Choke
 

I am curious a friend of mine has 16 gauge where the Parker letter states that one of the barrels is choked to shoot close. I have not measured the chokes yet, but what did this statement normally mean?

Phil, That would mean full choke.

Thanks Dave I was just not sure. Interesting as it seems like chokes were referred to or ordered several ways. Some of my Parker's state the choke by today's common standard for example full and full, this same gun was sent back to Parker to 5 years later to have the right barrel rebored to shoot BB's. My 8 gauge hammer gun had a request to pattern with "Goose shot", no choke mentioned.

Phil:
You are close to the proper answer yourself. "Shoot close" does not always mean full choke. It means adjusting the choke constriction to pattern a selected shot size densely and evenly. That may result in virtually any constriction from IC to XFull... depending on the circumstances at hand. But in general, "Full" indeed shoots close with most sporting birdshot sizes.

My CH Bernard gun, the "Charleston Gun" was ordered to "Shoot Buckshot" in the long barrels. I can't wait to shoot a pattern with buckshot to see what it will do.

Why does this seem to me to be bassakwards. If I wanted a gun to shoot close, to me that means close shots and thus I would want cyl or IC. Conversely, a gun to shoot long/far would be Full choke. Probably just the terminology of the time period.

Bill I picked up a dozen Original Remington 00 buck shot brass shells this weekend at a local gun show. If you have the desire to try some shells I will send you a half dozen to try.