October, 1918 
FOREST AND STREAM 
585 
THE BARREL BORING OF FIELD GUNS 
THE SPORTSMAN CAN NOT DO FULL JUSTICE TO HIMSELF OR FEEL CERTAIN OF 
HITTING THE BIRDS HE AIMS AT WITH A GUN THAT PERFORMS IRREGULARLY 
T HE sportsman about to purchase a 
new gun usually has opinions of his 
own as to who the maker shall be or 
is guided by the advice of friends in whose 
judgment he has confidence; fortunately, 
he will not go wrong on any one of the 
four or five leading American manufactur¬ 
ers. The dimensions of the weapon which 
he selects, that is, the length of barrels, 
and stock, drop weight and other dimen¬ 
sions, will depend upon his strength and 
other physical peculiarities, as well as the 
purpose for which the gun is to be used. 
A question, however, he will have to con¬ 
sider carefully is, shall it be bored cylinder, 
improved cylinder, modified choke, or full 
choke? There has always been a good deal 
of mystery about the boring of gun bar¬ 
rels; in fact, it has been encouraged by 
craftsmen. In the early days of muzzle 
loading guns, the arguments were largely 
confined to the system of ignition, but with 
the development of the breech loader the 
character of the ammunition which, in¬ 
cluded primers, thickness and quality of 
powder wads, shot wads, crimp and load¬ 
ing pressures, all entered into the equation, 
and very properly so, for they all play a 
very important part in the development 
of the efficiency and the degree of execu¬ 
tion that the sportsmen will have under his 
control in the game field or at the traps. 
The discovery of choke boring has played 
a most important part in the development 
of the shot gun. After it was ascertained 
that a constriction of the muzzle would 
hold the shot together and increase the 
range and pattern of the weapon there was 
an extraordinary craze foreclose shooting 
guns. Sportsmen insisted upon the heaviest 
choking and the gun makers vied with each 
other in their production. These men soon 
discovered, however, that in upland shoot¬ 
ing with excessively choked guns, they 
missed many shots or uselessly macerated 
the game. This lead to careful experi¬ 
menting but it was years before many 
sportsmen awoke to the fact that the full 
choked gun was a handicap in most forms 
of field work and for the game field the 
cylinder gun was to be preferred. As a re¬ 
sult many sportsmen discarded their choke 
bores and turned again to the cylinders. 
In those sections that are heavily shot 
ever, where game is wild and rises at long 
distances, the cylinder bore frequently fails 
vhere the choke bored gun would have 
'eached the birds. The constant aim of 
nanufacturers of guns, however, has al¬ 
ways been to obtain a regularity in pref- 
:rence to extreme closeness of pattern. 
The eminent authority, Henry Sharp, in 
t recent issue of the British Sportsman, 
n reply to an inquiry on this subject, says: 
This opens a wide vista—one, perhaps, too 
fften overlooked when the question of 
hoke-boring comes under the sportsman’s 
onsideration. To many individuals “choke” 
neans a full measure of bore constriction 
By WILLIAM BRUETTE 
and nothing else; on this basis choke for 
game-shooting is very often condemned in 
toto. From conversations that I have had 
with shooters here or there, the belief has 
assumed shape that some proportion of the 
shooting public appears to be unaware that 
the term choke covers an exceedingly wide 
range of bore contraction. Guns bored on 
the cylinder plan are thought to throw 
their shot in a “free and easy” style which 
greatly conduces to the maintenance of 
“good” shooting and the filling of the 
game-bag; on the other side of this men¬ 
tal picture stands the choke, and it is not 
favored because of the assumption that a 
more or less bullet-like clustering of the 
shot pellets attends its use. In other 
words, the cylinder is thought to produce 
ordinary, every-day shooting, with which 
all sportsmen have been familiar from the 
earliest ages of sporting firearms; whilst 
the choke is deemed only suitable for use 
in the hands of the most capable rifle-shot, 
and then only at extraordinary ranges, lest 
it reduce the flesh of game to the con¬ 
sistency of potted meat. Probably this will 
be deemed an exaggerated summing-up of 
the views sometimes expressed respecting 
the utility of the two forms of barrel-bor¬ 
ing known as true cylinder and full choke- 
For certain forms of game shooting 75% 
of choke is unsuitable but it is illogical on 
that account to condemn all degrees of 
choke. I think it true to say;that the esti¬ 
mate of choke formed in many quarters 
is altogether erroneous, and, therefore, mis¬ 
leading—indeed, some men I have met ap¬ 
pear altogether to ignore or are unaware 
of the fact that there are various degrees 
of choke; they have never stopped to in¬ 
quire ; so with them cylinder is cylinder 
and choke is choke; the first is the best 
possible, and the other is more or less an 
unmixed evil. 
I may be asked why it is that I cannot 
countenance the true cylinder, so will say 
that the primary, the middle, and the final 
cause of my complaint in respect of this 
form of barrel-boring arises from its total 
lack of ability to effect a true delivery of 
the shot charge with any degree of con¬ 
tinuity. I have witnessed the shooting of 
true cylinders under the most favorable 
conditions conceivable; the loading of the 
cartridges has been conducted under rigid 
laboratory conditions—-to be more precise, 
the cartridge cases and wads were sized 
and selected by the finest micrometer 
measurements; powder and shot charges 
weighed to half a grain, and the pressure 
on the wads and the turnover of the case 
being effected with similar mathematical 
accuracy. Despite all this care, 10, 15, or 
perhaps 20 per cent, of the shots fired pro¬ 
duced an unaccountable scattering of the 
pellets. As I have previously remarked, 
it is this altogether inexcusable habit of 
the true cylinder which leads to its con¬ 
demnation at my hands. Guns which give 
such fatal evidences of total incompetence 
towards shot control are not arms that I 
care to use in the field, for the simple 
reason that one never can form a reason¬ 
able forecast as to the result of any shot 
taken with them at any object—sitting or 
flying—no matter how good the aim may 
be. No man can do justice to himself 
with guns that perform in that manner, 
for, although one shot may produce a shot 
delivery as perfect as heart can desire, 
there will then possibly follow discharges 
which are never certain to hit the bird 
aimed at, but, nevertheless, are quite 
capable of wounding others towards which 
those errant pellets were not consciously 
directed. 
This being the apparently irremediable 
position with regard to the shooting of the 
true cylinder, I have always regarded 
choke as one of the most valuable im¬ 
provements ever effected in the shot-gun. 
Gunmakers of discernment readily seized 
upon this highly advantageous method of 
shot-gun barrel-boring upon its inception, 
and why anyone should still have doubts 
respecting the relative standing of true 
cylinders and guns having some degree of 
choke, I can not understand. 
True, it is sometimes possible to have 
too much of a good thing; there Is choke 
and choke, and to use a 75 per cent, choke 
for shooting quail or for prairie chicken 
in September, may be altogether inadvis¬ 
able. But is the choking of gun-barrels to 
receive condemnation on that account? It 
is merely a question of degree in choking; 
forms of choke can be devised to suit 
every phase of sport encountered in this 
or any other country. In the case of the 
shooting above mentioned it is merely a 
question of the degree of choking selected; 
probably with standard loading—and 1 1-16 
oz. No. 7 shot—a 50 per cent, choke— 
that is, one producing patterns of some 
140 pellets on a 30 in. circle at 40 yds.— 
would prove admirable in the hands of 9° 
out of every hundred men engaged in this 
form of sport. And the vastly important 
advantage conferred by this very slight 
degree of barrel constriction must not be 
overlooked, which is that in guns so bored 
on proper lines the “blow-away” shots, so 
common in the case of the true cylinder, 
will prove to have been virtually eliminated 
when good ammunition is used. 
In these times of reduced shot loads 
choke has become more than ever valuable, 
for, with 12-gauge shot loads reduced to 
one ounce or less, it becomes more than 
ever essential to maintain an effective con¬ 
trol over the delivery of the shot. True 
cylinder boring altogether fails to maintain 
an efficient control over the delivery of its 
shot charge, and I fail to understand why 
any cartridge manufacturer or powder 
maker will for a single moment tolerate a 
form of barrel-boring which gives such 
highly erratic and unsatisfactory shooting. 
