Cutting Shotgun Barrels

[Mortblanc]

Been testing buckshot reloads all week. Actually been shooting one day and counting little bity pellet holes for two!

In the course of this activity I have accumulated a series of pattern targets that are quite revealing.

One of the question often asked is can one cut a shotgun barrel to make it "handle better" or open the choke for defense use.

Perhaps these two targets will show just exactly what happens when you cut down a barrel and take the choke out of a shotgun.

I was using a Mossberg 500 with interchangeable choke tubes, shooting the same batch of reloads from a shooting bench at the standard 40 yards.

The first target is a round of #4 buckshot on top of a load of 7 1/2 shot. The choke is a standard full.

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#4 buckshot is .24 caliber and a 2 3/4" 12ga shell holds 18. lot of pellets but big enough to be lethal to man or beast.

The full choke placed 95% of the buckshot into the 30" circle that is the standard for measurement of choke. 42% stayed in a 16" circle that surrounds the "kill zone" and 70% of the buckshot stayed inside the area of a human body with most of it concentrated in the region of the chest, down into the abdomen. This is an instantly lethal hit at 40 yards.

Even the small shot is spread in a uniform pattern that would have killed any small game animal inside the 40 yard range, possibly out to 50 yards.

Now we will look at what happens when you cut that full choke barrel down to make the gun "handle better" or "open it slightly".

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What we have now is a target with only 4 hits inside the human zone and 3 in the kill zone. That might not be a lethal hit in the real world. It might wound but not incapacitate.

Only 38% of the buckshot is on the target paper. The small shot is even more sparse with only a 23% pattern and big gaps in the pattern that might allow small game to escape being hit.

Plan on only using the shotgun at short range so it does not matter???

Why restrict you range? Why not be able to reach out to where the skittish game is living? Why not be able to keep a human adversary 15-30 yards farther away, know you can clear the street all the way to the neighbor's door? Why have to pass up a shot at a deer just because it is past the 25 yard mark?

Don't throw away the choke. It does make a difference. A big difference.