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Can anyone explain the difference between the different makes /types o


ChrisAsh
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Often wonered about the reason for so many different makes or styles of chokes like Optima, Invector, invector plus, teague and so on

 

Why do people buy specialist makers chokes rather than use the ones supplied by the gun maker

 

If you brought say 10 different makes of 28gram no7.5 cartridges, then patterned them using the same gun choke etx would you find any real difference in the patterns

 

If non gun makers sell expensive chokes people assume are better in their pattern, then why cannot the gun makers make better chokes

 

Phew that will do for now, all I ever wanted to know

Edited by ChrisAsh
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Makers don't all have the same bore dimensions, so a standard choke would not be viable. Some favour the thread at on end, whereas others favour the other end.

 

Long chokes, short chokes - each will claim to give better patterns.

 

When Nigel Teague started making his own chokes, I believe a number of makers started to improve their own factory chokes.

 

You can get a bit carried away. Unless you pattern every type of choke, with every shell you are going to use, you won't have a genuine idea how each will perform.

 

Coloured chokes seem a gimmick, but ported chokes are, in my opinion, more trouble than they are worth. No benefit and a pain to clean.

 

I have a Teague multi-choked gun, but use another - same make, but fixed choke - choked 3/8 and 3/8 - with the chokes regulated by Nigel Teague.

 

I would stick with one set of chokes and a shell I was happy with.

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A bit of an old fashioned guy me if more folk looked at there technique and less at what choke, cartridge, many would get on better

 

I do believe the old maxim fishing tackle is designed to catch anglers not fish.

 

But its a free country and you should spend your money as you wish.

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When I first regularly started shotgun shooting I only shot clays and being somewhat green bought a fixed choke 1/4 and 1/2 Beretta game gun and joined a local clay ground where I quickly learned to believe that if I bought a multi choke I would be as good a shot as the others, so I bought a multi choke.

Over the years I have spent much money in that elusive game of pursuit of the perfect choke and gun combination which would short cut me to becoming the great shot I wanted to be. They don't exist.

In the meantime I went out and did a lot of shooting; clays, pigeons, pheasants, crows, rabbits, hares, woodcock, ducks, geese and all manner of legal quarry.

It took me some time to realise that as my shooting improved, I found 1/4 or 1/2 were more than capable of cleanly killing the vast majority of targets I encountered, and then realised my improvement had nothing to do with the chokes.

1/2 and 1/4 will do for any legal quarry I pursue. Bolting rabbits will roll head over heels dead after being hit upfront with 32 grm of 6 shot, even at distance, as will pigeons and crows, and pheasants will drop out of the sky dead with 28grm of 7 shot through the same choke.

I prefer decoying with full choke simply because I can get good kills at distance, but my game gun is choked to the same configuration as my first gun was all those years ago when I believed I was at a disadvantage. I wasn't; I just hadn't learned to shoot.

Practice good technique and buy good quality cartridges and forget about choke. Unless you're shooting at extreme ends of the same spectrum, if you miss, it wont be because you have in the wrong choke.

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When I first regularly started shotgun shooting I only shot clays and being somewhat green bought a fixed choke 1/4 and 1/2 Beretta game gun and joined a local clay ground where I quickly learned to believe that if I bought a multi choke I would be as good a shot as the others, so I bought a multi choke.

Over the years I have spent much money in that elusive game of pursuit of the perfect choke and gun combination which would short cut me to becoming the great shot I wanted to be. They don't exist.

In the meantime I went out and did a lot of shooting; clays, pigeons, pheasants, crows, rabbits, hares, woodcock, ducks, geese and all manner of legal quarry.

It took me some time to realise that as my shooting improved, I found 1/4 or 1/2 were more than capable of cleanly killing the vast majority of targets I encountered, and then realised my improvement had nothing to do with the chokes.

1/2 and 1/4 will do for any legal quarry I pursue. Bolting rabbits will roll head over heels dead after being hit upfront with 32 grm of 6 shot, even at distance, as will pigeons and crows, and pheasants will drop out of the sky dead with 28grm of 7 shot through the same choke.

I prefer decoying with full choke simply because I can get good kills at distance, but my game gun is choked to the same configuration as my first gun was all those years ago when I believed I was at a disadvantage. I wasn't; I just hadn't learned to shoot.

Practice good technique and buy good quality cartridges and forget about choke. Unless you're shooting at extreme ends of the same spectrum, if you miss, it wont be because you have in the wrong choke.

This should be a stickie.

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Oh how I agree . A good example is as follows .A customer of mine owned a lot of guns ,a gun for this a gun for that etc.etc. He always was and still is a fanatical record keeper and can look up every shooting day he has had for the last 45 years , where ,when who was there the bag and how many cartridges he used .

About 10 years ago for one reason or another he bought a Beretta 20 bore 28" and had me alter the stock and bore the chokes to 1/4 and 1/2 . He has shot that gun and another bought to pair it almost exclusively since then and was surprised that his cartridge to kill rate had increased by over 10% ,largely because he has stuck to one gun and one gun only .

Giving advice to a novice shooter I always say use 1/4 and 1/2 choke and one brand of cartridge until you have shot enough to be able to tell the difference .

Too many people are swayed by articles in mags and glossy adverts , offering things that make you shoot better yet I hear little talk of technique , mount and stance and dare I say it shooting ability .

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Many years ago I bought an old side by side gun for general use . It was the only gun I could afford at the time and it was used for every thing . The gun was bored half and full and I got used to it very quickly and shot very well with it . After a couple of years use I decided to part exchange it for my first over and under. When I took it into the gun shop the RFD measured the chokes and they were in fact cylinder and improved cylinder . So much for worrying about chokes .

 

Harnser

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When I first regularly started shotgun shooting I only shot clays and being somewhat green bought a fixed choke 1/4 and 1/2 Beretta game gun and joined a local clay ground where I quickly learned to believe that if I bought a multi choke I would be as good a shot as the others, so I bought a multi choke.

Over the years I have spent much money in that elusive game of pursuit of the perfect choke and gun combination which would short cut me to becoming the great shot I wanted to be. They don't exist.

In the meantime I went out and did a lot of shooting; clays, pigeons, pheasants, crows, rabbits, hares, woodcock, ducks, geese and all manner of legal quarry.

It took me some time to realise that as my shooting improved, I found 1/4 or 1/2 were more than capable of cleanly killing the vast majority of targets I encountered, and then realised my improvement had nothing to do with the chokes.

1/2 and 1/4 will do for any legal quarry I pursue. Bolting rabbits will roll head over heels dead after being hit upfront with 32 grm of 6 shot, even at distance, as will pigeons and crows, and pheasants will drop out of the sky dead with 28grm of 7 shot through the same choke.

I prefer decoying with full choke simply because I can get good kills at distance, but my game gun is choked to the same configuration as my first gun was all those years ago when I believed I was at a disadvantage. I wasn't; I just hadn't learned to shoot.

Practice good technique and buy good quality cartridges and forget about choke. Unless you're shooting at extreme ends of the same spectrum, if you miss, it wont be because you have in the wrong choke.

 

Great write up scully, was with you until you became Yoda in the last few words!

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Top post by Scully. :good:

A long while ago I bought a cheap AYA non-ejector. When I bought it off a bloke he said it was 1/4 and Cylinder. I smashed a few birds up with it and took it to a 'smith and he told me AYA used to import them as standard full and full.

This one was such a gun. I had it reamed out and it was better for it.

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Scully is about spot on. Gun fit is far more important.

 

How much choke might be determined by whether you intend to eat the quarry or not!

 

I've reduced both chokes in my SO as they were far too tight. With a good pattern the margin of error is greater than for a tighter choke. Clays, in particular, don't generally need to be hit by dozens of pellets and many can be smoked just as well with an open choke. One might wonder why some special chokes were designed for a wider spread for skeet.

 

Now, if one can only afford or prefer one gun, the change of choke from skeet to dtl is almost a 'must do' if one expects decent scores on both disciplines. I know I used to struggle with skeet while using my trusty SO game with those tight chokes.

 

Where there is a market for after-market chokes there will always be some who will claim this or that as the next best thing to sliced bread. Often marketing hype to catch the attention of the unknowing. After all, even the manufacturers are not standardised with their multichoke fittings.

 

Making a list of what is available and their pros and cons would soon make it clear to the OP for some of the reasons; no real need to know all the reasons.

 

Personally, I would never expect any nominal choke to be optimal without some post-fitting regulation. I've seen too many guns throwing a lousy pattern.

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Hi Oliver

 

Perhaps you could expand on the last line of your post, i am not clear about what you are saying

 

Regarding what is available etc i was looking more for some reason why there are so many makers and why some people prefer to buy hrom non gun makers rather than their own gun maker, after all there cannot be that many design options relating to the inside of a choke

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There is a difference between how the different manufacturers come to the constriction of the choke.

 

 

 

Briley for instance are manufactured to set increments for constriction so 1/2 (modified) is 0.020" of the bore regardless of how it patterns.

 

 

 

The standard Browning Invector + however would be x amount of pellets in a circle at a set distance and call that 1/2 regardless of the bore size and constriction, which is great if you use the same cartridge as they did, maybe not so great if you don’t.

 

 

In the case of my Browning invector + chokes my aftermarket Briley’s when I measured them were physically tighter than standard Browning ones, ¼ was nearly a ½, akin to a tight 3/8 and ½ was nearly ¾ compared to the original Browning ones.

 

 

What this did was get Briley the reputation of giving better kills with the same choke over the standard Browning, this was all smoke and mirrors as you could achieve the same by shooting a tighter Browning choke, but it did their reputation no harm at all out on the shooting grounds.

 

 

Muller had the same sort of thing, the U2 got the reputation of being a direct replacement for ¼ choke with better kills. When measured against my standard Beretta Optima it was akin to the Beretta 3/8 choke, but to be fair to Muller they never claimed it was ¼ choke but that was the choke it was marketed against though.

 

 

Also aftermarket were actually cheaper than standard (maybe not so now) so if you wanted to shoot ½ ½ for instance 2 Briley chokes were only £20 more than 1 Browning Midas choke and easier to get hold of.

 

 

There is not much you can do to a choke, it starts off at one measurement and tapers to another but there is a lot you can do on marketing it, selling a 3/8 marked as ¼ does seem the way to sell chokes though.

 

 

I now shoot standard 3/8 chokes in both my guns. :shifty:

 

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