Chokes and Beads
This isn’t an uber-technical column where I go through #choke constrictions by the millimeter and tell you thread sizes for front #beads. It’s a more an overview of what chokes you need so that you’re comfortable with what you have in your gun. Along the way I’ll cover some basics on what the beads are for on the front of your #shotgun.
Choke tubes are threaded cylinders that screw into the front end of the shotgun barrel and determine the openness or tightness of the spread of “shot” (the BBs) when fired. The typical range—starting with the most open pattern and moving toward tighter patterns—is Cylinder, Skeet, Improved Cylinder, Light Modified, Modified, Improved Modified, Light Full, Full and Extra Full. Some manufacturers (Fabarm, for one) use different terminology, but for the most part these names are the industry standard. Remember to clean your chokes regularly, and use adequate grease to ensure they don’t rust or get stuck (it happens more often than you think). Caesar Guerini also provides a choke wrench with its guns, as well as a choke thread cleaner, which can be used by just screwing off the top and twisting it into the threads. Briley makes a syringe of blue grease that is great for applying a thin line of grease before you screw your chokes back into your gun.
In addition to the chokes at the front of the barrel, there are also front beads. To bead or not to bead…that is the question. For pistol and rifle shooters, lining up the beads to shoot is required to get the bullet where you’re looking. But for shotgun, we don’t “aim” the gun, we “point” the gun. When you are mounting the gun for fit and to see where your eye lines up with the barrel, it’s very important to see how the bead(s) line up. If you have a mid-bead, they should look like a figure 8, with the front bead on the top. If there’s no mid-bead, the front bead is more of a reference point. Once you’re out shooting clay targets or real birds, you’re not supposed to look at your gun, you’re supposed to look at the target. So at that point, you really don’t need a front bead. Your eyes cannot focus on two things at two distances at once, so if they are looking at the end of your shotgun, they can’t focus on a target 30 yards away. If you start by looking at the target, and then are pulled back to look the barrel (by your fiber-optic bead), it drastically reduces your chances of hitting the target, since when you look at the gun, you slow down the movement of your barrel while the target is still moving forward.
