Major shotgun preparedness faux pas

JONOV

Old Mossy Horns
I'll admit to carrying a lot of "growing up opinion of family" with regards to chokes. Some of that 40+ years old.

About the only chokes I've patterned were for turkey and some open chokes on trench guns I was issued for social work.

I guess I'm falling victim to what the old folks told me as a kid, and maybe I need to get some big white paper and run it out to 30 or 40 yards and see exactly what I got?
Some of that is probably older than that, that's just when it was taught to you.

In college, having beers after trapshooting club, someone was talking about older, fixed choke guns being predominately full chokes. One pedagogue said, "that's all they needed. They were better shots back in the day."

To me, that didn't pass the smell test but what did I know?

Later on I was talking to a dealer of predominately English antique/classic shotguns. Most of his were choked full/full, full/extra full, mod/full...I asked if that was a function of the type of shooting they did. "Partially, but also the ammunition at the time." Basically the plastic wads that are ubiquitous in modern factory ammo make for a tighter pattern naturally than what was previously used.
 
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