34 THE COMPLETE SHOT 



expose it if he knew, which is not the case. But now that the 

 principle of boring is well understood, there appear to be 

 several methods by which a similar result would be possible. 

 The barrels are known to stretch very considerably under the 

 pressure of the powder-gas, and consequently any treatment of 

 the barrels at the muzzles that would prevent them stretching 

 with the rest of the barrel would act, more or less, like a modified 

 choke. This might be done perhaps by an external thicken- 

 ing of the barrel, or by a hardening of the metal just at the 

 right spot. 



However, to prefer a cylinder that gives a high pattern to 

 a modified choke bore that does the same, is only a fad. The 

 former is difficult to obtain, and the latter is everywhere ; and 

 it is not the modified choke that so often is made to shoot 

 untrue to centre, but the full choke. 



The disadvantage of the choke-bore pattern is that it may 

 plaster the game at distances nearer than the cylinder does. 

 To compare the two patterns made at 20 yards, it is difficult to 

 believe that the choke is almost as free from plastering as the 

 cylinder. As a matter of fact there are several reasons for the 

 well-known surprise that it does not often plaster feathered 

 game. 



The birds are not often coming straight at the gun nor 

 going quite straight away from it, and any tendency to cross 

 the line of aim is equivalent to allowing the game some benefit 

 for any slight inaccuracy of timing the shot, and any wrong 

 allowance in front. For instance, perhaps 5 inches too much 

 allowance in front, with otherwise correct timing, at 20 yards, 

 might very well allow half the shot column to go past a slow bird 

 before he flew into the remainder of the shot column, which 

 would be equivalent to shooting at a motionless bird with only 

 half the pattern. 



On the other hand, a very fast bird may fly right through 

 the shot column before more than half of it has passed his line 

 of flight. When the bird is caught by the centre of the head of 

 the column at 20 yards range, he has but 10 inches to fly 

 to <ret out of the line of flight of the shot from a full choke bore. 



