Any opinions on poly chokes? Are they still around?

Yes, I have an opinion, and I'm sure that virtually everyone who messes with shotguns also has an opinion. My opinion is that the Polychoke was a curious anachronism a little akin to "see through" mounts for rifle scopes.

They were exceedingly popular for a period lasting up until the 1960's (both the "Polychoke" and the various similar adjustable chokes offered by gun manufacturers). They were also ugly, were often coupled with Cutts Compensators which blasted the ears of the shooter, and were inconsistent in the patterns they would produce.

I had one as a youngster on a Mossberg bolt action 20 gauge and would dial it up and down according to whatever I perceived my most likely next shot opportunity. One day I finally tried actually patterning it and found that certain settings would produce patterns with holes and dense spots, and that the "imp cyl" position shot better, more dense patterns than the "full" position.

Of course today they have largely been replaced with internal interchangable choke tubes, but I regard even choke tubes as inferior to a well-executed fixed choke (besides, they cause a lump at the end of the barrels in a properly thin-walled double or O/U.

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Of course today they have largely been replaced with internal interchangable choke tubes, but I regard even choke tubes as inferior to a well-executed fixed choke (besides, they cause a lump at the end of the barrels in a properly thin-walled double or O/U.

Tsk, tsk, tsk......do you roam with the local dinosaurs or are you still a lump of chemicals waiting for a lightning strike?

The proper term is "Luddite", thank you very much.

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Originally posted by Gatogordo:

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Of course today they have largely been replaced with internal interchangable choke tubes, but I regard even choke tubes as inferior to a well-executed fixed choke (besides, they cause a lump at the end of the barrels in a properly thin-walled double or O/U.

Tsk, tsk, tsk......do you roam with the local dinosaurs or are you still a lump of chemicals waiting for a lightning strike?

Would you buy a poly choke, Gato?

polychokes are still being made, which tells you that people are still adding them to guns... albeit probably older fixed choke guns. They also make screw in models that can make a newer gun have a variety of chokes at your finger tips....

I think they are sort of funny looking, but most who have used them, think they work great.

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Originally posted by wretch:

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Originally posted by Gatogordo:

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Of course today they have largely been replaced with internal interchangable choke tubes, but I regard even choke tubes as inferior to a well-executed fixed choke (besides, they cause a lump at the end of the barrels in a properly thin-walled double or O/U.

Tsk, tsk, tsk......do you roam with the local dinosaurs or are you still a lump of chemicals waiting for a lightning strike?

Would you buy a poly choke, Gato?

No, not normally. I have to close my left eye (left eye dominant, rt handed) and a dog nut on the end of the barrel tends to be distracting, I have shot them with no problem, but they're so ugly I avoid them unless it's really dark and I'm half drunk.....

In addition, I much prefer screw in chokes. I normally hunt almost everything with IC and IM in my 101 barrels. Close in birds with dogs or in very heavy cover, such as quail or wood cock I use mostly skeet and skeet or skeet and IC, always subject to local conditions, of course......for instance, windy days for quail, I'd go to something like IC and M. Pass shooting or backing up I usually use IM and full or full and extra-full depending on what and where I'm shooting.

I use a camo Benelli Nova with Mod choke most of the time around my ranch if I'm jump shooting ponds for mallards (I try not to shoot any ducks but mallard drakes, sometimes I will shoot grayducks (gadwalls) if I'm really looking for duck dinner), that third shot of the pump helps fill the bag many times. We're fortunate to have some great mallard timber hunting. In spite of that, I kind of hate a Mod choke, it's neither fish nor fowl but it works for that use.

BTW I've had very good luck with that Nova, been in and under water many times (lots of beaver runs around here, 8 inchs of water one step, over your head the next), shake it out and keep going. Spray it off when you get home and you're good until the next time. It has a 24 inch barrel.....I was going to buy a 26 but they had a special close out of the 24s for like $220, about $25 or $30 bucks cheaper than a 26 inch) when I bought it, so I figured with the receiver length a 24 was about the same as my 27 inch 101. Seems to have been a good choice for me. I was buying it basically for a truck gun for skunks, etc but I've grown pretty fond of it, I seem to shoot it pretty well.

I like 870s just as well, but I don't have any coated ones and the blue, and especially the express glass beaded models, tend to rust while you're looking at them.

I might have had some harsh words for Polychokes, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't use one. I killed my first dove triple with a friend's old Polychoked Model 11 Remington. It was quite a thrill and I can still remember the place where it happened and the circumstances. I did a quadruple on whitewings once in Mexico where there was no plug requirement (or if there was one, nobody enforced it.) Now, if Gato doesn't come back and tell us he's done a quint on doves, my faith in him as a shotgunner will be shaken

The only reason I can see for a polychoke would be if you have a barrel which is choked in a way that doesn't suit you. If that's the case, it would seem that installing interchangable choke tubes would be a much better alternative (yes, I use them, too; it's just that I still like a good fixed choke better!)

What was it that Quincy Down Under said as his antagonists lay on the ground riddled with bullets? Something like "I said I never had much use for a handgun, not that I didn't know how to use one."

Stonecreek:

Don't mislabel a favorite movie of mine! It was Quigley Down Under (not Quincy). (Always enjoyed the shots with the Sharps)

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Originally posted by Stonecreek:
I might have had some harsh words for Polychokes, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't use one. I killed my first dove triple with a friend's old Polychoked Model 11 Remington. It was quite a thrill and I can still remember the place where it happened and the circumstances. I did a quadruple on whitewings once in Mexico where there was no plug requirement (or if there was one, nobody enforced it.) Now, if Gato doesn't come back and tell us he's done a quint on doves, my faith in him as a shotgunner will be shaken

The only reason I can see for a polychoke would be if you have a barrel which is choked in a way that doesn't suit you. If that's the case, it would seem that installing interchangable choke tubes would be a much better alternative (yes, I use them, too; it's just that I still like a good fixed choke better!)

What was it that Quincy Down Under said as his antagonists lay on the ground riddled with bullets? Something like "I said I never had much use for a handgun, not that I didn't know how to use one."

Nope, I've never shot 5 doves in the manner that I would call a quintuple. Then again, I've never hunted doves with a gun that I could do that with EXCEPT for my very first trip hunting whitewings in Mexico when I was 13 and I sure didn't do it then. I shot a Browning Sweet 16 and I was a pretty tough kid, but my shoulder paid the price. However, it started me down a lifetime of bird shooting so it was wonderful. Ever since then I've hunted them with a double or in the states with a 3 shot limit. I've killed a few triples, but not many. Most of the time, I try to kill one and mark it down. I've spent way too much time in the famous head down marching position looking for dead doves that seem to disappear on a pool table. Seems like that happens EVERYTIME I shoot a double. I own and use labs but I'm not fond of taking them to any old dove hunt unless I know what the shade/water situation is in advance.

OTOH, I took a friendly wager one time in Argentina that I could run 90% for a case of shells. It was somewhat boring and quite difficult. Shoot one dove twice and you have to run 8 in a row. I made it with 451 doves, barely and it was touch and go there at the end when I really had to pick shots. Killing multiple birds with one shot didn't count, which is fairly easy down there at times. Most I recall having killed with one shot is 5 but that was just fooling around at lunch one time when groups were flying between two trees just below us. Killing mutiples with one shot is not my thing, I like to kill one with one shot, most shots. Like I said, when I was really shooting I always took the toughest spots in a field and I never kept averages but ran at least 60% come what may and I liked to shoot a lot of doves in the 70 yard range. I'm way out of practice for that now, rarely shoot a shotgun except for the occasional duck hunt. I had the great pleasure of watching my son shoot a Texas limit, 15, of doves when he was 12 in a good field not far from our ranch, so I suppose he could shoot a shotgun if I worked with him. I'm going to try to get us to the local skeet range to warm up a bit before long. Like everything, at least to me, the smaller things, even if you like to do them, just seem like more of a hassle as you get older.

I've killed 5 quail on a covey rise twice in Mexico using borrowed Berettas on Black Throated Bob Whites (big coveys), but that was unusual, I'm usually not fast enough for that, possibly because of the restricted vision due to closing one eye. And I sure wouldn't be fast enough now. My dead friend Rudy Etchen was well known for it but he could make an 870 sit up and beg for mercy.

It's a long story, but I was stuck riding to and from Mexico one time with a guy that MIGHT have stretched the truth......when he started telling me how he killed all those triples on a covey rise when he was a kid WITH A SINGLE SHOT I began to doubt his veracity just a tetch.....

I could go on and on about that trip, it had some really memorable moments when we smuggled a truck load of shells into Mexico, but the sum of it was that on the way back, as we got on the N side of Houston I told the driver, a good friend of mine,....... there were 3 of us in the truck.....to pull over and let me out at Houston Intercontinental......Why? he said......I said, "I can't stand it anymore.....I may kill him if I'm forced to listen to another 5 hours worth......let me out and I'll fly home." "Nope, you ain't leaving me alone with him"......so I drank some whisky which kind of made me nod off which probably saved the guy's life.....it was like Chinese water torture, the bullshit never let up.

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Originally posted by hikerbum:
polychokes are still being made, which tells you that people are still adding them to guns... albeit probably older fixed choke guns. They also make screw in models that can make a newer gun have a variety of chokes at your finger tips....

I don't like the idea of screw in because of Murphy's Law. I just know what is gonna happen when I am up to my knees (or deeper) in swamp water with chokes in my pocket. I'll lose them.

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I think they are sort of funny looking, but most who have used them, think they work great.

Lots of guys say that. As perverse as it sounds, I like their looks. Although my dad wasn't much of a shooter, he owned a pump 12 gauge with a poly choke and compensator. I've liked the look of them ever since. To each his own, eh?

Gerrypeters: Forgive me for mistyping "Quigley" -- I certainly know better.

Gato: 451 out of 500 trumps a quintuple on doves. You haven't disappointed me!

I'll be headed up to West Texas for Labor Day weekend. The dove prospects are pretty optimistic there this year (as I suspect they are in NE TX.) I've hunted beasts and birds in Africa, Mexico, Canada and sundry other locations, but a really good Texas dove hunt with friends and family is an experience that is as good as the best. Even if your gun has a Polychoke hung on the end of the barrel.

Stonecreek:

Don't want to leave you with the impresssion of being some kind of nitpicker. I agree totally with you about Polychokes -and I was around when they first came out. Another poster (If I could remember who, I would give the credit to him)correctly described them as looking like "a potato on the end of the barrel". Even at an early age, I always wanted a shotgun to "look right" and hence even screw in chokes (although a vast improvement in looks)didn't cut it with me either.

Nothing sucks more than to find a Browning A-5 Sweet 16 advertised for sale and then see pics of it with a damned polychoke.

Like putting a mustache on the Mona Lisa.

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Originally posted by Gerrypeters375:
Stonecreek:

Don't want to leave you with the impresssion of being some kind of nitpicker. I agree totally with you about Polychokes -and I was around when they first came out. Another poster (If I could remember who, I would give the credit to him)correctly described them as looking like "a potato on the end of the barrel". Even at an early age, I always wanted a shotgun to "look right" and hence even screw in chokes (although a vast improvement in looks)didn't cut it with me either.

Hey, I didn't take it as nitpicking! It is close to a cardinal sin to confuse Tom Selleck's character with some TV pathologist played by Jack Klugman!

I think that sometime during the 60's the appearance of the Polychoke somehow came to suggest power and sophistication to some shooters. The "upgraded" versions of shotguns seen in Sears Catalogs and at the Western Auto store always wore a Polychoke along with sporting a checkered stock, compared to the plain barrel and uncheckered stock of the "field" model. It was something of a passing fancy, but hung on for many years. My wife's grandfather and uncle ran a gun shop from some time in the early 20th century up until the 1960's, and I'll bet they installed hundreds, if not thousands, of Polychokes for shooters who wanted "the latest". The Lyman interchangable (protruding) choke tubes were also popular. They installed one (with a Cutts Compensator) on a Winchester Model 42 Skeet Grade, for gawd's sake, that I now own. A couple of years ago I was finally able to buy a replacement barrel made for the reproduction Browning to return the gun to some semblance of its former dignity.

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Originally posted by crowrifle:
Nothing sucks more than to find a Browning A-5 Sweet 16 advertised for sale and then see pics of it with a damned polychoke. Like putting a mustache on the Mona Lisa.

But it feels SOO GOO-OOD on your belly button ....