A choke sits inside the tip of your shotgun barrel and constricts the pellets as they leave your gun.Ĭonstricting the pellets allows them to be more tightly grouped for longer distances and carry a greater amount of energy down range. There are a lot of scenarios where a hunter can find herself farther than 30 yards from her quarry, and thus chokes were invented. This design is nice and simple, but it means that beyond about 30 yards the spread of the shot was hard to predict. The insides of their barrels are smooth and historically (like pre-1870) were the same inner diameter all the way along their length.
#Shoot the tube full
Shotguns designed to shoot shot shells full of pellets do not have rifled barrels. Having the bullet spin allows it to fly straighter and farther, think about throwing a football.
That means that all along the inside of the barrel there are swirling grooves that cause the bullet to be rotating as it exits the gun and thus as it travels towards the target. But let’s back up a bit, why do chokes even exist? Rifles and some shotguns (that shoot bullets called slugs) have ‘rifled’ barrels. There are also ‘Poly-Chokes’ which are installed by a gunsmith on the end of your gun and can be set to different constrictions by twisting them. Mostly these days this is only the case with. If your gun has a fixed choke, the constriction will be printed on the barrel somewhere.
All shotguns have a choke tube, some are fixed into the end of the barrel (called a fixed choke) but more commonly today they are easily interchanged by twisting (unthreading) them. These are not universal rules and may not apply to you, but wise to consider when trying to asses a shotgun. Women generally have shorter arms than men so ‘compact’ or shorter stock lengths may provide a better fit. Another big thing to pay attention to relative to fit is the length of the stock.
The moment you want to take a shot is not the moment when you want your arms to be shaking or cramping so I’d say pump some iron, or buy a gun that you can shoulder repeatedly with ease. As a woman it can be a big benefit to have a shotgun that is comparatively light weight, especially if you are carrying it for long periods of time, as is often the case when turkey hunting. I spent too many years trying to harvest small game with a shotgun that was too long for me and could’ve avoided a lot of heartache by getting a gun that fit me appropriately sooner. Not a gun that your husband or father thinks is the right gun for you, but a gun that you actually feel comfortable shouldering and that doesn’t require you to contort yourself unnaturally to see down the sights. I would also like to point out that potentially more important than all of these factors is that you have a gun that fits. I’m focusing mainly on chokes tubes (or “chokes”) here, but all of the above factors should be considered when you’re trying to determine the best way to set your gun up for harvesting a turkey. Your choke tube (common tubes are: improved cylinder, modified, improved modified, full, extra full and turkey).Gauge of your gun (common gauges are 10, 12 and 20).Shell length (common lengths are 2.5, 3 and 3.5 inches).4, 5 or 6 shot – pellet size inside of the shot shell – 4 would be the biggest in this lineup) Type of shot (steel, lead, tungsten, etc.).There are a lot of factors that play into how all of those little pellets look when they leave your barrel and how they look (as a group) when they reach your target. Not to mention a bullet of almost any size could do a lot of damage to smaller and more delicate animals, destroying the meat you worked so hard to harvest. Shotguns are often used for small game like ducks and squirrel because shooting many small pellets means you are more likely to hit a small target than if you were shooting a single bullet. By Ashley Chance, Southeast Regional Coordinator
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