Hammergun

Happy Birthday!

Welcome to PW. A lot depends on personal preference. Some people find that 32" barrels are too long to handle behind a hide, but others prefer longer barrels (30" usu.) for pigeon shooting. It also depends on how tall you are. A tall person will usually find that they handle longer barrels more easily than short ones. 32" barrels on a sbs game gun are quite rare here. This length is usually found on 10 bore and 8 bore goose guns. 32" barrels are more common on o/u guns. You should also be looking at choke size too. Best thing to do is see if you can "try before you buy" The "standard" length used by me and most of my pigeon shooting mates is 30"

I tried tin shot some time ago. It has poor hitting power as it only caries about 2/3 the momentum of lead shot.

I hear that now he is out of work, Tony Blair is looking to take him on as PR officer for the NHS (or was it the Railways?)

I was under the impression that lupins were poisonous to animals. Is this so?

YP - It's really down to the workmanship, feel, appearance and individuality. Decoration also plays a large part. There's nothing that clever about the actual workings of a shotgun - they are actually very simple compared to rifles. Crapshot - if you say you use an o/u to improve your chances of hitting something, then this sounds like your sbs could do with having the stock altered to fit you. Cranfield - Sleeving starts at approx £700. Sleeved guns are not worth anywhere near as much as originals. I would question whether this is worth doing. A fine english sbs will be a good investment if looked after. A modern factory made gun will soon depreciate.

How about getting your Sanders gun fully professionally refurbished? (or are the walls getting a bit thin?) I have seen refurbished guns and it's amazing the difference before and after. Often they end up looking like new.

The thing is, poaching needs to be reoprted as aggravated armed trespass to get an armed response. Saying that there are "armed intruders" should usually be effective. In fairness to the police, even if it is a hoax or a sporting shooter, and even if the police believe it to be so, they are required by procedure to follow up with an armed response right to the end. It is exactly the same for the fire brigade. They must respond to all calls, even hoaxes which they know to be so. This takes up huge amounts of their time whilst lives are put at risk.

Have a look at the rat shooting topic below - http://forums.pigeonwatch.co.uk/forums/ind...4&t=747&hl=rats If you are using your uprated air rifle on the rats, I would question the wisdom of this. An uprated airgun can give potentially dangerous ricochet, and there is the likelihood of doing damage to roofs and fittings, not to mention stray pellets being dangerous over a long distance. I find that 12ftlb is probably even a bit much for ratting in barns, and my mate has downgraded his to about 9ftlbs specially for that purpose to protect the fittings. If you are doing the pest control for profit, you should ensure that you have suitable insurance.

If you are clay shooting on the farm, especially over grazing land, make sure you use fibre wads. If the farmer sees plastic wads all over the place or has a sheep choke on one, it's a sure way to lose your shooting.

Have you contacted the National Fraud Information Center (www.fraud.org)?

I'm in the chatroom now

Happy Birthday

I've been using the call in the wood just before it gets dark. Got a couple to come in to the call, but it takes practice. Crow call - there are some sample calls on http://www.crowbusters.com Different calls mean different things. One of my mates has it off to an art and can make crows change direction and come towards the call. He also has an owl decoy which he sits out and uses the appropriate crow call. When they see the decoy and hear the call, they come straight in. You can call magpies too. Takes some practice but it can be very effective, especially if you have the stinking corpse of a rabbit or other unfortunate anumal. Cow muck works too. OK. I'm going to have a session this weekend. As the pigeons are eating ash buds at the moment, do you think I should set up in the wood and loft some decoys into the branches of some ash trees where the buds are coming out rather than have a go on the rape?

That may be so, but by the time you add secure carriage, you will not save anything, in fact they will probably work out more expensive for 1,000. I did look into it myself last year. Carriage is typically about £20. Don't forget cartridges are very heavy to post and need to be by secure carrier. If I buy 1,000 express 28g HV fibre from my gun shop, they are £88. You can sometimes get what are termed as "overruns" cheaply. These are custom-printed cartridges surplus to requirements or ones where the ink has smudged or not gone onto the cases.

Aaron - I'm paying £24 for 250 express 28g fibre 7 or 7 1/2, or 8 shot HV 2 1/2". Cheapest at the moment. Also Clear Pigeon 6 shot fibre at £25 You can also get Express 24g fibre 8s for £23.50. Cartridges by post are too expensive because of carriage.

Started on Air Arms Diabalo. Soft pellets which have good hitting power.

Was your client shooting in a wood?

Mole traps can be had from most farm stores. They are fairly inexpensive, and if you aren't sure how to make one, you would be better off buying one, rather than risking your garden getting wrecked any more during your "development" phase!

Pigeons are still on the rape here, but not to the extent of as at the beginning of the month. They seem to be at it early mornng, then return to their trees. There are lots of pigeons in the trees at the moment, and I have been paying more attention to them as they fly overhead or come to rest. Been having some success with my pigeon call, which seems to work best late afternoon. Pigeons are after the spring drillings now.

I'm In!!! :unsure:

No, still no luck. Keep getting a message at the bottom saying "java connections must use secure encoding" :<

Nothing specific from this site. There are programs available which scan the net for any email addresses posted. These are used by hackers. I have had hits from my address posted on other sites. As a result, I have a second "hotmail" type address separate to my main address where I have all "junk" mail sent. Hunterswind: Some viruses will scan an inbox or cache on a computer and pick an email address there. The emails sent out from the infected computer appear to have come from somebody elses mailbox. This is so the infected person does not find out that their PC is infected straight away (and the person whose email has been stolen gets lots of "mail delivery failure" messages").

Just got access to another large farm today. Went to check it out. There's some sitty trees, with serious damage to the rape nearby. Pigeons were not coming out to play today. They were all sitting in some trees in a wood way behind. A shot or two sent them into the air, only to return to their trees. Will have an early morning session next weekend, and in the meantime try to locate the owner of the wood and ask him about shooting it.

I use a Damascus barrel gun for decoying - it looks just like a stick from the hedgerow! :unsure: