Lion21,

From what I understand the Sterling Skeet guns are nice Box lock guns and pretty well built. However J.P. Sauer & Sohn makes better pre war side Lock double guns, for very reasonable money. I am not bashing the Sterling Skeet gun they are nice box lock guns, however IMO the J.P. Sauer Best Side Lock guns are what a man should be purchasing, if he can afford to due so.

Hope you like your new gun.

all the best,

Pine Creek/Dave
L.C. Smith Man


Late 1800's J.P. Sauer & Sohn 16 gauge Best Side Lock Grouse Gun. French Walnut Wood, DT, Krupp 28" Barrels, chambered for 2 1/2" shells, built on a Pre War 20 Gauge Sauer frame. I love Grouse hunting with this 16 Gauge J.P. Sauer double gun.

Tula chokes, in my opinion, are basically an idea that should not have happened. The market place also agrees with me on this, because I don't know of anyone still making them. A Russian won the olympics with Tula chokes once upon a time, and everyone thought they may have something there. So a few companies made guns with this completely useless expensive idea. They worked no better than a cylinder bore barrel, and cost a lot more. The Russian would have won with cylinder bore barrels also, it made no difference.

The back story, some Russians competed somewhere once upon a time and some American was using a Cutts compensater on his gun. He shot really good, and the Russians were intrigued. They bought the gun from the American, then they hack sawed the barrel off and gave the gun back. They took that hacksawed barrel back to Russia and studied it. Then they made some guns that had the end of the barrel somewhat similar, and that was the Tula choke. It was about 3 inches of barrel near the muzzle where the diameter expanded way over bore size then restricted down to almost bore size at the muzzle. It sort gave the dimensions of a Cutts compensator. It really did very little. It might have made the gun more quiet, because it resembled a silencer but with only one baffle and it might have cut down recoil because the explosion hitting the forward rim of the compensator does that. Other than that, it probably did nothing a cylinder bore would not do. It did not choke, but hey, in those days, they used 1 1/8 ounce of number 9s in a 12 ga skeet load, and who needs choke throwing a pattern like that.

In my opinion, a gun with Tula chokes is a good conversion piece and will shoot good skeet, at least with big American size loads, 1 and 1/8th ounce, but then so would a Mossberg 500 with a cylinder bore.

From a post on shotgunforums in August of 2020

https://www.shotgunforums.com/forums/sh ... hoked.html


Now the post shows up here, sounds to me like someone
is trying to sell this gun, and not finding any buyers.

Look up the post history for Lion21 that started this thread. Troll