Harnsers theory on pigeon evolution.

[Harnser]

Many on here have been shooting pigeons for fifty years or so the same as I have . I think that they will agree with me that shooting pigeons 40 or 50 years ago was easier than it is today .

 

You couldn't buy decoys in them days and had to make your own .We used to use the old blue sugar bags and paint wing bars and neck bars on them . Or you used milk bottles and painted them blue and again painted the wing bars and the neck bars on them . These home made decoys worked a treat and we used to shoot really big bags . The thing is we used to shoot these big bags all the time ,and remember these were the days of the pro pigeon shooter who made a living from shooting pigeons . The most famous was major Archie coats . As a young man he was my hero .

 

I dont know if there were more pigeons about in those days or not ,just they were easier to decoy and shoot .

 

My theory is that over the years the pigeons have become harder to decoy and shoot because the less clever birds have been shot and the more clever and warier birds have survived and mated and this has speed ed up the evolution of the wonderful Woodie and made them much more warier and more difficult to decoy and shoot . Remember , a hundred day 50 years ago was just an average day out .

 

My best day out about 40 years ago was a massive 480 picked up on the day and another 50 or so picked up the next day in the wood that I had my back to .I shot till dark and waited till the next day to pick up in the wood . Incidently I was shooting over wheat stubble on that day .

 

Thats my theory and I am sticking to it .

 

Harnser.

 

 

[the hitman]

30 yrs ago in my area i could count on one hand the pigeon shooters i knew , and now i see 4x4s parked in fields as soon as the first pigeon shows an interest.

I think pigeons have become educated to decoys , and we just have to do our reconnaissance and set up the pattern in the right way.

[Harnser]

30 yrs ago in my area i could count on one hand the pigeon shooters i knew , and now i see 4x4s parked in fields as soon as the first pigeon shows an interest.

I think pigeons have become educated to decoys , and we just have to do our reconnaissance and set up the pattern in the right way.

 

I think that there were as many pigeon shooters in them days as there is today . All those years ago if you worked on a farm your boss expected you to go out pigeon shooting with the farm gun and cartridges . Most people in the rural villages had access to the local farms for pigeon shooting and rabbit shooting . This was a way to put fresh meat on the table.

 

Harnser .

[aga man]

i wasn't around 40 years ago so can't really comment on pigeon shooting in that era. however as a boy in 1986 [winter] i remember a 6 acre wood on one of our permissions was litterally blue with pigeons i have never since then seen as many pigeons in one place.

also it was said that the late archie coates would shoot upto 30 000 pigeons a year when he was on top, to acheive this surely there must have been a heavy population of pigeons nationally. even regular consitant shooters like pigeon controller off this forum would only manage 6-7000 birds per year.

so i feel the pigeon numbers are not what they used to be. ontop of that we have big woodpigeon numbers in some of our cities now and perhaps they are starting to feel safe there.

 

respect to you Harnser for once shooting over 500. an awsome acheivement that many of us will never experience.

[yickdaz]

I agree to an extent there are definatley more people shooting pigeons these days, than I can remember only 25 years ago so more people in the fields more magnets spinning around more artificial decoys sat on the field and generally more disturbance making them twitchy so they are bound to be more wary at times but you can still make good bags just look at pc, jdog and a few others who are doing well on them this summer and posting good bags , but they have them in good numbers in there particular areas and probably not as persecuted as they are in other parts of the country I could be wrong, they are very wary about coming in to decoys around our areas we shoot and only making 30 or so bags when we normally shoot 100 bags regulary, but there is another factor in that the fields we get the better bags on are still standing or about to be cut so I,m not writing the harvest shooting off just yet in the next few months I will let you know

[pigeon controller]

There are more pigeon shooters about now than ever before , I've been shooting them since 1989, 24 years . In our area you see people set up all over the place and we have a lot of permission overlaps. When I started you had to make all your gear as no one sold it as such, now we have lots of pigeon shooting stores etc. I remember making a rotary out of a bicycle rear wheel axle which you operated by a string from the hide with a ramp that made the decoys rise and fall so they disappeared into the barley. Also four manual flappers that were operated by one string from the hide. Nothing is new in pigeon shooting its all been tried before, we made shells out of grey guttering and also fibreglass sheet.

[Cranfield]

I am of the same vintage as Harnser and remember using painted milk bottles and shaped metal guttering as pigeon decoys.

We also had a lot of permanent hides on the farms in those days , some made of bales, but a lot of poles with sacks nailed to them and dug into banks.

You really only had to carry gun, cartridges,refreshments and decoys.

Farmers also gave us cartridges, but you were expected to scare birds, as well as shoot them.

So you could be moving round the fields in Winter, spending time in one hide, then moving on to the next one.

 

We also benefited from smaller fields, hedgerows and cover.

There were no big prairie fields , with all the hedges removed, in our area then.

Unlike now.

 

 

I do think there are more pigeon shooters about now in some areas.

I have visited friends that shoot near large towns and every field seemed to have a shooter in it.

There are still quieter areas about, where its not so hectic.

[retromlc]

I haven't been shooting long but farming methods must be faster, a field is cut one day, disced the next ,muck spread same evening then ploughed, pigeons don't even get to those fields, shooters are desperate so set up ASAP as they may only get 48 hours before its finished. A local field to me was cut, I phoned farmer to shoot it but someone beat me to it, I thought I'd give it a few days to settle, it was mucked and ploughed with in 36 hours.So I went and shot 100 sporting instead.

As I've scanned my permission the fields have been done before my next day off.

pigeons are wary and I think they are flying in groups for safety in the Summer,whereas 5 years ago I saw more singles and pairs that I do now.groups of 10-15 birds all together.you don't want to shoot at a group but they arrive together and leave the same way,if you see any at all

Edited August 28, 2013 by retromlc

[remmyman]

I don't go back quite as far as Harnser as regards pigeon shooting (30 yrs in my case), but imo nothing has changed over that time concerning pigeons 'coying or not. I've proven to my own satisfaction time and time again that if birds have a viable food scource, are allowed to gain confidence and all the usual rules of fieldcraft etc are in place then big bags are not hard to achieve. In fact I've found that a 100 bird day (or thereabouts) is now the average day in my neck of the woods (Essex/Suffolk border). I believe that several factors are responsible for this. On my patch birds seem to have become far more 'urbanised' and come to the fields in more manageable 2s/3s thus resulting in a longer shooting session. Also, magnets, floaters and Hyper- flaps definitely draw more birds within range of the gun all things been equal. Because the lack of year on year hard winters coupled to the availability of oilseed rape has resulted in an ever increasing pigeon population. 'Old Timers' talk of 'massive' winter flocks in the old days thus inferring more birds then than now, but I believe they were just more concentrated on limited food reserves (winter greens etc) instead of spread out over tens of thousands of acres of osrape as now, come winter. I do agree that modern farming practices encourage people to 'have a go' long before birds find a particular field to their liking, along with more efficient combines leaving less and less grain, resulting in birds moving on before building up into shootable numbers.But the last few years have seen me shoot my biggest bags too, 216,263,222, 363, 486(shared) 509(shared) along with numerous 150 +s to my own gun. Of course I still have bum days, it goes with the territory, but they do seem to be less often than say 10 years ago. Then again perhaps I to am getting old and my mind is playing tricks on me!! :wacko: Regards Remmyman

[JDog]

Remmyman

 

Yours is the post with which I concur most closely. There were a lot of birds about when I first started decoying 40 years ago but I am convinced that there are more now. It's just that the distribution of pigeons is different, more being seen in towns than ever before and their range has spread.

 

If pigeon shooters are limited to small areas of land and that land is shot too frequently then the birds will get used to seeing decoying aids and start to avoid them. Patterns and other methods of decoying need to vary in these heavily shot areas.

 

None of the land over which I shoot is shot by others. However in some years some of the land is devoid of pigeons and at other times there are lots. It is the availability of food which is the main influence on numbers. On one estate, not known for huge numbers, I would normally get out a dozen times a year and shoot 500 or so. This year I shot over 700 in four outings. The difference? Spring Rape which had never been grown on the estate before and which was only grown this year due to the diabolical harvesting season last year and subsequent poor Autumn drilling conditions.

[motty]

I also agree with Remmyman.

When Archie Coates was killing pigeons, he didn't have to contend with thousands of acres of oilseed rape. Imagine if this year there was no rape grown. This would push the birds on to old stubbles and other greens, offering the pigeon shooter the potential for some huge bags.

I'm fairly sure it's a fact that there are more pigeons about now. My Father and Grandfather have told me stories of these huge flocks of pigeons (more than likely in winter) and they would probably still say there were more pigeons around years ago. My Grandfather shot 16 pigeons with 1 shot on some sprouts in the 60s. If rape was grown then he would never have had that shot.

It's also true that farming methods are different. Not many stubbles are left over winter anymore. The few that i have permission to shoot on can deliver some big bags.

I know a few pigeon shooters who have shot 500+ and 600+ bags of woodies. I don't think they are getting wiser.

[turbo33]

I agree with the OSR theory too. I have been shooting since '67, and the one single thing that seems to have changed dramatically is farming. When I were a lad , there were market garden farms round here which really concentrated the pigeons. None now, pretty much everything is imported. The stubbles would often be left over winter, which would give great sport as the chickweed came through. Spring drilling followed and a few here have benefited from that scenario. Now everything is turned in/disc'd and sprayed to within an inch of its life in a moment. Then there's nothing for the birds to feed on round here until the rape shows through. Yes a few on the acorns and beech mast, but otherwise it becomes devoid of birds round here.

I'm sure the Suffolk/Norfolk lads do better because of the different/diverse farming practises, that draw the birds up there in great numbers. The few birds that are around here at the moment are undecoyable and feeding/behaving like the winter rape birds. Maybe they are becoming educated on a more evolutionary scale. I certainly wouldn't discount it. It happens with pheasants so why not pigeon. I would grant the woodie with a greater level of intelligence than a pheasant in the first place.

[matone]

 

I think that there were as many pigeon shooters in them days as there is today . All those years ago if you worked on a farm your boss expected you to go out pigeon shooting with the farm gun and cartridges . Most people in the rural villages had access to the local farms for pigeon shooting and rabbit shooting . This was a way to put fresh meat on the table.

 

Harnser .

There`s a part of the answer in that Harnser,back then mostly people with a bit of fieldcraft & understanding of the countryside

were decoying. Now it`s a free for all with the Pajero brigade in the field after seeing three pigeons land,popping away at `em,then

wondering why they don`t get a bag !

 

Same reason for lamp shy foxes.

Edited August 31, 2013 by matone

[JDog]

Good point Matone.

 

Field craft used to mean everything when transport was limited. Either you learnt how to decoy pigeons on your own patch or you didn't shoot any.

[kitchrat]

Many on here have been shooting pigeons for fifty years or so the same as I have . I think that they will agree with me that shooting pigeons 40 or 50 years ago was easier than it is today .

 

You couldn't buy decoys in them days and had to make your own .We used to use the old blue sugar bags and paint wing bars and neck bars on them . Or you used milk bottles and painted them blue and again painted the wing bars and the neck bars on them . These home made decoys worked a treat and we used to shoot really big bags . The thing is we used to shoot these big bags all the time ,and remember these were the days of the pro pigeon shooter who made a living from shooting pigeons . The most famous was major Archie coats . As a young man he was my hero .

 

I dont know if there were more pigeons about in those days or not ,just they were easier to decoy and shoot .

 

My theory is that over the years the pigeons have become harder to decoy and shoot because the less clever birds have been shot and the more clever and warier birds have survived and mated and this has speed ed up the evolution of the wonderful Woodie and made them much more warier and more difficult to decoy and shoot . Remember , a hundred day 50 years ago was just an average day out .

 

My best day out about 40 years ago was a massive 480 picked up on the day and another 50 or so picked up the next day in the wood that I had my back to .I shot till dark and waited till the next day to pick up in the wood . Incidently I was shooting over wheat stubble on that day .

 

Thats my theory and I am sticking to it .

 

Harnser.

 

 

Nice to see that the "Elder Statesmen" of the forum agree with me that it's getting harder.

I remember the plastic pipe or bits of blue jeans days, now flappers and magnets, walkers and floaters are losing their appeal. I think there are more birds about, due to OSR and perhaps global warming?. In the old days most birds either starved to death in the winter, flew to Europe or were too thin to be worth shooting. In the winter now, they fly in from Europe ( my pal has seen flocks of 1000's coming in near Southend, like geese in Canada) and they are plump with yellow fat. This also puts paid to the old saying "They have to eat each day", they don't, on those cold foggy days nothing moves all week. Round here they are never allowed to settle, the world's supply of gas guns keeps them jumpy in winter. At harvest time fields are cultivated in minutes, no build up again. So you end up with birds spread all over the place, each feeding on his own local patch. When they do flock up in winter they again cannot settle and are here one minute, gone the next, even if not put off by anything. I expect there are more shooters too, but not in winter, only us hard core go out. But the birds are learning our tricks all too fast, whether by natural selection or teaching or both I don't know. In an earlier post I described seeing adult birds steer a young bird away from my magnet.

We need a new gadget - remember how well the early magnets worked? Can anyone develop a hologram machine of birds dropping in like rain (please!!)

[cocknee]

Excellent thread this I have been shooting pigeons for around 45 years and think that its the amount of "pigeon shooters" at this time of year that seem to come out of the woodwork that make getting a bag difficult I spend hours and hours watching feeds build up only to have Joe Bloggs banging away and frightening everything in sight the night before because he had a couple of spare hours after work it seems to happen even more frequently its as if its a race to get to the stubble first regardless of weather there is potentially a bag to be had. I suspect that most people that do this wouldn't know what to look for anyway (all the gear and no idea).

[anser2]

As another of the older people on this forum I have to agree with Harnser that pigeon shooting is becoming harder. For me in my part of Norfolk the peak was about 20 years ago. ( before this I was not a regular pigeon shooter more of a wildfowler first and pigeons had to fit in between wildfowling and rough shooting. For me things started to go wrong with the hard winter 4-5 years ago.The frosted rape in by area turned a shade of purple and the pigeons did not feed on it again until the spring growth started in late March (my pigeon has to stop once the pheasants start to lay in April mainly due to work but also to also to give my local birds some sort of close season. ).

 

Next my main farmer started to become pigeon wise. No longer setting up a banger in the open gateways , but targeting the sitty woods on the edge of the field and using a lot more bangers. For years I had the shooting to myself , but with the arrival of several farm workers who were keen pigeon shooters the birds became a lot more skittish and a lot harder to decoy.

 

So far its been mainly the winter shooting thats declined , but this year even the stubble shooting has let me down. With the late harvest the farmers have been very keen to plough up the harvested fields as soon as possible ( often within hours of the harvest). I had 2 afternoons on harvested rape a couple of weeks ago getting 2 on the first and 3 on the second day. And most of the pigeons took no notice of the decoys at all.

 

The other factor has been a decline in the overall numbers. Ten years ago the birds started to flight out on one estate at sunrise and till be comming out on a winters morning until miday. On a good morning I would see 10,000. In the past 5 years I have not seen more than a thousand and more frequently only a hundred or less. There have been a few good days and while a decade ago I counted 50 to be the expected days bag , a dozen times a year it would hit 100 and on occasion 200. In recent times I am very pleased with 20 and often do not get into double numbers.

 

Well this has been my experiance shooting over 3 farms totaling about 7,000 acres.

[retromlc]

well I admit to being one of the 2 hour brigade when I can fit it in,life is too busy to spend days looking and hours waiting in a day for the ebb and flo of the pigeon,I have been verbally abused by one of the old school for turning up on a field " he's been watching for weeks"and as i pointed out I had been watching it too( but that doesn't bother them,they want it all for themselves)And like i say you have to move fast because of farming methods,and now locally these established shooters taking fees off strangers not from around my village to bump their undeclared income,by sticking them in every field available.Things move on and you can't have it like it used to be,the farmers don't care as long as the pigeons don't settle.I sit in the fields in Winter and watch when I can but the established old boys still come over when I'm or anyone apart from them are set up and ruin your day.

[retromlc]

Good point Matone.

 

Field craft used to mean everything when transport was limited. Either you learnt how to decoy pigeons on your own patch or you didn't shoot any.

good point,but how many fail days did you have when learning,how many times did those who now know how to decoy mess up a good opertunity?

[Actionpigeons]

There are more pigeon shooters about now than ever before , I've been shooting them since 1989, 24 years . In our area you see people set up all over the place and we have a lot of permission overlaps. When I started you had to make all your gear as no one sold it as such, now we have lots of pigeon shooting stores etc. I remember making a rotary out of a bicycle rear wheel axle which you operated by a string from the hide with a ramp that made the decoys rise and fall so they disappeared into the barley. Also four manual flappers that were operated by one string from the hide. Nothing is new in pigeon shooting its all been tried before, we made shells out of grey guttering and also fibreglass sheet.

as above, I agree there are just a lot more shooters about now.

Edited September 1, 2013 by Actionpigeons

[JDog]

retromlc

 

That is a fair and honest admission of yours being one of the 'two hour brigade'.

 

On your other point I still have many days when I mess up and I posted about one on rape stubble two weeks ago when the line split on either side of me and I could not pull them off the line into the decoys.

[Palumbus Gus]

Good thread this.

 

I have a theory that has not been mentioned yet. Whilst I mostly agree with what has been said about the OSR and evolving farming methods changing the feeding habits and concentrations of birds, I think that there are more pigeons coming into the towns than ever before. They are happy to spend all day in a town eating left over scraps, browsing under beech trees in the parks, or raping the ripe cherry trees on avenues of all thier fruit. They roost in the towns more than before in ivy clad trees and any back garden with a tree, with their only threat being an ambitious moggy. Why then, when they have all they need on their doorstep for most of the year, would they risk massing in their thousands to fly miles to a field where they may get shot at?

 

I'm sure that there are loads of you lampers who contribute to this site who would tell of the massive changes in fox's behaviour in the last few years due to the city life providing everything they need to survive, so why not the pigeons too? Not saying that there are no piddies in the fields of course, more that the OSR revolution has gone some way to broaden their horizions. (IMHO!).

 

Gus.

[motty]

Good thread this.

 

I have a theory that has not been mentioned yet. Whilst I mostly agree with what has been said about the OSR and evolving farming methods changing the feeding habits and concentrations of birds, I think that there are more pigeons coming into the towns than ever before. They are happy to spend all day in a town eating left over scraps, browsing under beech trees in the parks, or raping the ripe cherry trees on avenues of all thier fruit. They roost in the towns more than before in ivy clad trees and any back garden with a tree, with their only threat being an ambitious moggy. Why then, when they have all they need on their doorstep for most of the year, would they risk massing in their thousands to fly miles to a field where they may get shot at?

 

I'm sure that there are loads of you lampers who contribute to this site who would tell of the massive changes in fox's behaviour in the last few years due to the city life providing everything they need to survive, so why not the pigeons too? Not saying that there are no piddies in the fields of course, more that the OSR revolution has gone some way to broaden their horizions. (IMHO!).

 

Gus.

I had some good bags on spring rape this year (176, 140) and the main flightline was straight from the town. There must be plenty to eat in the parks, allotments and peoples gardens etc, but pigeons still flight out to the fields when they decide/need to.

[pigeon controller]

There are various comments made that I totally agree with here are a few memories which reinforce the previous comments. DB started shooting with his older brothers forty plus years ago shooting the sprout fields of the Severn and Avon valleys. His brother shot thirteen pigeon with one shot along the tops of sprouts, DB shot over a hundred pigeons standing by a holly bush with his first dog Russ running about picking up. The pigeons would migrate south and amass in the woods along the Severn valley and feed on the local sprouts and cabbages. We still look at these areas but they do not hold the number of birds nowadays. It's nice to remember the past days but like all sports you have to adapt , as have the birds we attempt to decoy.