Why not both barrels choked?

[goldy_bansal]

Why dont they make both choke barrels. Is there any benefit of normal barrel than choke barrel?

[jaz]

goldy bansal , post it in appropriate shotgun (dunali) heading.

[goldy_bansal]

How CAN i move this post into shotgun heading? There is no delete option for this post.

[mundaire]

Goldy,

You do indeed have many guns with both barrels choked. Chokes are basically selected based on the intended use. For wildfowling & live pigeon shooting, where longer range shots are the norm, many select tighter chokes - full & full choke on both barrels is not uncommon. For more general field shooting in pursuit of birds like quail, chukar, etc. most people prefer the first barrel (usually right barrel on a SxS or lower barrel on an O/U) to have a more "open" choke, as the first shot would be taken with the bird at a relatively closer range, since the second (follow up) shot is most often taken when the birds have had a few seconds more to get further away from the shooter, people usually prefer a tighter choke for the second barrel. If you see enough guns, you'll probably end up seeing almost every imaginable permutation & combination of chokes.

Newer guns (not common in India, due to the import ban), often come with interchangeable screw in choke tubes, so you can change the chokes on one or both barrels to suit shooting conditions.

In India, since hunting is banned, you'll end up using your shotgun only for self-defence or clay shooting. In the first case, for short range self-defence a more open choke would be desirable to give you a wider spread at a shorter range. Not an expert on trap and skeet, but for trap usually tighter chokes are used, on the other hand for skeet the chokes are almost as open as true cylinder (no choke).

Here are a couple of articles where they have explained things better than I probably would be able to

http://www.wildfowlmag.com/tips_strateg ... un_062304/

http://www.briley.com/understandingshot ... riley.aspx

HTH

Cheers!
Abhijeet

[hvj1]

Hmmm Abhijeet, very nice.

[DAN]

Mundaire u forgot to mention that only right (in s\s) open choked barrel should be used for balls and slug shooting. if u shoot in the fully choked barrel you'll end up damaging the integrity of the choke, gun and may even end up blowing off the gun (which was the case of my uncle who shot a ball in fully choked left barrel.)