Choke suggestion...
 

Just got my wife a Mossberg 500 Bantam 20 ga. It has a 22" barrel. She will be taking it dove hunting in the coming days, and I wondered what the opinion of some of you would be as to what choke should be used with the shorter barrel. Modified or improved cylinder? Thanks in advance for any input.

Just pattern it at 30yds with both and go from there.

....and there you have it ! :confused0024:

how good of a shot are you? i made the mistake of not changing my choke once grouse hunting. i dont shoot clays that much and had in a full. big mistake. i would got improved cylinder.

I'd recommend the mod. choke especially for a 20ga and with a child/wife or beginner shooter (forgive me for the assumption, you're wife might be the state skeet champ but I'd assume you then wouldn't be asking) I'd also stick with 7.5 or 8 shot. 9 takes some solid shooting to reliably drop birds all day. Nothing worse than having occasional hits fly 100-200yds away and dropping in the woods. #9s, IC choke, 12ga in the hands of a good shooter IS great, but we're not talking about that here are we?

Good luck,
HL

She is not a state skeet champion, but not a bottom of the barrel beginner either. She has killed some doves in the past, but always using a 12 ga of mine. After getting tired of the recoil she decided to step down a bit. She likes a shorter gun, which is why we got the Bantam. After patterning a few shots yesterday I feel the modified may be the best option...little difference. Main reason for asking is that I have never done any wing-shooting with a barrel shorter than 28" and with this one being 22" I wanted to feel out what experience others may have had with a similar setup. Thanks for the input! Got 4 boxes of #8's shot sitting in the truck ready for her to shoot at some birds this evening!

Go with the improved cylinder i think.

For doves, improved cylinder and #8 shot.
BTW the barrel length has nothing to do with choke. The amount of choke in a shotgun is determined by the percentage of shot it can put into a 30" circle at 40 yds.
But that being said, I have had some shotguns actually shoot a tighter pattern with turkey loads using a full choke than with an xtra full choke.

Im gonna go against the grain here.. Dove hunting is my passion and I have been doing it for over 30 years... When I go dove hunting I load up the skeet choke. I rarely pack anything over a 20 guage and I use either 6, 7 or 71/2 shot.. Dove are not big tough birds, one or two pellets is enough to bring them down.. Most of my shots are close, fast shots where a bigger pattern is desired, but I can reach out and touch them also..

Bernie P. has it. Just for grins, sketch out a "dove" and try at 30 yards. I'd go with whatever puts a good number of BB's in the bird .... try 3", No. 8 and No. 7 1/2.

I'll throw my own twist on the conversation...

How and where you will hunt will also effect what barrel length and choke combo you choose. If you're hunting in pretty dense marshland edges with good cover and high populations, your average shot may be 20yrds on low flying birds. If you're hunting open ground, or over prairie ponds, trying to catch fast and high flyers, it might demand much longer shots. Obviously, the shot, barrel length, and choke you use to take down a "settling" dove at 20yrds will be different than what you need to knock down a high flyer at 40-50yrds.

Personally, I prefer to have dense shot patterns so I can reach out farther. For me, yes, it makes the close shots a little harder, since the spread is smaller, but the target is closer, so it's also easier to hit and appears "bigger", and then my pattern will still be dense enough at longer ranges to put shot to feather. Even if I miss a close range shot (doesn't happen much, but let's just say...), the dove will be flying AWAY, so if it's too dense up close, the spread will let me pick them up on the way out. So my method is to shoot a lower number shot with a tighter choke, and longer barrel. I usually hunt with 6's or 7.5's, a 12ga 3" and 26" barrel and mod choke. I also tend to hunt over prairie ponds without good cover, and the dove don't typically get very close.

At the other end of the spectrum, some shooters prefer to have a wider spread, to make the close shots easy. My problem with this method is that the lighter shot doesn't hold energy as well, and the wide shot patterns mean your range is significantly shortened. Shooting 9's from a cylinder bore and a 22" barrel might make those shots "right at the end of your barrel" easier, but you CANNOT reach down range very far before your group opens up and your shot looses energy.

So you kinda have to choose where on that continuum you want to fall. Hand throw a few clays low, close, and fast across her some time, and see how well she picks them up. If she's getting a lot of misses, swap up shot numbers or chokes to open her pattern and see if that improves her hit percentages. Then see how well that combo performs at longer ranges. If the combo she feels good with at 20yrds works well at 40yrds, then you're set. If the good 20yrd combo isn't breaking clays at 40yrds, then you'll have to find a compromise in between.