Just getting into five station and have a O/U with 26" barrels. What choke sizes are best for this sport and which barrels would they be installed? Thanks, Smoker

Smoker-

The truest answer would be to pattern your shotgun, and go with what looks like it's giving you the best results.

However, real world, I'd set up as below & see if you can find a load/brand/shot size that will shoot acceptably well for you through the given chokes.

If your shots are close, you can go Skeet & Skeet. If they're a little farther, go Skeet & I/C. If even longer, I/C & Modified.

All depends on how your "course" is set up.

Conventional wisdom has the tighter choke in the top barrel, with the barrel selector set to fire the bottom barrel first. Theory being, at least in the hunting fields, that your first shot will be closer than your second, usually going away, shot.

However, in sporting clays type environments, all bets are off on that theory. If you are very anal about everything, you can swap chokes at each set-up, to fit the conditions. However, it's very time consuming, and I'm not sure it makes enough difference to matter. If you feel a burning need to change something due to target presentation, you can always flip your barrel selector to fire in the reverse order, therby giving you a tighter choke first if your second shot happens to be an incomer, etc.

Anyway, what I usually do, is shoot everything with my gun set up with a Modified tube above an Improved Cylinder tube, just the way I do when I'm hunting. I find it to work just fine for about 95% of any reasonable shot that I would take in the field. And, at least in my case, the sporting clays stuff is nothing but practice for hunting, so why get too "fancy" when I don't often feel a need to change tubes in the field...

Hope this helps!

To more or less repeat the above advice, I'd use IC and IM if there are many quite long shots for 2nd birds. Otherwise IC/Mod may be your best choice.

Assuming your gun has selectors, you will find that if you use your top barrel for your first shot, normally your most open choke, you will have a very slightly faster recoil recovery because the barrel is more in line with the comb and comes back a little straighter. So, put your more open choke in the top barrel.

Also, this has the advantage in the field of substantially faster reloading for that not too uncommon occasion when you need a third shot. It is much faster to throw a shell in the top barrel, than in the bottom, again, assuming you are set up for and SHOT the top barrel first.