Jug Choking

[Mortblanc]

Went to the range today to fire control groups and patterns to use as comparison for any improvement. O made a significant discovery.

In my memory I have never patterned a cylinder bore shotgun. My patterning has always been to prove choke performance, not to test the performance with NO choke.

After all, cylinder bore/open choke is 40% pattern at 40 yards, right? No need to check the known.

To my amazement I found that my cylinder bore only gave 32% choke.

It was a nice even spread or #7 1/2 shot with a piece of shot about every 3 square inches and would prove a decent rabbit killer at 30-40 yards.

Buckshot was a different matter. I had a slightly better percentage of shot inside the circle but there was a huge donut hole in the center of the pattern almost 12" in diameter.

It appears that any amount of improvement I can provide will be welcome, but I am definitely starting from behind. I feel I will be very lucky to achieve a test proven 1/4 choke when I was speculating that I would want a modified (1/2 choke).

Slug performance??? That was so bad that I am heading back to the range tomorrow with more slugs and an improvised optical system in an attempt at getting all the shots to remain on the paper.

I have seen better performance with slugs from crudely hacksawed shotguns of no great merit and I am very disappointed in this particular barrel which was manufactured specifically for shooting buckshot and slugs.