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[quote="Prussian Gun Guy"]Hey there Duncan,

You sure seem to have been gettin' a lot of guns lately? I don't like to be envious.

....just a couple.....the lowly Fox Sterlingworth and this humble Smith (oh yeah, the ithica 37 hardware store gun....).....I'll lay low for awhile and tweak these to suit ......then....who knows?? I wish I could afford the kajillion dollar Lindners and such like my affluent east coast heroes, but all I can seem to manage is this non-graded entry level American stuff.... Crying or Very sad

.... sniff, sniffle...... Wink

Hey Brit I'm sure your aware but most LC's have .650 Bores so your chokes maybe more open than you think.I have a 1923 Ideal grade that measures just about full and fuller with a Galazan choke gauge. In reality it is IC/MOD just don't want you to have all the choke removed.

Member Joined: 09 Oct 2005 Posts: 76 Location: Denver

britgun:

The best sporting clay shot I know uses an older browning gold hunter autoloader with IC and never changes the choke tube. My Merkel SxS is Skeet/IM (theatrically, it always SEEMS tighter) and it works fine with 7/8 oz loads. I have an over under 12g sporting clays gun that always has Skeet/Skeet tubes in it and it will break anything out there (if I do my part).

I took some lessons once, and when we talked about choke the instructor took the choke tube out of his gun and we just shot across the threads. We shot a target off a high tower (100 feet or so) and we shot it from the next stations away on the course. This was maybe an 80 or 90 yd shot. Guess what, if I had an ungodly amount of lead ahead and below, the targets broke. They didn’t get dusted, but they broke. Now people that change chokes all the time drive me nuts!

Of course you’d never want to do this with live birds, but for sporting clays I’m not sure choke makes that much of a difference if you just need a chip. When I get to the point where I can honestly say “Wow, that target flew right thru that pattern!” maybe I’ll rethink things. In the interim, I’ll assume I was behind and over (where else?).

That said; if I were to buy another gun just for sporting clays it would be an 8 lb O/U with 30” barrels and fixed IC/IC chokes. However, you guys have messed me all up and now I just want to sell my sporting clays gun and buy another 16 g SxS! Or maybe a 16g O/U, or maybe a 16g.......

Member Joined: 01 Dec 2006 Posts: 524

It has long been known the IC is a fantastic choice of choke for upland gunning as well as decoying ducks and even more. As I stated before, it can be very versatile even if you need it to be tighter, by load manipulation.
With some hot, hard shot you can get close to full choke performance out of it if needed.

Member Joined: 01 Dec 2006 Posts: 524

I am so glad I was able to sell that gun to a high quality person as you Duncan. Not only that, but I get to read about your journey with the Fox which hopefully turns out to be great. Can't wait to see a picture when she's all finished. Having to come to the reality neccesary to put that gun into the hands of someone that can shoot it, and appreciate it, was not easy for me.
But its much easier when you know and like the person to whom you sold it.

I have 5 boxes of Federal 1oz gameshok loads that I will send you if you want them. They worked well in that gun on quail and I have both 7 1 /2 and #6. I think 3 boxes of 7 1/2 and 2 boxes of #6. Will check a bit later today after my job hunting chores are over.