Choked barrel or not ?

Some of the most accurate airgun and 22lr barrels that I have had were choked, but I think that most would tell you that unchoked barrels are preferred for slugs. If you barrel is leading up quickly and affecting accuracy, you might want to try polishing the bore - spending a little extra time on the choked section. More importantly is matching the projectile to the barrel. There's a couple of calculators online for determining the projectile stability for a given barrel.
 
Nervoustrig, thank you for your input, I only shoot swaged hollowpoint slugs through my Condor and my pellet gun is a Bobcat 25 cal. The Bobcat is very accurate but I’m not that good of a shot in the wind at to long of distance so I thought I would increase my success eliminating ground squirrels with a more powerful pcp shooting bullets. When I got my Condor and tried Varmint Knockers 32.8 gr hollow-points I was amazed at the power of the Condor compared to my Bobcat and the bullets weren’t affected by the wind or barely affected in my shooting world. I have since purchased a variety pack from Nielsen but have not used them yet.
mtnGhost thank you for your input and to tell you the truth I don’t clean my barrel often so now that I’m staying home I’m going to clean that barrel over and over then see what that does for my accuracy. I have been thinking of purchasing a new barrel and having it professionally polished before I receive it. I’m not able to spend a lot so I was reaching out to the experienced Airgunners here for an answere to my question. Will replacing the stock barrel with a new unchoaked and polished barrel with no other improvements make my Condor more accurate. Also any suggestions where this would be purchased.

Thanks again for your input.
 
Experiences will vary on this but my conclusions are that a choked barrel will shoot a wider variety of pellets well, but its best pellet will not do better than an unchoked barrel will do with its best pellet.

I think I'm the perfect person to answer this question. This may be kinda long, so settle in. There's a lot of info around this subject. 

I own a highly modified AF Condor. I have multiple barrels for it. Here they are in no specific order:

1. Stock choked 24" LW barrel (1:17.7 twist) in .22 caliber

2. Stock choked 24" LW barrel (1:17.7 twist) in .25 caliber

3. Un-choked 24" LW barrel (1:17.7 twist) in .25 caliber

4. Un-choked 24" Russian Federation barrel (1:16 twist) in .22 caliber

5. Un-choked 24" Russian Federation Barrel (1:15 twist) in .252 caliber

So to answer your question, the barrel WILL INDEED accurately shoot multiple types of slugs. But you MUST tune your gun around the slug, and not vice versa. This has been an expensive lesson for me. Unfortunately, the only way to tune a stock Condor is using power wheel adjustments. This is a major disadvantage to competitive air rifles because unregulated guns are subject to the dreaded "bell curve" of velocities, while regulated guns have a very flat and consistent velocity. This equates to accuracy downrange.

The caveat of regulators is power limitations as a result of the size of the plenum (regulated air chamber side of the regulator). One of the things that makes the Condor such a power house is that it's not regulated. So essentially the bottle and a valve assembly are a giant plenum. But since the air going into them isn't regulated from a higher pressure source, the pressure drops after each shot. This equates to accuracy downrange. Regulated guns are ALWAYS more accurate when you look at the entire shot string. 

That being said..... Here are your options. You have 2, and one will definitely yield better results. But you need to be willing to make some adjustments to your valve assembly and power wheel settings. But either way you go, there's a primary step that you need to do. And that is you need to get a variety of slugs (perhaps a sample pack), and try shooting some groups with them (one at a time). Start with your power wheel set low (say 1 or 2) and shoot a group. Don't worry about sighting in the scope when you're trying to establish a group. You're just looking for group sizes. See if they tighten up with different velocities on different slugs. Chronograph the velocities while you're doing this. Shoot 4 or 5 shot groups. See if they get tighter or looser at different velocities. 

The absolute BEST way to tune your rifle around the slug is to regulate it. There are some really nice after market regulators for the Condor. There's Altaros, PCP Tunes, and the cheap eBay (Chinese) regulators. But keep in mind, the Condor is designed as a pellet rifle FIRST, not a slug gun. So even though the gun can shoot slugs with great power, the regulators were designed to accommodate the rifle set up to shoot pellets. And pellets require MUCH less power to send downrange because their "footprint" in the barrel is minimal compared to a slug. But PCP Tunes has 2 regulators that convert your gun into a regulated, slug slinging BEAST! They have the AF Condor Regulator (version 3) that has a larger plenum size than the V1 and the V2. It's also able to handle bottle pressures of 300 BAR and you can set the plenum pressure for up to 250 BAR. This is the regulator I use, and I have the reg pressure set at 220 BAR. This gives me 80 FPE using AVS 38gr .254 slugs. I'm pushing them 980fps. But PCP Tunes also has the regulator designed for the Texan. It has a much larger plenum. So at 150-160 BAR you can achieve the same velocities I'm getting at 220 BAR. This makes the air usage MUCH more efficient. 

Now you're going to get some people on here that might badmouth PCP Tunes, specifically the Texan regulator. Apparently there was a failure on one of the 1000 that have been sold. It's the only one that EVER failed, and the reasons for failure are subjective. However, Paul owned the failure, beefed up the platform, and came out with the V2 of the Texan regulator. If you're shooting .257 caliber or smaller, you will get efficiency and power equivalent to the Power Plenum in the FX air rifles. But I've never, ever had a single issue with anything I've bought from PCP Tunes. Paul is awesome, and he stands behind his products. 

But I recommend another regulator as well (in conjunction with the one that you keep on your gun). This is a regulator that every air rifle enthusiast should have in their arsenal. It's the following Huma reg: Externally Adjustable Inline PCP Regulator With Integrated Fillset. With this regulator that attaches straight to your scuba tank, you can tether it straight to your rifle and make external pressure adjustments to tweak your velocities. By using this regulator you can adjust the velocities by small incremental amounts to find out which velocity your slug likes the best. You can use this reg with your rifle unregulated to pinpoint velocities and try to match them with the power wheel settings, or match them with the regulator you keep on the rifle. 

Slugs do NOT perform like pellets. 10fps can be the difference between 2X's MOA and sub MOA groups. Once you find that ideal velocity with the Huma reg, you can set your other reg to match the average velocity. Pay no attention to the pressure. You're adjusting the pressure to achieve velocity, and slug stability within that velocity. 

So long story short, your stock, choked LW barrel can be extremely accurate, but you have to tune your gun around the slug. You'll spend a LOT of time and money if you try to tune the slug to the gun. I speak from experience. 

If you have any questions about Condor set-up, feel free to contact me. Send me a PM or email. 

I got my .25 un-choked LW barrel from RL Airgun Supply, but I don't think they're in business anymore. I couldn't open up their web page. My un-choked barrel is already threaded with 1/2-20 UNF threads to accept a moderator. If you're interested, I'd probably be willing to part ways with it. I have no need for it since I got my Russian Federation barrel. To be honest, I don't think I fired more that 100 rounds through it. This was in the infancy of my slug quest, and I thought my accuracy issues were a result of the barrel. So I went with the Russian Federation barrel with a faster twist. But looking back now, I realize the problem was I was trying to tune the slug to the gun, and not vice versa. 

Lastly, if you want to know a slug that shoots great from the choked LW barrel, it's the 48gr slug from MP-Molds. It's a boat tail design that has the footprint of a slug in the barrel. My longest kill shot with the slug was a 185 yard headshot on a ground squirrel. The beauty of the slug is you can buy the mold and pour them yourself. But you want to use pure soft lead. Air rifles have nowhere near the power that firearms have, so you want the footprint of the slug to malleable.