Can chokes be opened by shooting over many years?

[Richard Flanders]

I have a now 87? yr old lady duck hunter friend who shot the choke clean out of an Ithaca Mod 37, but she was using steel shot. She had a screw in choke installed and kept on shooting.

[Double Lab]

Shooting even a gadzillion loads through a gun will not "wear out" the chokes. Is this gun still on face Tom? That would wear first.

To establish the "choke" for the gun you would have to take the choke diameter then subtract it from the bore diameter and then pattern it on paper. Remember that the loads that the gun was patterned with are vastly different from the loads commercially available today. Unless you reload with fiber, filler or overshot wads the plastic shotcups and modern powders that most of us use are going to give you a totally different result. And yes the Galazan type plug gauge only measures the very end of the muzzle and they can be way off.

Best advice is to take it out and shoot some targets with it Tom. The proof is in the pudding. If it breaks targets hard on the skeet field then you got choke. If not someone has reamed the chokes. We don't live that far from each other Tom, contact me and I'd be happy to measure the gun for you and just maybe we could shoot a few targets just for the fun of it.

[10 bore]

shoot it at paper, I think you will find if it was F and M it still will be if it in deed hasn't been touched. I shoot a lot of patterns and find with "opened choked " guns shoot tighter than they constriction say what they "should be". I have shot 12 ga guns with .013 of choke and get 60%, (mod) but should be closer to imp cyl, Try at test pattern at 40 yds and that will tell all.
scott