Best all round shotgun barrel length and choke

[RC51kid]

I am new to shotguns for sporting uses. I have only owned them for HD. I came into a older Remington Model 11 that I am fixing up and would like to have it as an option to hunt with. It came with two barrels, a 19" and a 30" full choke. I will keep the shorter barrel for HD and times I need a short barrel. I am will to get them shortened and threaded for chokes if I need to. The 19" barrel will probably get threaded since it was cut down and is now cylinder bore.

I would like to use the longer one for a little of everything if possible. Some casual trap shooting, turkey, some small game like rabbit or squirrel and maybe a little pheasant or grouse. I would also like to be able to use the shotgun as an option for coyote if I call them in close. But I imagine that I could use the shorter 19" barrel for this if I get it threaded for chokes which I will probably do. I dont plan on shooting ducks at this time.

What would be the best barrel length and choke for the longer barrel to do all of that? I know this is the bird hunting forum and I am asking about hunting some "non birds". But I figure you guys know the most about shotguns.

 

[Slickhill]

I would leave the 30” full barrel alone and hunt birds with it. I would leave the cut barrel cylinder bored as well. You could buy a lot of shells to practice with or have the money towards a new shotgun for what it’s going to cost to have thinwall tubes put in the two barrels.

I don’t get overly worked up about choke in a bird gun. In the past week I’ve shot multiple limits of doves with a Mod choked Ithaca 37/16ga, a F/XF choked Merkel double, and a Cyl 20ga Win M50 that someone cut the choked section off the barrel somewhere back down the road. In all of that there could have maybe been a bird or two that I would have killed if I’d had a tighter choke, or maybe a bird I would have hit with a little more open choke, but not many. Practice until you can consistently center the bird/clay in the pattern and then you might want something with changeable chokes to fine tune things.

A couple generations of our ancestors hunted with fixed chokes and never gave it a thought. With the invention of the external adjustable chokes followed by screw ins it became a must have, mainly because the people selling them said so.