Pigeon

[trekmoor]

Pigeons are not the easiest of birds to shoot. I once fired 18 shots at them and only hit one bird ! That happened in gale force winds and the instant the pigeons saw me they just tilted a wing and were instantly several feet away from where the gun was pointing. I went home annoyed and thoroughly ashamed of my shooting !

At that same farm I once asked a friend out to shoot pigeons with me. We did not use decoys and we had no hide . We just crouched behind a wall and shot the pigeons as they flew over our heads to reach the long, narrow wood behind us. We were both shooting with 5 shot semi-autos and we both very quickly ran out of cartridges but by then we'd shot about 50 pigeons. We were just about to go home when the farmer appeared and was very pleased with what we'd shot.

He told us to stay in place while he brought us more cartridges ......he gave us 500 ! We banged away for the rest of the evening and ended up with 232 pigeons ! I had a lab back then and he was a very tired doggie by the time we went home ! I can still remember having shot 3 birds dead in the air at the same time.

The same man (we were about 19 at the time) once took me shooting pigeons and we made bale hides on top of big, square shaped , haystacks. Stuart shot one bird then at once swung onto a second one. The first pigeon he'd shot plummeted straight down into his face and knocked him right off the top of the haystack ! Once I knew he was O.K. I couldn't stop laughing even though he didn't find it at all funny. The pigeon had given him a beauty of a black eye !

Wullie

[ips]

Ha, a great read wullie
No they are not easy at all, i havent counted my empties yet but we both missed as many as we hit so i reckon i finished on 11 for at least 60. Unlike sundays outing we were in the same hide taking turns to shoot first and the other mopping up, great fun and we soon got a system going. We had the hide set up around a tree, dave shooting one side and me the other at one point he was taking a low bird in front of me (he was on my left sat down) just as a bird came in high to his left so i stood up and shot over his head, it was all highly orchestrated and great fun
My first shot yesterday was an incoming and nearly landed in the hide then a bird came right into to the decoys dropping like a stone i killed it stone dead with one shot four foot of the ground and a good thirty five yards. Dave turned to me and said "i thought you said you couldnt shoot" in reference to me having told him that i was really a trap shooter and not very proficient at game and stuff ...it was a nice compliment but after that much barracking ensued following misses from both of us
I reckon from a shooting perspective pigeon is the best sport.

[trekmoor]

When I went shooting with Stuart we were always a bit competitive. We were both about eaksy peaksy with shotguns and I was a better rifle shot than him while he was far better with a pistol than I was. Pistol shooting, which had to be done on actual ranges and which was closely supervised , never did interest me much. Neither did any other kind of target shooting.... I only shot at targets when I was ranging in a rifle.

Stuart and I were in the same class at school and we did quite a lot of things together including chasing the dolly birds back in the sixties !

We both got shotguns just as soon as we were legally able to have them and we both promptly became "marsh cowboys." Neither of us knew anyone who went shooting , we did our learning as we went along.

Stuart read a book which described digging "graves" on the foreshore from which the occupant of the grave could quickly sit up from his totally prone position in order to shoot passing ducks. We used to go wildfowling at a place called "Cramond" on the outskirts of Edinburgh on the Forth estuary. We went there on Stuarts old banger of a motorbike armed with the shotguns and with old army surplus trenching tools. We arrived on the beach in complete darkness and dug ourselves a grave each about 20 -30 yards apart. Then we waited for first light and the ducks while lying flat on our backs in the very wet sand.

Two mallards flew near Stuart and he downed one of them and took it back to his grave ....we had no dog. Then the competitive stuff came into play. He'd placed the duck behind his head to act as a pillow and to rub in the fact that he'd shot a duck and I had not , he kept taunting me about how comfortable his "pillow" was. Then after maybe 10 minutes I heard him say...." Oh ! Oh you barsteward !" so I sat up in my grave to see what was wrong.

His head was shuddering and shaking and he continued to make funny noises and to issue cuss words. The duck he'd shot had probably only had one or two of the lead shot clip it's bill. Enough to knock it stone cold for a while but not dead. That duck now erupted from behind his head and promptly took to the air and buggered off ! He could not turn around in the grave to take a shot at the fast departing duck and it escaped.

I exploded with laughter and then I began the long and very enjoyable business of taking the p*ss out of him ! Stuart liked a good laugh but his sense of humour was always somewhat lacking when he was the butt of the laughter .....which made me laugh all the more ! Ours was almost a love/hate sort of relationship.

Wullie

[ips]

Brilliant
I bet your memoirs would be a fantastic read, you should write a book of short stories / anecdotes

PS
My new mate and i concluded yesterday that every time we poured ourselves a brew from the flask, birds came in so from then on one poured a brew and one remained ready. Later it became apparent that if we got the crackers and cheese out lots of birds came in. So, the rest of the day was spent having a brew in order to entice them in during quiet times and if that didnt work it became a cracker moment. I really cant see a better way to spend your day than being in a hide with your dog and having a good laugh with a good pal. Why oh why did i not find all this fun stuff when I was younger instead of spending nearly every weekend travelling the UK shooting inedible clay discs...the amount of things i have done in the last three years as a direct result of having a gundog is quite incredible

[CockerCanuck]

Brilliant
I bet your memoirs would be a fantastic read, you should write a book of short stories / anecdotes

PS
My new mate and i concluded yesterday that every time we poured ourselves a brew from the flask, birds came in so from then on one poured a brew and one remained ready. Later it became apparent that if we got the crackers and cheese out lots of birds came in. So, the rest of the day was spent having a brew in order to entice them in during quiet times and if that didnt work it became a cracker moment. I really cant see a better way to spend your day than being in a hide with your dog and having a good laugh with a good pal. Why oh why did i not find all this fun stuff when I was younger instead of spending nearly every weekend travelling the UK shooting inedible clay discs...the amount of things i have done in the last three years as a direct result of having a gundog is quite incredible

Ips it sounds exactly like a day in a duck boat/blind with a good dog and a good friend. If pigeons are like ducks you will find the absolute guarantee for birds to come is when you step out of the blind to releave the bladder pressure brought on by the "brew".

[trekmoor]

You should just stay where you are and pee doon yer trooser legs like us civilised Scots do . I have a theory that doing this is traditional and is due to us Scots once wearing kilts that allowed you to pee anywhere, anytime !

I'm sure the reason the English are a soor faced lot is because they didnae wear kilts and always had to haud their pee in .....nae wunner they developed stiff upper lips !

Wullie

[ips]

Had a day pigeon shooting yesterday, i set hide up in a wood and decoyed some recently sown barley. Had some good shots but seemed to miss every bird that on paper was not missable, how does that work anyway enough of the shooting.
Eze is now very happy in the hide eagerly awaiting a retrieve with no sign of gun sensitivity however two issues have developed.
1 - her handling on blinds has gone to pot, she goes were she thinks it is rather than following my directions, this is strange because she has until recently handled quite well.
2 - she isnt picking the bird cleanly she is mouthing it a bit not every time but quite often. This isnt good (obviously) because occasionally the bird is showing signs of damage as in breast skin ripped a bit. She has retrieved a few runners now so i am thinking that is possibly to blame in some way.

Any input or advice on either matter ?

[Judy]

Is your handling becoming more casual?

[ips]

Is your handling becoming more casual?

Um, honest answer "i am not sure, certainly not aware of it" its as though she thinks she knows were it is, usually in the area of the decoys or so she assumes. Just runs around looking, she stops and looks for instructions but doesnt follow my direction. Probably sloppy handling on my part.
On the plus side she hasnt done the drop bird outside the pen thing lately. On sunday i was set up in a wood so she had to get through the fence and find her way back, which she did so we are learning on the job so to speak.

This was our setup on sunday.

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[trekmoor]

Some dogs just do not pick woodpigeons up "cleanly" and if they do not they get mouthfuls of loose feathers which can make dogs even more likely to not do a clean pick-up .....the result of this can give the appearance of being hard mouthed or the dog may become hard mouthed.

Most young dogs learn by experience that they don't get a gob full of loose feathers if they do a clean pick and then start to do clean pick ups but some dogs don't seem to learn this lesson. Those dogs may begin to semi pluck birds prior to retrieving them.

You could try putting a few fresh shot pigeons into little lengths of your wife's tights leaving the head and tail out. This might give the dog the idea that a good, clean , pick up around the birds body is the best way to go but I wouldn't want to bet on it .....might be worth a try though .

Wullie