss by distances that are best expressed in feet. So in terms of overall effectiveness, if you’re missing with a full, switching to a modified is highly unlikely to turn misses into hits.

There isn’t really a “best” choke. Chokes are horses for courses, in other words the best depends on the situation.

Back in the stone age, which as most know was before 1980, dinosaurs and fixed chokes roamed the Earth. So the question of “which choke” was an important one because whatever gun you bought came with a fixed choke barrel, so you had to buy the best compromise you could. Most people settled on modified or full, unless they had very specialized designs for the shotgun such as skeet shooting.

Fast forward to modern day, and it’s the rare, rarest of things for a new shotgun NOT to have screw in chokes, so now we have choices. Weather or not most of us benefit from these choices is debatable. My father at the age of 72 effortlessly outshoots almost anyone who is not a competitive clays shooter. He does so with a 60 year old 16 gauge with a fixed modified barrel.

He may be the last of era in terms of men who learned to shoot birds by shooting birds, as he never shot at a clay pigeon until he was over 18. He shoots with an ease that, to be honest, I find almost annoying. Many times he has patiently let me empty my gun at a flushed bird and after I’ve gone 3 and out, he picks it off at the 40 yard line with a single shot from the 16. He, IMO, perfectly demonstrates the point of how much does choke really matter.

Not that this is right, but here’s what I use:

– Anything that tends to fly directly away from me. Trap shooting, pheasants, etc, I use modified or in a double gun I use modified in the first tube and full in the second. It should be noted the I’m not a “real” trap shooter, this is a highly specialized game that has its own demands. I’m referring to informal clay shooting with consumer-grade trap speeds.

On very windy days I will switch to full because the pheasants especially get downrange so much quicker with the wind.

– Close quarters and crossing shots. Grouse, woodcock, snipe, I use IC. Also I use this for clays if shooting a lot of crossing shots skeet style.

– Anything high, fast, and far. Waterfowl, windy day pheasants, pigeon, etc. Full.

– Predators or turkey – Full or specialized extra full.

Grouse

As I crawled off the back of a dinosaur and bought my first shotgun, it was a 28″ full choke on a Rem 870 3″. That is what i learned to shoot with and use it for mostly everything. I have a inherited Ithaca single shot break action with an IC. Fun grouse gun in thick cover. Not because of the choke, but its tiny and easily handled in thick crap.

The only shot gun that I have noticed a huge difference in is an OLD Harrington 10 gage. It has a 30 or 32″ barrel (Full) and we can swat crippled divers at 75+ yrds with it. Shooting gees at 30 yrds is like hitting them with a 7mm RUM

I’ve got both my 12ga and my 20ga with modified. I bring the other tubes with me, but I can’t remember the last time I changed them from modified.

the one that patterns the best. I have always shot a modified choke out of my 870 and have always struggled as a wing shot. This year I finally took my gun to a patterning board and was increadibly surprised at what I found out. My gun absolutely HATES a modified choke, I had less that 30% of the pellets in 4 different loads in a 20″ circle at 20 yards (not the most accurate distance or target size for patterning I know but I had to use what I had.). Where with an improved I went to 75% and a full to 80%.

suzuki wrote:

Improved cylinder. I don’t even use any other chokes in my shotguns anymore.

agree I don’t think you can go wrong with improved cylinder. That was really interesting scmelik and I am going to bring some cardboard out with me when we go pheasant hunting and see what pattern I get.

tomr wrote:

agree I don’t think you can go wrong with improved cylinder. That was really interesting scmelik and I am going to bring some cardboard out with me when we go pheasant hunting and see what pattern I get.

i was surprised as hell about it. I am still not a good shot but when I hamstring myself by shooting a terrible pattern out there then it makes it even worse. I went out goose hunting one day this season and I went 6-9 and was shooting a full choke so apparently there is something to it.