Choke

[timps]

Timps and Westward make a lot of sense. Also, as has been said, unless you pattern the gun you have no idea what's going on and that you may be surprised. This is highlighted in a recent post/photo by an experienced guy that reflected that his full choke with a well known clay pigeon brand cartridge was actually throwing XXFull at 40 yards.

 

As I read him, Westward quite rightly said that you "can't" rely on the pattern fringe.

 

It’s one of the reasons I don’t bother with aftermarket chokes anymore, you buy them with what is written on the side of the choke and the pattern could bear no resemblance to what you actually want to achieve, depending on the cart you are using and their interpretation of constriction.

I now take the standard chokes as I already have them, find what I am happy with when actually shooting the cartridge I intend to use then double up.

 

 

This phenomenon of finding open chokes give more erratic, less convincing break signatures is not imaginary, it has happened to me before hence why I use a little more than graphs would hint is enough. There must be a reason why ALL top 20 shooters use tighter chokes, none compete with open chokes as a matter of routine.

 

Completely agree, if I am getting crappy breaks I come off the stand thinking I was lucky rather than I earn it, t gives me no confidence at all as I can’t adjust to give better breaks and my head takes over and my shooting gets worse.

 

I don’t want soot balls but I do want good kills and I am prepared to sacrifice the odds at closer range to keep my head in check and not think about changing.

 

The reason I change for bouncing rabbits is the bounce is out of my control and can jump over a tight pattern and the rabbits are usually close enough for a good break with the more open choke.

The reason why on the low driven is I can drift off line due to the non-dominant eye taking over / incompetence and they show full face and are well within range of the more open choke.

 

I tend to be what would be considered over choked for the rest of the targets at close range and don't feel the need or want to change.

 

The best I have ever shot in a sporting comp is 95 ex 100 and that was with ½ ½ and Hull 7’s and no thinking of changing carts or chokes regardless of target.

 

I wish my head could be in that place every comp but sometimes it needs help and chokes can help it, like you say by tricking or focusing it.

 

You need the choke that convinces your head you are doing the right thing and that does vary from shooter to shooter but as you say the top shots tend to go tighter than open so it must say something.

 

[wymberley]

I started out by absorbing all that was written down in books by people who I later learned talked a good score rather better than they walked it so as little choke as possible which seemed to work fairly well because targets back in the day were dustbin lids at fairly close yardages and we were allowed 32g too which was nice !

 

Then one day having missed enough to put myself out of the running on a tricky and fairly distant pair of Teal I bumped into a local pot hunter by the name of Danny Daniels who shot a fixed choke 682 1/2 & 3/4, what followed was my personal revelation in two ways, first that a heavy, clay specific gun DOES make a difference regardless of how many times you read banal statements about Indians and Arrows , the second that "enough" choke matters. Quite simply I found that I could fire at and EXPECT to break edge on distant targets, the same day I managed to do very well (memory is fading I may have even won it) on the 10 bird Pool stand which included a very stiff going away quartering target orange at slightly gulp inducing distance using Danny's gun. What will forever be etched in mind is him saying (behave yourself) after I had blown apart the third or forth target so amazed was he even that I was finding that target.

 

Fast forward to last Sunday where at my first stand of a registered shoot I kept getting weak breaks on the (2x10) difficulty going away bird and admittedly two misses on the second (6.5x10) difficulty high quartering away bird. On the last pair in a bid to trick my mind into a positive mode I selected top barrel and was rewarded with an amazing first barrel kill as should have been the case from the half choke anyway. Stay with me as I shot the next stand where a rather shootable high/fast away bird evaded me completely despite the sight picture looking more than adequate, the second rapid crosser was smoke balled. I immediately went into "save the rest" mode and pre-mounted on the first bird and managed 4 choppy kills and four more smokes.

 

On the next stand I decided to change to a Full for a very tidy looking Teal just to focus my mind not because I believed you needed more than the half/half I thought I was using. You guessed right if you had thought I was to find my bottom barrel was Skeet.

 

This phenomenon of finding open chokes give more erratic, less convincing break signatures is not imaginary, it has happened to me before hence why I use a little more than graphs would hint is enough. There must be a reason why ALL top 20 shooters use tighter chokes, none compete with open chokes as a matter of routine.

What a cracking post. Nailed it.

Don't do clays other than a tool for coaching some years back and a couple of years of perhaps a box or two once a week at a run of the mill sporting layout at about that time so I can't comment on the specifics.

However, it's worth noting that clay pigeon shooting is an offshoot from game shooting and as such the same basic criteria apply. You require 'w' number of pellets to 'kill' each and every shot. Read any historical book on shooting published in the UK up until round about the late 80s or early 90s and for game shooting open chokes were in vogue. You need 3 hits on a game bird of a certain size of which 'x' fitted into the proverbial 30" circle so multiplying 'w' by 'x' you had 'z' as the number of pellets required is what these books would have said although in some the author would have recognised that didn't seem quite right so would have introduced his own 'fudge factor'. Albeit with different figures, this applied to clays. This was in spite of some information which had been published at the tail end of the 19th century which has an affect on both game and clay but was completely missed (as far as I'm aware) here in the UK. We sat, content on the status quo until the advent of NTS when some bright spark decided that if we need to assess this (steel being the main thrust) we perhaps really ought to find out precisely how lead performs first. Unfortunately, by now many guns had been ruined by either being made, or having alterations made to give, open chokes as the increase in shooting, both game and clay took off.

An offshoot of this study produced a little titbit that shotgun pellets conformed nicely with the theory of probability and as such it was realised that in order to produce 'w' hits with every shot, an average of 'y' was required so the total in the pattern became 'x' times 'y' on average to achieve 'z'. Couple this with the information that we missed and which related to the phenomenon of 'central thickening which had the effect of offsetting the higher pellet count now seemingly required but at the cost of reducing the effective pattern spread well below the 30" circle, we finally made sense of it

The simple fact is that unless, whether it be game or clays, we revert to the nature of the targets detailed by Hamster in his opening sentence, we need choke.

[Wingman]

too true,

what chokes do you use?

Half and Half in my Perazzi for clays (main clay gun)

AYA no3. has 3/4 and full and is my main pigeon, rough shooting gun.

Cant remember what choke is even in my Auto-5, think its 3/4

[Hamster]

 

 

The reason I change for bouncing rabbits is the bounce is out of my control and can jump over a tight pattern and the rabbits are usually close enough for a good break with the more open choke.

The reason why on the low driven is I can drift off line

 

Right again. I'm not silly enough not to realise that Full will break a close rabbit or close tower bird (if you're on it) as the excruciating one liner goes but bright enough to realise I am not precise enough.

 

The point of my earlier post wasn't just to demonstrate that open chokes give unsatisfactory (even misses) breaks but to hopefully also show that it was almost certainly those chippy breaks that caused me to even think of changing to a Full for that Teal.

[bornfree]

I've tried tight chokes several times over the years and I don't mind admitting iam not good enough to use them.I win a bit of money in A class sporting and keep in AA in skeet and DTL using 1/4 or under.

[TIGHTCHOKE]

Choke - the never ending question!

[dougall]

oh for fixed choked guns........

[TIGHTCHOKE]

oh for fixed choked guns........

 

 

That is one way around it, I then bought a second set of barrels and had them Brileyed!

[wymberley]

 

 

That is one way around it, I then bought a second set of barrels and had them Brileyed!

A 4 and a 3. This man lacks the courage of his convictions.

[TIGHTCHOKE]

No, not really, I usually shoot 32" 3/4 and full fixed choke at clays, but carry the second pair with the long Briley's for anything close and or difficult combination pairs.

[Squinting shot]

dude, it aint the choke that does the shooting.

i shoot full / full 90% of the time, 100% clay shooting with full full. now i`m not an awful shot.

i love shooting #9s in this combination.

I tried that last weekend had a better time than I thought I would,