[John Davis]

Yes he did. And herein lies the genesis of the claim that Kimble "invented" choke boring in shotguns. His first choked bored muzzle loader was a 6 gauge Tonks. In 1879, J. W. Long published the revised and enlarged edition of his 1874 book, American Wild Fowl Shooting. In this edition, Long includes his version of the discovery of choke boring. Long tells the story of the wager he had with his good friend Fred Kimble to see who could come up with the closest shooting gun. When Kimble saw the results of the gun Long had found, he wrote to Long and said “Buy that gun, and send it to me sure.” Long did so “and that same act was a means of causing choke-bores to spread, as they never had spread before, even throughout the civilized world.” Long’s reference to “the civilized world” implies that it was Kimble’s gun which was responsible for spreading the word of choke-boring across the Atlantic. Joseph Long was an agent for Greener shotguns in America. Around 1874, Kimble’s 6-gauge, choke-bored shotgun was sent to W. W. Greener in England for testing and measuring. Thereafter, Greener claimed to have invented choke-boring as we know it today.


Now you've really got me missing EDM.