In all the public London trials of guns the patterns of cylinders have not averaged as high as 100 pellets of No. 6 in the 30 inch circle at 40 yards range. With 1¼ oz. of No. 6, of 270 pellets to the ounce, about 250 pellets in the same circle have been frequently obtained at the same 40 yards range from choke bores. But the majority of guns sold as cylinders now will put as many as 120 pellets in the circle, and the author has seen one of Holland’s put 160 pellets in that circle. In this gun there was no noticeable choke bore when a barrel gauge was used at all distances within 8 inches of the muzzle. The author did not attempt further to learn how this barrel was bored, and it would not be fair to expose it if he knew, which is not the case. But now that the principle of boring is well understood, there appear to be several methods by which a similar result would be possible. The barrels are known to stretch very considerably under the pressure of the powder-gas, and consequently any treatment of the barrels at the muzzles that would prevent them stretching with the rest of the barrel would act, more or less, like a modified choke. This might be done perhaps by an external thickening of the barrel, or by a hardening of the metal just at the right spot.
However, to prefer a cylinder that gives a high pattern to a modified choke bore that does the same, is only a fad. The former is difficult to obtain, and the latter is everywhere; and it is not the modified choke that so often is made to shoot untrue to centre, but the full choke.
The disadvantage of the choke-bore pattern is that it may plaster the game at distances nearer than the cylinder does. To compare the two patterns made at 20 yards, it is difficult to believe that the choke is almost as free from plastering as the cylinder. As a matter of fact there are several reasons for the well-known surprise that it does not often plaster feathered game.
The birds are not often coming straight at the gun nor going quite straight away from it, and any tendency to cross the line of aim is equivalent to allowing the game some benefit for any slight inaccuracy of timing the shot, and any wrong allowance in front. For instance, perhaps 5 inches too much allowance in front, with otherwise correct timing, at 20 yards, might very well allow half the shot column to go past a slow bird before he flew into the remainder of the shot column, which would be equivalent to shooting at a motionless bird with only half the pattern.
On the other hand, a very fast bird may fly right through the shot column before more than half of it has passed his line of flight. When the bird is caught by the centre of the head of the column at 20 yards range, he has but 10 inches to fly to get out of the line of flight of the shot from a full choke bore. The last pellets in the load will not be travelling more than 700 feet per second, and fast game is often going at 100 feet per second and more, although newly started game in still air may not often exceed 60 feet per second. But probably the real reason why good shots especially do not plaster their game at near distances is that they always shoot well in front, with a view to hitting only in the head and neck. At short range the slowest pellets are quite equal to killing whenever they hit straight for a vital part, exposed or otherwise. A shot aimed well forward with the intention of almost missing, by premature arrival of the pellets on the line of the bird’s flight, is almost sure to result in the cleanest kind of kill, brought about by two or three shot pellets in the head and neck and none anywhere else.
This also is often accomplished even at long distances, but not in the same way. Then the shot that succeeds must be well timed to get the bird’s body into the thickest of the pellets, and one of the reasons why the body is not plastered is that from most angles of impact, on a coming bird, the body shots glance off, and only the head, neck, and wing shots tell. The only great chance of smashing winged game that occurs is in near shots at going-away game, and then, whether a man holds a cylinder or a choke bore, he will assuredly give lots of “law,” even if, in doing so, the game passes out of sight.
There is an idea that the killing circle from a gun can be mapped out by geometric progression. That is to say, that if lines are drawn from the muzzle to the extremity of a 40 inch circle at 40 yards, you will be able to measure off, or calculate, the killing circle for straight-away game at any distance. That is not so. At the nearer distances the size of the killing circle is regulated by the pellets that, at 40 yards, are outside of it altogether. There they are too thinly scattered to count for chances. Thus the killing circle of a cylinder and of a full choke have no relationship to each other, or to geometric progression of the spread of pellets for each distance.
The author has measured many patterns at different distances, and he believes that the following table shows very truly the diameters of the killing circles covered, on the basis of that pattern which was regarded as thick enough to kill game in the cylinder days. That is to say, the latter sort of gun was tried at 40 yards where it spread fairly evenly over a 40 inch circle. But its proper distance was 30 yards, and at that range nothing else at any other distance gives the shooter an equal chance with No. 6 shot.
| For Still, or Straight Away, or Straight Coming Game. The Size of the Killing Circle based on a Minimum 100 Pellets in a Circle of 30 inch Diameter | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Description of gun and size of shot. | At 20 yards. | At 30 yards. | At 40 yards. | At 50 yards. | At 60 yards. |
| Cylinder and No. 6 shot. | 22 in. A | 35 in. A | 40 in. B | none | ... |
| Even spreading choke bore and No. 6 shot | 20 in. A | 26 in. A | 30 in. B | 37½ in. C | 45 in. C |
| Centre clustering choke bore and No. 6 shot | 20 in. A | 25 in. A | 28 in. B | 34 in. C | 40 in. C |
| Cylinder and No. 5 shot | 21 in. A | 34 in. A | none | ... | |
| Even spreading choke bore and No. 5 shot | 19 in. A | 25 in. A | 30 in. A | 37½ in. B | none |
| Central clustering choke bore and No. 5 shot | 19 in. A | 24 in. A | 27 in. A | 35 in. B | none |
In the above table each circle of shot has been marked with a reference letter, which is intended to imply—