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big bags

number 1

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in Pigeon Shooting Tips

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lazza

lazza

Posted
Posted

Hiya Number1

I've shot some reasonable bags on peas, in the late summer.Mostly young birds though! And also had some really good days on Laid Barley & Barley Stubble. One day on the peas I had 130 in 4 to 4 1/2 hrs, which was very manic! Mind you saying that,.........I've had days that I've really enjoyed, taking only 10. I rate my day on different things now, mainly, if I was good enough to find the right place to shoot, if I managed to decoy the birds correctly & finally if I shot well.

 It's great to have those days when you do the numbers! But as they don't happen all the time, I try & enjoy myself whenever I go out. :D  :(

How's your shooting going? Have you had many days that you remember well?........Good or bad!!!!....lol..

 :thumbs:

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Deako

Deako

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Hi Number 1,welcome to the site.

As Lazza says,any day where you have a few good shots is a good day,but a very satisfying day for me would be about 50 birds,a very good day is when you break the magic 100.

On the rare days when we've shot 200+,to be honest the fun goes out of it.I don't mean to sound cocky,but a 200 bird day is very tiring and,to me,it now seems somehow a little unnecessary,but I think everybody likes to shoot a really big bag at least once,just to do it!.I'd be interested in other members comments on this topic. :thumbs:

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Cranfield

Cranfield

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As has been said before, a good day with steady birds , some clever decoying and some difficult, but successful, shooting, is my main aim.

 

I have had quite a few 100+ days, but I have been shooting a lot longer than most of you.

They are tiring and probably the reason that I am a bit deaf in my left ear.

 

In the early 70s, I can,t remember the exact year, but it was Winter with thick snow everywhere.

A kale field backed on to some woods where I shot and the trees had kept the snow off  of part of the field.

It was the only green for miles in a completely white landscape.

 

I used no decoys and shot from a straw bale hide up against the wood.

The farmers son (my friend) was about 80 yards along the wood from me in another bale hide and we had the "green" area covered.

 

The wind was very,very strong and was blowing over the wood off our backs.

Pigeons came in from about 8 am and we shot fast and furious all morning. We didn,t bother trying to pick birds up, nothing seemed to stop the pigeons coming.

Birds would come in front of me, I would shoot and my friend would take birds from the same group as they flew past him.

 

I ran out of cartridges about noon and my friend was very low.He left me his cartridges and went back to the farm to get some more.

He could only find 200 and we shared them.

By 2.30 pm we had no cartridges left, the birds had slowed down, but were still coming in.

 

We counted 482 birds and there might have been some we missed. We estimate we used nearly 600 cartridges.

 

My head ached for days and I had the taste of spent cartridges in my mouth for the same amount of time.

 

I remember every minute of that day as if it were yesterday, but I,m not sure that I would want to do it again.

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Cranfield

Cranfield

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William, those birds were shot in January and the Game Dealers had stopped buying pigeons back in December.

 

It had been a hard Winter and the birds were in a very poor condition.

We could walk round the woods and pick dead birds up of the ground where they had died from the cold and little to eat.

 

Those pigeons we shot fed the local foxes, rats etc.

A few breasts were cut off for the ferrets.

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lazza

lazza

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I think that's interesting what your you said about the hard winter & dead birds in the 70's. I assume that because of our "warming climate", that doesn't happen so much now. I was out late last October, & noticed the pigeons were still nesting. I remember reading something about pigeons breeding all year round apart from December & January.

I wonder if you can remember how much difference that made to the next years shooting, or how long it took before the pigeon numbers recovered?

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Cranfield

Cranfield

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Posted

It was quite common through the sixties and seventies when we had our last "hard" Winters, for birds to die from cold and starvation,not just pigeons.Older, sick birds would die first, so there was some sort of natural selection process.

 

There never seemed to be an obvious shortage of pigeons in the Spring and Summer after such a Winter.

"Nature abhors a vacuum", I read that somewhere.

No doubt the birds bred more after such a Winter to make up the numbers.

Also birds could move in from adjoining areas, even counties, to make up the numbers.

There was also a popular view in those days that  pigeons migrated over from the Continent, where there Winters were often worse than ours.

I,m not sure if that was ever proved one way or the other.

 

I do know that I have never heard a pigeon "coo" with a French accent. :thumbs:

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