And the Winning Numbers Are...

Five and 15.

Huh?

We shotgunners tend to come in two groups: those who fuss about chokes and those who just shoot the birds. I’m with the anal-retentive crowd. Choke may not matter a whole lot, but it’s one of the few things about shooting that I actually have control over, so I invest chokes with mythic importance. We have to have some sort of choke in our guns, so we might as well get it as right as possible.

Traditionally, upland double guns have been choked Improved Cylinder and Modified. Of course each maker has his own idea of what those designations mean. Technically, IC means whatever choke constriction and shell combination happened to produce a 50% pattern within a 30” circle at 40 yards. Modified is 60%.

Of course it’s all hooey. A tight-patterning shell (low speed, low payload, high shot hardness) combined with an open choke sometimes can produce the same pattern percentages as a loose-patterning shell (high velocity, heavy payload, soft shot) shot from a tighter choke constriction. Just because the choke designation is stamped on the side of the barrel or choke tube doesn’t mean it will automagically throw a certain pattern.

That’s why I like to refer to chokes in points of constriction rather than vague names. Of course there’s no guarantee that a .010” 12-gauge constriction will throw an IC pattern, but at least I know what the constriction is and can work from there. Knowing the number is more reliable than just knowing the name, but it’s not perfect.

As with all things Technoidal, I’ve let others do the work for me. It makes life so much easier. When picking my chokes for upland shooting, I rely on my betters.

My typical first barrel in the uplands is at about 20 yards. More or less. Vaguely sort of. It must be a pretty common distance, because William Harnden Foster, the inventor of the game of skeet, selected 21 yards because it was his typical first barrel for grouse. Over the years I’ve found that it works pretty well as the first-barrel distance for lots of upland birds.

So what’s the best choke for 20 yards? Skeet choke, of course. That’s what it’s built for. Now here’s the good part: If you talk to the folks at Briley, the company that makes all those skeet tubes, and ask them what the favorite constriction for their skeet tubes is, you will hear .005” in all the gauges. Yup, .005” in 12 gauge through .410 is the best constriction for shots of about 20 yards on the skeet range or in the field.

It’s self-regulating too. Although .005” is a small percentage of constriction in the large .729” 12 bore, it’s a higher percentage of squeeze in the little .410 tube. Clearly the smaller gauges need tighter chokes to maintain adequate pattern density, though at the cost of pattern diameter. That’s the price you pay for using a pipsqueak pipe.

If my first barrel is used generally at 20 yards and would need .005” choke regardless of gauge, what about the second barrel? For a lot of us a 30-yard second barrel would be the most practical. There are plenty of exceptions, but generally 30 yards is a good compromise distance for the second shot.

And what works best at 30 yards? That would be .015”. It gives about the same pattern at 30 yards as .005” does at 20 yards. In 12 gauge .015” would be called Light Modified. In .410 it would be about Full. That’s OK, as 30 yards is about the limit for a .410. In 20 and 28 it might be called Modified. The names get confusing, so that’s why I just like to use the number .015”. It works for all gauges.

So that’s it. For my upland work, setting up for 20- and 30-yard shots, I like .005” and .015” chokes in all the gauges. Clearly these aren’t ideal chokes for every possible situation, but they will be in the ballpark. And don’t forget that you can increase or decrease distance a little with shell selection. Larger shot tends to pattern a bit tighter, as do loads with slower velocities. Small shot pushed hard will open up.

What is your take on these choke numbers? Have you found a better combination for general shooting? I’ll take all the help I can get.

That’s it for now. Boots off. Beer open.