Choke preference

[deewayne2003]

Briley, a TX firm, has done an excellent job capturing the TX market..

Texans if nothing else are loyal to TX companies that produce good products and services...

HEB, Whataburger, Buccees, etc.. all have incredible customer loyalty in TX..

Briley makes a great choke at a reasonable price... but the truth is there are a lot of other chokes out there just as good for just as good of a price (IMO)..

But you wont catch anyone in my house shooting anything other that Briley lol..

Indeed Texans are loyal, but Briley made it easy when I shot trap & skeet in College.

The first college nationals I attended at the National Shooting sports foundation center in San Antonio; Briley would sell their chokes at 50% discount to any shooter with a student ID…. Including high school students.

So yeah, I became a Briley fan.

 

[WAB]

Indeed Texans are loyal, but Briley made it easy when I shot trap & skeet in College.

The first college nationals I attended at the National Shooting sports foundation center in San Antonio; Briley would sell their chokes at 50% discount to any shooter with a student ID…. Including high school students.

So yeah, I became a Briley fan.

Briley is a very good shop for a lot more than chokes. Great customer service and folks who actually know how to bend a stock!

 

[BRICKBURN]

I got Briley chokes when they were the first to create a longer forcing cone for the choke by extending them an inch out of the barrel.
Absolutely, the best chokes in my shotgun. Pattern really well.

 

[Jetjockey]

I used to twist choke tubes all the time. IC/Mod for pheasants, SK/IC for quail, IM/Full for waterfowl. Then I bought a 1923 LC Smith 20 with 2 1/2” chambers and IC/MOD chokes. I quickly realized unless your hunting turkeys or sky busting geese, all you will ever need is IC/MOD. I quit twisting chokes years ago, and all my guns with chokes wear IC/MOD. Than again, I’m not really a serious shotgun man.

 

[spike.t]

I am more Continental in dress and will trade that post shoot cigar for two fingers of Maison Surrene, but yes!

The people in the shoot in England I used to have a half gun in, used to look at my clothing and threaten to take me to the shooting garment tailor in London they used....was interesting bunch of people...lawyer who owned it....one guy who was introduced as a fishing boat owner from Iceland....i thought he had a trawler or 2....wrong...turned out it was actually a full shipping line from trawlers to freight etc etc....an Australian who when a train went past one of the fields was asked by the shoot owner if it was on time....turned out owned that train company amongst a few other ones....couple of the Qatari sheiks.. .one dressed more like an English gent than they probably did...other one was very high up in the Royal family but seriously down to earth....didn't use his title when he introduced himself...bumped into him at the Madrid hunting show later...wearing jeans and wandering about by himself...no entourage etc anywhere....so even though they could have afforded to drag me to the tailors I avoided it and kept wearing my browning camo thermal trousers and a nice warm waterproof green coat....had to endure some serious piss taking but I was warm and dry ....oh and not an adjustable choke in sight ....my guns were a couple of 20 bore rizzini o/u guns with 1/4 and 3/4 chokes....others were in slightly different league....Westley and Holland amongst others....bit of a ramble

 

[spike.t]

Look good shoot good right?
View attachment 582678

Love the matching face make up

 

[BeeMaa]

This brand or that brand I don’t think makes much difference.

Best chokes I’ve ever bought were angle port chokes that matched the bore on my shotgun. There is actually a fair amount of variation is 12ga bore size. Having chokes match your actual bore makes a lot of sense to me.

I’ve done some pretty extensive testing on chokes and have found that ported chokes open up a pattern 100% of the time over the same constriction choke without ports.

One plus of the ports is will reduce felt recoil a little but at the price of reducing the effective range. As long as you pattern your shotgun, load, choke and distance and it’s acceptable to you…go for it.

 

[Challer]

Only you, your gun, your loads and a pattern board can inform what’s working for you. There are classic texts like Oberfell and Thompson, and Sporting Shotgun Performance which address the statistical nature of patterns. Fortunately there is software now that can analyze the pattern board to obviate hours counting pellets.

End of the day, there is little evidence extended tubes do anything of value (although I love my Mullers) and a good fixed choke tends to prevent deformed flyers more than some screw ins.

I use flush Brileys and Mullers in most guns, am skeptical of most factory tubes until patterned. All my shotguns outperform me so it’s of little consequence these days.

 

[WAB]

Lots of discussion on patterning boards here. If you want a very out of the box approach to assessing patterns, get a copy of Bob Brister’s book, shotgunning, the art and the science. This is a much more insightful approach to assessing shot charge performance on a moving target than shooting at a static plate.

The choke is just one piece of the system, and not the most influential one when it comes to terminal performance.

 

[HankBuck]

Honestly, the best choke is a fixed choke. With modern cartridges, the need for interchangeable chokes is highly questionable for most applications.

WAB, agree with you and more importantly so do some of the Worlds top Sporting Clays shooters - some shoot “fixed choke”. Fixed chokes on competition shotguns is more common in Europe then in the US. Browning even makes Fixed choke versions of their shotguns just for the European market. Something I read was “chokes affect your pattern by a few inches - most targets are missed by Feet”. It is also extremely rare to ever see a top shooter “change chokes” during a competition - their focus is on breaking the target.

 

[Daisy]

WAB, agree with you and more importantly so do some of the Worlds top Sporting Clays shooters - some shoot “fixed choke”. Fixed chokes on competition shotguns is more common in Europe then in the US. Browning even makes Fixed choke versions of their shotguns just for the European market. Something I read was “chokes affect your pattern by a few inches - most targets are missed by Feet”. It is also extremely rare to ever see a top shooter “change chokes” during a competition - their focus is on breaking the target.

I guess that’s a little outside the point. They 100 percent make sure the choke in their gun matches the type of shooting they are doing. If different, they would use a different gun with a different fixed choke.

I think the average person has one or two shotguns, and should change the choke based on what type of shooting they are doing. If you have 10 shotguns with a different fixed choke for every type of shooting, that’s perfect. Again, really, not the point of what people were talking about in this thread.

If you went to any of the wingshooting ranches, I go to, hunting, Quail, and used a modified or full, choke on Quail, they would probably make you change your gun when you exploded about four quail in a row. If you’re hunting doves and have a fixed skeet choke on your shotgun and miss 12 in a row because you don’t have enough knockdown power, again, you wouldn’t be very happy.

If you have a shotgun and keep improved cylinder in all the time, you could do perfectly fine. However, you wouldn’t do as well as you could do by changing for different targets, Quail different than dove different than pheasant different than turkey different than duck.

 

[mdwest]

Indeed Texans are loyal, but Briley made it easy when I shot trap & skeet in College.

The first college nationals I attended at the National Shooting sports foundation center in San Antonio; Briley would sell their chokes at 50% discount to any shooter with a student ID…. Including high school students.

So yeah, I became a Briley fan.

They still do this.. They send out an email once a year to all of the SCTP members (Im assuming they do the same for the other "school" shooting programs as well) offering a huge discount for a limited period of time...

Their customer service is top notch as well.. I actually had to have some chokes custom threaded a couple of years back (turkish O/U that no one in the US makes chokes for).. I happened to be going to Houston anyway on other business.. so I took the shotgun and one of the chokes I had for it with me and went to the Briley shop...

They literally had me turned around with a full set of chokes in less than 2 hours.. for the same price I would have paid if I had just bought their standard production chokes for a beretta or benelli, etc.. were incredibly pleasant to work with and super helpful..

By the time I finished shopping (they have a wonderful collection of shotguns for sale in their shop (as one would imagine)... plus a lot of really cool shotgun gear both for hunting and competition).. I was ready to take the shotgun home and shoot it..

Youve gotta love companies that still make customer service a priority these days... so many out there simply dont care anymore..

I'll remain a loyal briley customer and keep buying their chokes exclusively for both my hunting and my competition guns..

 

[HankBuck]

I guess that’s a little outside the point. They 100 percent make sure the choke in their gun matches the type of shooting they are doing. If different, they would use a different gun with a different fixed choke.

I think the average person has one or two shotguns, and should change the choke based on what type of shooting they are doing. If you have 10 shotguns with a different fixed choke for every type of shooting, that’s perfect. Again, really, not the point of what people were talking about in this thread.

If you went to any of the wingshooting ranches, I go to, hunting, Quail, and used a modified or full, choke on Quail, they would probably make you change your gun when you exploded about four quail in a row. If you’re hunting doves and have a fixed skeet choke on your shotgun and miss 12 in a row because you don’t have enough knockdown power, again, you wouldn’t be very happy.

If you have a shotgun and keep improved cylinder in all the time, you could do perfectly fine. However, you wouldn’t do as well as you could do by changing for different targets, Quail different than dove different than pheasant different than turkey different than duck.

Daisy, I get your point - as over thought as it is - and it has be written countless times in every hunting magazine ever published (funded heavily by advertising from gun & choke tube manufacturers). I agree “different chokes” can be better for different applications. Different chokes are nice but hardly essential - they are the least important part of your shotgun. Improved cylinder or Modified will serve well for everything including ducks/geese/deer-buckshot, quail & rabbits etc... In any double, the combination of - ic & mod are hard to beat. Sure, your patterning board & target will show benefits from different chokes at different ranges and that can be critical - IF you’re Hunting “Patterning Boards”. Hunt more - read less, but always shoot what gives you confidence and if changing choke tubs does that for You - then You should absolutely do that. Hunting Wild birds always means differnt target ranges that can’t always be predicted - Choke Full for ducks and then get a crosser at 20 yrds - what Now?…Change chokes or wait til its at 40 yrds?? No, you just “shoot”. Worried about ”blowing up quail”? Choke skeet then dog bumps covey out at 35 yrds — change chokes? Pass up the shot? NO, you just shoot. Over thinking because of “over marketing” and treating a Scatter Gun like it’s a lazer guided missile. Generations of excellent shooters (clays and wing shooters) never needed to change a choke tube and didn’t have 10 different guns - they put a good dent in waterfowl populations (market hunters 1900s) and hit limits of quail in the 1920s-1950s. I don’t argue that different chokes can help in different situations but they are Not needed. World Class Sporting Clays shooters can shoot entire tournaments with Mod & Mod - close 20 yrd targets out to 60 yrd targets……it’s Not the arrow - it’s the indian. Sure, I’m exaggerating a bit - but You get my point…as I get yours. And You have some valid points - we just disagree

 

[IvW]

Old Brno sidelock sxs fixed chokes 1/2 and 3/4 28" makes a fine African field gun.....

 

[Daisy]

Daisy, I get your point - as over thought as it is - and it has be written countless times in every hunting magazine ever published (funded heavily by advertising from gun & choke tube manufacturers). I agree “different chokes” can be better for different applications. Different chokes are nice but hardly essential - they are the least important part of your shotgun. Improved cylinder or Modified will serve well for everything including ducks/geese/deer-buckshot, quail & rabbits etc... In any double, the combination of - ic & mod are hard to beat. Sure, your patterning board & target will show benefits from different chokes at different ranges and that can be critical - IF you’re Hunting “Patterning Boards”. Hunt more - read less, but always shoot what gives you confidence and if changing choke tubs does that for You - then You should absolutely do that. Hunting Wild birds always means differnt target ranges that can’t always be predicted - Choke Full for ducks and then get a crosser at 20 yrds - what Now?…Change chokes or wait til its at 40 yrds?? No, you just “shoot”. Worried about ”blowing up quail”? Choke skeet then dog bumps covey out at 35 yrds — change chokes? Pass up the shot? NO, you just shoot. Over thinking because of “over marketing” and treating a Scatter Gun like it’s a lazer guided missile. Generations of excellent shooters (clays and wing shooters) never needed to change a choke tube and didn’t have 10 different guns - they put a good dent in waterfowl populations (market hunters 1900s) and hit limits of quail in the 1920s-1950s. I don’t argue that different chokes can help in different situations but they are Not needed. World Class Sporting Clays shooters can shoot entire tournaments with Mod & Mod - close 20 yrd targets out to 60 yrd targets……it’s Not the arrow - it’s the indian. Sure, I’m exaggerating a bit - but You get my point…as I get yours. And You have some valid points - we just disagree

I hear you. You’re probably more right than me on this. It is definitely more the shooter than the gun (or choke).

 

[BeeMaa]

Three pages of comments. Three pages! ON CHOKES!!! I suppose mentioning fixed chokes vs mulit-chokes on the shotgun forum is about the same as saying PF vs CRF for rifles.

Kinda funny considering the OP has made exactly one comment on this thread...post #1. Just something to keep in mind while we scream into the void of internet comments.

 

[WAB]

Three pages of comments. Three pages! ON CHOKES!!! I suppose mentioning fixed chokes vs mulit-chokes on the shotgun forum is about the same as saying PF vs CRF for rifles.

Kinda funny considering the OP has made exactly one comment on this thread...post #1. Just something to keep in mind while we scream into the void of internet comments.

It just shows you that we have some passionate wing shooters here. Honestly, it morphed into a much more interesting discussion than what screw in tube do you use.

 

[muleye]

I haven't had any problems with Carlsons and get good results. When I hunt waterfowl over decoys, I use the same choke in both barrels. The shooting distances over decoys don't change much, so I don't see a need for different chokes.

 

[HankBuck]

I haven't had any problems with Carlsons and get good results. When I hunt waterfowl over decoys, I use the same choke in both barrels. The shooting distances over decoys don't change much, so I don't see a need for different chokes.

Muleye, about 10 years ago I was duck hunting with a friend - over decoys on a tidal river in NJ. As it neared legal shooting light my friend noticed he had No choke tube in his benelli, he’d removed it to clean and failed to screw one back in. I had no extras - only the IC in my barrel. He decided to shoot without it rather then Not hunt and loaded up his Bismuth 6s. I used 2 3/4” steel 4s. It was a good morning and ducks were moving. By 9 am we both had our 6 duck limit and also one goose each. We were surprised that there appeared to be no difference in our shooting, shoots from 20 - 45 yrds, only 1-2 cripples for each of us (had to finish them on the water0, both geese dropped stone dead. I would not recommend going “chokeless” for ducks and it could damage the threads on inside your barrel over time, and i would guess for 45-50 yrd shots the disadvantage becomes clearer but 45-50 yrd shots Always result in a lower kill rate due to multiple factors. Don’t get me wrong, I put some thought into my chokes and prefer IC or Mod for most waterfowling and Cylinder for rabbits or woodcock….but I wouldn’t skip a Hunt because I bought the wrong choke.

 

[HankBuck]

I know you would! I bet you’re a damn good shot.

Honestly I mainly use over under when I do need different chokes for varying shots like a tower shoot. When meat hunting I pick the best one for the bird and blast away.

I keep my grandfathers Remington 870 in the trunk of my Tahoe at all times. I have a predator choke in it and I’ve pulled it out and wore out some birds. So you’re right more than me.

DAISEY & redleg: my bet or “hunch” is that neither of you shoot registered NSCA Sporting Clays, are not Classified above “C” level but are likely above average field shots on winged game. Here’s why I believe this - I’ve Never, ever heard a good competitive shooter “brag” about their shooting - the score sheet says it all. Also, Top shooters rarely switch chokes and most shoot modified or IC & Mod for entire courses. I do agree what one of you said - you Never miss because you select the wrong choke ….chokes affect your pattern by “inches” and most targets are missed by FEET. But, I’m never gonna BET and shoot against anyone —- I’m just Not good enough