Changes You Have Seen In Pigeon Shooting ?

[marsh man]

Since I first went pigeon shooting in the early 60s very little in the laws concerning pigeon shooting have changed

 

We can still go 364 days a year , seven days a week with no bag restrictions , we know there is a general licence in force but can you honestly say that has made any difference to the way you shoot pigeons for sport .

 

Most of us are now looking forward to shooting on the stubbles after trying to protect that crop throughout its growing period , we shoot them on a flight line , on grass , plough or any where else where we stand a chance pulling some towards the decoys and offering you a sporting shot.

 

Then there are the roost shoots in February to look forward to , and no doubt there are many more ways that I haven't mentioned how we go about putting a few more in the bag. So in reality that side of pigeon shooting in the last fifty or so years have changed very little .

 

I would say the two biggest changes I have seen are ... gadgets worked by a battery ( magnets , flappers ect ) and oil seed rape. there are a lot of small changes that make life a bit more easy like nets , flocked shells and poles but to me they are the main two.

 

So what are your main changes you have seen ? and dare I say it , is there anything you would like to change ?

[TR1]

Having been pigeon shooting for the last 45 years I would say in addition to your observations, that the introduction of field margins making access easier and the ability of the birds to adapt to feeding on standing wheat are notable.

[ditchman]

as marsh man says....GADGETS !..........everything seems or has to be electrified these days.......if you look on the motoring threads....99% of all problems are electric....im sticking to my old first of the defender l/r ....no electrics ...engine management systems....computor chips 1/4 mile of wiring....same with the pigeon gadgets................i think decoys have improved......shells are a god send...it was a pain in the derrier to lug about wooden decoys before they arrived.................i dont think pigeons are smarter they just have more varieties of food to go at......in the old days you didnt get "ONE BANG AND THEY ARE OFF " SO MUCH as you do now...

 

....now that im much older i get more pleasure out of it...as i take the time to look around me and be with my thoughts and good company......45 years ago it was shoot shoot shoot...as much as you could...and think of the money the butcher would give you.........i still get the same heart ponding trill when i see birds come into the decoys and old manual flapper i use.........

[fenboy]

The biggest change over the 30 odd years I have been pigeon shooting is the equipment.

When I started the only gadget was a string pull flapper , nets were MOD and hessian based , they weighed a ton when dry let alone wet.

 

Hide poles made from hazel or such like , not the fancy things with kick plates you cab buy today .

 

My first decoys were rough pigeon shapes cut from length's of grey guttering with white wing / neck bars painted on with what ever white paint you had to hand.

 

Not everything has changed for the better I think back then the pigeon received much more respect than it does today and most of those shooting them were true country men , not just someone who was only interested in finding some live targets .

[JDog]

Mobility has to be a big difference.

 

In the 60's those who went pigeon shooting either walked or rode their bicycles to their chosen field with minimal kit. Does anyone know of anyone nowadays who does not use a motor vehicle? I doubt it.

[Penelope]

Not everything has changed for the better I think back then the pigeon received much more respect than it does today and most of those shooting them were true country men , not just someone who was only interested in finding some live targets .

 

Sadly right fenboy.

 

As for changes, gadgets for sure.

Edited July 20, 2015 by Penelope

[JDog]

as marsh man says....GADGETS !..........everything seems or has to be electrified these days.......if you look on the motoring threads....99% of all problems are electric....im sticking to my old first of the defender l/r ....no electrics ...engine management systems....computor chips 1/4 mile of wiring....same with the pigeon gadgets................i think decoys have improved......shells are a god send...it was a pain in the derrier to lug about wooden decoys before they arrived.................i dont think pigeons are smarter they just have more varieties of food to go at......in the old days you didnt get "ONE BANG AND THEY ARE OFF " SO MUCH as you do now...

 

....now that im much older i get more pleasure out of it...as i take the time to look around me and be with my thoughts and good company......45 years ago it was shoot shoot shoot...as much as you could...and think of the money the butcher would give you.........i still get the same heart ponding trill when i see birds come into the decoys and old manual flapper i use.........

 

 

Wasn't that bird food three decades ago? No wonder you have different methods to the rest of us.

[ditchman]

 

 

Wasn't that bird food three decades ago? No wonder you have different methods to the rest of us.

 

 

 

 

trust you to pick that out................i looked at it when i posted ...and thought what the heck.......i was busy welding a muck bucket up outside the kitchen door and needed to get on with it before it got tooo hot in the sun.........

 

 

got to be the best example of a Freuedian slip ever............

[fortune]

Things that have changed :>>> Gadgets >> such as Rotaries >> people seem to want to drive right up to where they want to set up. (Nothing wrong in that). >> I think that years ago the majority of pigeon shooters were brought up with guns and shooting and hadn't taken it up as a kind of hobby like cricket of golf and there wasn't the current sort of sheep mentality of > "it has to be a single trigger O/U with 30" multi choke barrels or it wont shoot anything and it mustn’t have a speck or scratch on the gun or it is a disaster or the end of the world is nigh. Nearly everyone shot with a sbs 12 bore and the cartridge of choice >> pretty much the only one available was Eley grand prix ounce & a sixteenth. The only other main thing is that shooters generally didn’t shot hundreds because they just didn’t. Some did but most shot 20 or so and that was it. I suppose it was what do I do with all of these birds and the cost of cartridges was more thoughtful because not many bought a thousand cartridges at a time and shooting lead off at clays was a waste of money. Just different times.

[Redditch]

Me, after leaving the UK in the 70's and travelling the world, then arriving back after 38-39 years away, I notice there are no longer the massive flocks there used to be.

We used to go out in England with 8-10 guns and knock down anything between 1,000 and 5,000 a day out then. But flocks would be 5-20,000 and literally blanket a field And often several adjoining fields at the same time. Now they rarely appear in huge flocks, instead coming in in max 20-30 and more often 2-3 at a time (from what I've seen of the videos, and watching during the four months I sent in England prior to moving over to NI)

And where I am in NI now, there USED to be lots of pigeon, now the only place you see a fair amount of pigeon is around the barns, and they are feral, and number no more than 30-50

Corvids seem to have completely taken over the further north and west you go in fact

Ohhh, I'm not complaining, as corvids are good sport too, but it would be nice to have more woodies. Usually lucky to get 3-5 woodies on a days shooting, and 95% of the birds I shoot now are corvid, 4% feral pigeon, and only 1% woodies :(

BUT, even in those days, the massive flocks only appeared two three times a year, and you had to be lucky to get on them.

Roost shooting, we would get all the young farmers, and the local shooters in on the act, and cover maybe 30-40 farms, all the copses and woods, just moving them on, and would stock up on cartridges (no limits on the amount of cartridges, and yep, choice was ELEY Grand Prix 1 1/16, (or S&B/Baikel later (which meant waiting give seconds for the paper and smoke to clear to see if you hit anything LOL) )

Guns were SBS, or semi auto, very few pumps (manufrance was the most common pump), and very few o/u

No magnets, flappers, and most decoys were wooden (plastic were just appearing, but very very expensive)

Now it's rare for shooters to invite other shooters, as they often get repaid by having them use their permissions after as if it were there own and inviting their friends too :(

Edited July 20, 2015 by Redditch

[pigeon controller]

The main thing is retail issue of all the bits and pieces , we made manual flappers, manual floaters which you moved by a cord , rotaries that were operated by a cord on a by bycicle wheel hub and a flyer that you released out of a tree that would fly down into your pattern and draw birds from a distance. This was shooting cabbages and sprouts then rape came on the scene and it all became a little bit easier and we leart to use real birds as decoys with Angels.

[ditchman]

HHaaaahhhah................i remember the fliers well....never used them but some of my mates did...........they set them up the day beforehand....sometimes 3 strings with 10 cut outs on each one...then release them one at a time...................a lot of faffing about that was............

 

 

 

for those of you who dont know what a "flier" is or was.....it was a "ariel runway....or zip wire".....sometimes 20-30yds long from 20ft up a tree down to the pattern...and at the top was a battery of cut out decoys....and you would release them one at a time when you saw a bird......

 

 

dont think motty uses them as he is short on trees !!

Edited July 20, 2015 by ditchman

[marsh man]

Some interesting points came in ... Thanks......one or two are .

 

We often hear the phase ( school boy error ) when we run out of cartridges now , but being on low wages in the building trade back then we very rarely could afford more than a few boxes at a time , so when we ran out it was because we didn't have anymore rather than we didn't take enough.

 

P C picked another point , saying we buy nearly everything we need instead of making bit and pieces up ourselves , such as wire cradles out of fencing wire , fenboy said about making decoys out of plastic guttering , and with me during a lot of guttering work we always had some over ,or being honest about it we made sure we had some over. at the time they done the job and the advantage was they stacked on top of each offer and didn't take up to much room. we always used undercoat paint to reduce the shine on them

 

Transport was brought up by Mr JDog , a bicycle was a big step up from walking and then I bought a second hand Honda 50 which opened up a whole new world for getting around , how I managed to get all my gear ( which wasn't that much ) and a sack of pigeons resting between your legs without getting stopped by the law I will never know , then a car and girls came along and like they say , the rest is history .

 

Nets took up a lot of room and with them being heavy you only used one piece that went in front and each side , our first ones were bought from a advert in the back of the Shooting Times for around 19 / 11d , now a 5 mitre one can be rolled up and put in your game bag.

 

Bags improved with time , once you reached your first 50 you slowly but surely moved towards your first 100 , which was over a period of a few years and then the day came when every thing went right and you got your first ton . now I am happy with whatever I get and prefer quality rather than quantity .

 

.

[wymberley]

State of the art 1977. Taken from 'Know Your Pigeon shooting' - a WAGBI publication.

 

 

 

[ditchman]

that looks like a cross between a traction engine and a monocycle...............

 

 

 

the look on his face tells it all..........."ive just jagged my nuts on the crossmember"....sort of look ...

Edited July 20, 2015 by ditchman

[JDog]

Me, after leaving the UK in the 70's and travelling the world, then arriving back after 38-39 years away, I notice there are no longer the massive flocks there used to be.

We used to go out in England with 8-10 guns and knock down anything between 1,000 and 5,000 a day out then. But flocks would be 5-20,000 and literally blanket a field And often several adjoining fields at the same time. Now they rarely appear in huge flocks, instead coming in in max 20-30 and more often 2-3 at a time (from what I've seen of the videos, and watching during the four months I sent in England prior to moving over to NI)

And where I am in NI now, there USED to be lots of pigeon, now the only place you see a fair amount of pigeon is around the barns, and they are feral, and number no more than 30-50

Corvids seem to have completely taken over the further north and west you go in fact

Ohhh, I'm not complaining, as corvids are good sport too, but it would be nice to have more woodies. Usually lucky to get 3-5 woodies on a days shooting, and 95% of the birds I shoot now are corvid, 4% feral pigeon, and only 1% woodies :(

BUT, even in those days, the massive flocks only appeared two three times a year, and you had to be lucky to get on them.

Roost shooting, we would get all the young farmers, and the local shooters in on the act, and cover maybe 30-40 farms, all the copses and woods, just moving them on, and would stock up on cartridges (no limits on the amount of cartridges, and yep, choice was ELEY Grand Prix 1 1/16, (or S&B/Baikel later (which meant waiting give seconds for the paper and smoke to clear to see if you hit anything LOL) )

Guns were SBS, or semi auto, very few pumps (manufrance was the most common pump), and very few o/u

No magnets, flappers, and most decoys were wooden (plastic were just appearing, but very very expensive)

Now it's rare for shooters to invite other shooters, as they often get repaid by having them use their permissions after as if it were there own and inviting their friends too :(

 

That is an average of 500 birds per gun. I am sceptical about those numbers.

[dad]

i have been shooting pigeon 50 years now the changes i have seen are the professional or semi prof. i have lost shooting to them on good pigeon land, they pay for soul rights and you are asked not to come any more. part time keepers too, i will run your pheasants if i can do the pigeons and rabbits some of the small shoot farmers cant resist it. also the size of the bag 25 is and allways was a great day out.seems to be so much importance on the 100 or more. back in the 60s 15 on clover was a nice day nevr took more than 50 crtgs

probably never owned more than 50 ( currently got 4250) then jack hargreaves and out of town came along and told every body about archie coats and the rest of wanted to do the same.

[kaunda]

If I bought a box of Eley cartridges from the local ironmonger he would give me a Shooters Yearbook.

They now cost £4.00 ( the book,not the cartridges).

[ferretman_2009]

The only thing I aint got in my kit is a TAZOR but hell you can buy them now so you never no whats going too happen between now and the box in the ground

[marsh man]

If I bought a box of Eley cartridges from the local ironmonger he would give me a Shooters Yearbook.

They now cost £4.00 ( the book,not the cartridges).

I remember them well Kaunda , they were produced by Eley and our local shop only stocked Eley cartridges so at Christmas as a little thank you they gave you the diary . I did see Archie Coats at one of the C L A game fairs on the Eley stand and they were given them away , but that was in July, so they would have to been a good salesman to sell you one that only had five months of the year left

[aga man]

Amongst the differences i have noticed in the past 25 years is more rape being grown, which i think has had an effect on the lack of interest in peas in many areas now. Also the huge increase of the price of cartridges nowadays, gone are the days of buying bulk barrels of bin ends and over runs direct from gamebore!

I also don't remeber shooting young woodies all year round like we do nowadays but perhaps we did?

 

I also agree with fenboy's last paragraph sadly.

[motty]

Me, after leaving the UK in the 70's and travelling the world, then arriving back after 38-39 years away, I notice there are no longer the massive flocks there used to be.

We used to go out in England with 8-10 guns and knock down anything between 1,000 and 5,000 a day out then. But flocks would be 5-20,000 and literally blanket a field And often several adjoining fields at the same time. Now they rarely appear in huge flocks, instead coming in in max 20-30 and more often 2-3 at a time (from what I've seen of the videos, and watching during the four months I sent in England prior to moving over to NI)

And where I am in NI now, there USED to be lots of pigeon, now the only place you see a fair amount of pigeon is around the barns, and they are feral, and number no more than 30-50

Corvids seem to have completely taken over the further north and west you go in fact

Ohhh, I'm not complaining, as corvids are good sport too, but it would be nice to have more woodies. Usually lucky to get 3-5 woodies on a days shooting, and 95% of the birds I shoot now are corvid, 4% feral pigeon, and only 1% woodies :(

BUT, even in those days, the massive flocks only appeared two three times a year, and you had to be lucky to get on them.

Roost shooting, we would get all the young farmers, and the local shooters in on the act, and cover maybe 30-40 farms, all the copses and woods, just moving them on, and would stock up on cartridges (no limits on the amount of cartridges, and yep, choice was ELEY Grand Prix 1 1/16, (or S&B/Baikel later (which meant waiting give seconds for the paper and smoke to clear to see if you hit anything LOL) )

Guns were SBS, or semi auto, very few pumps (manufrance was the most common pump), and very few o/u

No magnets, flappers, and most decoys were wooden (plastic were just appearing, but very very expensive)

Now it's rare for shooters to invite other shooters, as they often get repaid by having them use their permissions after as if it were there own and inviting their friends too :(

I'm surprised I haven't heard of you, as these would certainly have been some kind of record bags!

[Old Boggy]

As has been said, the introduction of OSR has been instrumental in sustaining pigeon numbers during the harder winter months. I'm sure that I'm not the only one on here who remembers sadly seeing pigeons in heavy snow feeding on brussel tops and in very poor condition, offering no sporting challenge just the opportunity to put them out of their starved misery.

 

Also as been said, cartridges were not bought in the same numbers as nowadays, not by me anyway. I, like others I'm sure, were reloading using the old re & recapper and rolled turnover machines in just enough numbers for the next outing, probably using just 20 to 30 cartridges. The cost of shot, powder, wads etc. at that time made this quite affordable. Couldn't afford Eley Grand Prix and Sellior & Bellot were too unpredictable.

 

Possibly the title of another thread, but where were you when the assassination of JFK was announced on 'The Wireless' ? I was in my attack reloading cartridges. God, that ages me !

[yickdaz]

Amongst the differences i have noticed in the past 25 years is more rape being grown, which i think has had an effect on the lack of interest in peas in many areas now. Also the huge increase of the price of cartridges nowadays, gone are the days of buying bulk barrels of bin ends and over runs direct from gamebore!

I also don't remeber shooting young woodies all year round like we do nowadays but perhaps we did?

 

I also agree with fenboy's last paragraph sadly.

I started in the mid 80s as a young kid and I haven't noticed much difference they behave more or less as they used to do I say more or less because I never shot them before rape was on the scene , we never used any gizmos and gadgets just static decoys and made good bags throughout the 90s then magnets came on the scene and used one ever since but I agree with you on the cartridge price hike that's the one thing that stands out in my mind

[fenboy]

We cannot complain too much about the prices of cartridges , as some of our older members have said they only brought a box or two at a time because that is all they could afford .

I would bet the majority of us pigeon shooters buy at least a slab at a time and keep at least 500 - 1000 in stock , cartridges have gone up yes but so have wages and free income.