I don’t think this gun was ever a rifled choke gun ( would to have to have been made after 1900) or a dedicated ball and shotgun as it left the factory. The Tolley catalogue indicates their 10 bore Ubique weighs 12 lbs. Rifled choke barrels, particularly on a big bore are heavy. A rifled choke 8 bore gun with 34” barrels would have left the factory weighing more than 15Lbs. I guess it is possible that the barrels have been altered internally but with the barrel length the emphasis with this gun would have been on wildfowling first anything else secondary. The documented ball guns (post 1878) I have seen all have had original barrel lengths less than 28” and were heavy, some as heavy as rifles of the same bore. This is a great old big bore and I would be proud to have it but it is what it is.
I would like to plug Donald Dallas’s The British Sporting Gun and Rifle; an excerpt;