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Pigeon Magnet, or repellant !!


Towngun
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PIGEON MAGNET OR REPELLENT!

 

Air Pros, Turbo Flappers, hypa flappers and magnets beware!

In 1988 John Batley (The Great Pigeon Ambassador) noticed that during the editing of video footage, rapid wing beats were a precursor to an escape. Approaching birds would turn away when seeing rapid wing movements. If you watch a natural flock then rapid movemnt is very short lived and then the bird settles! John explains in his excellent book* that if a bird was shot and fell to the ground, thereafter still then the second bird would keep coming into the pattern. The moral is rapid movement means danger. This makes sense even if you are not a pigeon! This does not mean that you should not have movement but it does mean you should not have too much movement. If you use a Turbo Flapper, use a timer or a remote control and limit the wing beats. If you accept this view (based on slow motion filming) then a Pigeon Magnet becomes a Pigeon Repellent. I wonder if anyone has considered using a timer on a pigeon magnet i.e. two of three spins and three times as long paused? If anyone tries this please report back.

 

* "The Pigeon Shooter" 2nd Edition by John Batley

Edited by Towngun
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A bird flaps rapid before both landing and taking off ,have used flappers with and with out timers it all depends on the birds to weather they flare or not .Ive also had a timer on a rotary and found it not to work i tried it 3 times over 3 days with no luck on any of the days and far to much flaring :good:

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When used in a pattern I have always though to a pigeons eye it presents a picture of a stream of pigeons comming into the decoys. The same as when you see a pigeon drop into a feed followed by a couple and then for a few mins a stream of birds dropping in.

 

I shoot in a lightly shot area and always start out with a magnet. 9 times out of ten they work very well , but I have found on occasion , usualy on a stubble they put off the birds. The answer is simple , switch the magnet off and use it as a bouncer. I also find at times th birds become shyer of it as the day wears on. I suspect by mid afternoon you are getting birds that have already tried to decoy a few times during the day and been shot at. Likewise sometimes a magnet works well for several hours and then the pigeons switch off it for an hour or two only to switch back on later. Probably that has something to do with the angle of light hitting it , possibly causing a flash from a moving part . Indeed the other day all the pigeons I saw comming into the decoys and magnet from the left decoyed well while others passing 100 yards to the right ignored it. It was a sunny day and again i think that was due to the angle sunlight was hitting the magnet.

 

As for rapid wing beats , I find a magnet works better it the rotations are about once every 2-3 seconds. Any slower and the birds ignore it.

Edited by anser2
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A lot of things in pigeon shooting seem to have changed in the last 24 years, but I agree that frantic flapping on the ground is not "normal" behaviour.

 

My flapper is on a timer and slowly flaps two or three times and then stops.

I don't believe a rotary creates the same problem as frantic flapping at ground level.

I have never used a timer on a rotary and can't think it would serve any useful purpose to do so.

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I agree with Cranfield.

 

An excess of white wing bar flashing might serve to alarm incoming birds but the wings on my rotary are fixed and appear from a distance to be a bird gliding in to land and appear not to give off any alarm signals although I can offer no explanation as to why they sometimes fail to work.

 

Having said that I can think of occasions when I`ve watched hundreds of pigeons clambering around on well grown peas using their wings to assist their climbing and the peas have looked like a sea of flashing white wing bars. Far from making incoming birds cautious this exaggerated level of flapping,movement and white wing bars only serves to attract others with even greater abandon.

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Yes TownGun you are correctamundo in your theory.

BUT there is absolutely no point in fitting a timer to a rotary machine, it would still partly be a repellant because basically whilst you can switch a machine on and off the pigeon traffic is unpredictable.

People mess about with flappers and other deterrants, in and close to static deeks, under the misconception that they are decoying aids.

Ideally just use a dead bird random feeding pattern with some good floaters and ( if you must ) site your rotary in the next field down-wind of your position.

Goodnight.

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flappers and rotarys are far from deterrants, otherwise there wouldn,t be a market for them, i use one or the other every decoying session thats my opinion of course, just ask pigeon controller, protom1, and motty what they think, they use them all the time and don,t do to bad using them :yes:

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flappers and rotarys are far from deterrants, otherwise there wouldn,t be a market for them, i use one or the other every decoying session thats my opinion of course, just ask pigeon controller, protom1, and motty what they think, they use them all the time and don,t do to bad using them :yes:

 

:yes::good:

 

Iv had more goods days using them than not :yes:

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Of course there is a market for em because every Jim Crow is searching for a magical solution to shooting more pigeons ( and/or just shooting some pigeons )

Look I am no novice either with shot gun or to pigeon decoying and I shoot regularly, always with two, but sometimes three mates similarly disposed as myself and one of us does not (never) use a rotary and our statistics since 2001 are almost identical !!

Goodnight - I really need an early bed I'm up with the birds tomorra !!

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I am totally 'pro' magnet. I almost always use one and have good results. Today i had a bag of 145 on drilled barley using one (see sporting pictures).The birds decoyed really well most of the time. I did take the magnet in for the last hour or so as i felt (as Anser mentioned) that some birds were shying off that had tried to come in earlier.

 

As for rapid wingbeats turning pigeons off, i think that Mr Batley's theory is a load of rubbish.As Protom mentioned, birds flap rapidly when landing - hardly a concern for another incoming pigeon.

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Did a bit of a field test of all the gadgets yesterday ;) went to a field of rape that the farmer had stated the birds were interested in (good start as if no birds there is no super switch to bring them to you) turned up and watched then set up, now I had shot this field in the past and felt the magnet had spooked them, so set up with a turbo flapper,and 4 YES 4 dead birds on cradles and two of dennys dippers ( I quite like them they do give movement that's not "over the top")

 

Soon had a few birds in, all added to the pattern, and in truth thought yeah not going to be to bad a day might get 30 or so in the bag, my mate hawkeye turned up and as we stood looking at my set up ( we were outside the hide) a couple of birds zoomed in and landed in my pattern, bloody hell he says, I wont bother with a magnet and off he goes to a part of the field well away from me but where a few birds were crossing.

 

I was shooting reasonable every 10 mins or so the odd bird would come in and each time I added it to the pattern, I had not heard many if any shots from hawkeye, and was trying to phone him to say come down here and set up with me, when he started banging away, he phoned me and said get your magnet out I have put mine out and the birds are now steaming in, so out with a magnet used my trusty hypalight and hypa's and sure enough birds started coming in big style, birds that had not committed previously IE came but then pulled away just when I was thinking "these are in" stopped doing that and committed fully, and to cut a long story short

I shot just over a ton (picked 86) rest were lost in high rape or in a field behind me, altogether with hawkeyes tally about 160 birds dropped :good:

 

Now my conclusion, turbo flapper, great bit of kit but its 50/50 if they will commit fully

it really needs a remote on off rather than the supplied random timer? I believe it's flapping makes them take notice but the random flapping spooks them, the dippers? I like them for the cost-effective movement they offer, but nothing repeat nothing will beat a magnet,start with one if it does not work on the day take it in,its like a coat get too warm take it off, dont have one and get cold cant put one on.

 

Cheers Keith

Edited by kdubya
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well said kdubya another instance today were it worked wonders, some drilling had gone in on a field next to land i shoot.

a big wood split my land and the drilling the birds were flighting over my perm and the wood to get to it not a brilliant line but a nice trickle, so set up with me back to the wood,had no dead birds to put on the rotary so just sat behind the net and waited for a few to come over in range, birds were passing wide either side of me and very high overhead it took me 30 mins to shoot 2 birds,decided to set the rotary up and birds started to pull off the lines and over me, as i got them i put dead birds down on the deck behind the rotary then i got some to decoy and most to pull well in range of me,

now without the rotary i would of shot about 6 birds in total all afternoon , ended with 24 and a crow not a big but again proved that the rotary can make you a bag instead of a few shots

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A lot of things in pigeon shooting seem to have changed in the last 24 years, but I agree that frantic flapping on the ground is not "normal" behaviour.

 

My flapper is on a timer and slowly flaps two or three times and then stops.

I don't believe a rotary creates the same problem as frantic flapping at ground level.

I have never used a timer on a rotary and can't think it would serve any useful purpose to do so.

 

 

 

I too agree with cranfield, i prefer to use decoys set out in the correct way for the day and conditions but ....with a flapper, i use the flapper purely as an ATTRACTOR, when i see a pigeon i give 2 or 3 wing beats as if it has just landed outside the pattern, then thats it, if i continue whilst the bird is coming in it just shys away, i think the white flashes on the birds wings are very visible at distance, and the bird can access what is happening by the frequency of the wing beats.....less is more, dont have enough experience with a magnet to comment on them as i very rarely use them.........

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I too agree with cranfield, i prefer to use decoys set out in the correct way for the day and conditions but ....with a flapper, i use the flapper purely as an ATTRACTOR, when i see a pigeon i give 2 or 3 wing beats as if it has just landed outside the pattern, then thats it, if i continue whilst the bird is coming in it just shys away, i think the white flashes on the birds wings are very visible at distance, and the bird can access what is happening by the frequency of the wing beats.....less is more, dont have enough experience with a magnet to comment on them as i very rarely use them.........

Sorry, i disagree. If pigeons really could assess what was happening, we would never decoy them.

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