numpty Posted August 30, 2015 Report Share Posted August 30, 2015 What happens to it afterwards is a matter of ethics. I accept that everyones moral compass is set different and that is perfectly legal, but why tell us what you do with birds when the vision of piles of dead 'wildlife' does little to generate support for our activities, sport or pest control. It even generates adverse reaction among some pw members. It would certainly make for an interesting poll. The basc has a good practice guide I believe, I wonder what a good practice guide would look like if it was created by pw? I think I will start a new thread. The difference between the examples is pretty obvious. A crow, other than a young rook soaked in milk overnight is damned hard to stomach. Never tried a fox admittedly, but skinned fair few and the smell would put me off sticking one in the oven. I find it sad to think that anyone is pleased to leave the by product of their sport, all be it 'vermin' to rot in the field, just because it is tagged with the term vermin. If I had not read your previous posts Scully I would think you had a foot in the wrong camp by letting everyone know what you have done. I am often approached by walkers and those in the local villages about my activities as a pigeon shooter, and will talk at length about the damage they do and how I control them, and can only imagine the abuse I would receive if I then told them I dump them when I finish. I offer anyone and everyone pigeon along with advice on how to cook them, for free, as I feel everybody who kills wild birds should be an ambassador for our sport and show others that we have respect for our quarry. I am sorry Wymberley, that just because it is perfectly legal does not put it beyond criticism, as the comments from many pigeon watch members are proving! If anybody has no respect for the birds we pursue, then I suggest they shoot clay instead. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wymberley Posted August 30, 2015 Report Share Posted August 30, 2015 (edited) I find it sad to think that anyone is pleased to leave the by product of their sport, all be it 'vermin' to rot in the field, just because it is tagged with the term vermin. If I had not read your previous posts Scully I would think you had a foot in the wrong camp by letting everyone know what you have done. I am often approached by walkers and those in the local villages about my activities as a pigeon shooter, and will talk at length about the damage they do and how I control them, and can only imagine the abuse I would receive if I then told them I dump them when I finish. I offer anyone and everyone pigeon along with advice on how to cook them, for free, as I feel everybody who kills wild birds should be an ambassador for our sport and show others that we have respect for our quarry. I am sorry Wymberley, that just because it is perfectly legal does not put it beyond criticism, as the comments from many pigeon watch members are proving! If anybody has no respect for the birds we pursue, then I suggest they shoot clay instead. You misunderstood. I was responding to Post #21 which simply related to pigeon shooting and not any particular aspect, good or bad, of it. Edited August 30, 2015 by wymberley Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fenboy Posted August 30, 2015 Report Share Posted August 30, 2015 I have recently been shooting pigeon with steel , they are then brought by those that keep various birds of prey. No way on earth would any of those people feed a lead shot bird to any of them as it kills them , so I have often wondered how wise it is just to leave dead pigeon and saying that the buzzards etc will eat them , yes they will and it will likely kill them too , I guess some may not be too upset at that though . Yes there is always going to be a odd pricked bird laying around the country side but piles where raptors can gorge themselves is perhaps not a great idea. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redditch Posted August 30, 2015 Report Share Posted August 30, 2015 Same in NI as far as most game goes. People just don't and won't eat it anymore, even if you offer to GIVE it to them all skinned, plucked, gutted, and ready for the oven :( If it's not wrapped in cellophane with a sell by and use by date, then it's "ohhhhh, you can't eat that" :( So, 99% of my pigeons get used for fox bait, and the same with the rabbits, I can only eat so much myself, the rest is waste unfortunately Sad days we live in Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scully Posted August 30, 2015 Author Report Share Posted August 30, 2015 I find it sad to think that anyone is pleased to leave the by product of their sport, all be it 'vermin' to rot in the field, just because it is tagged with the term vermin. If I had not read your previous posts Scully I would think you had a foot in the wrong camp by letting everyone know what you have done. I am often approached by walkers and those in the local villages about my activities as a pigeon shooter, and will talk at length about the damage they do and how I control them, and can only imagine the abuse I would receive if I then told them I dump them when I finish. I offer anyone and everyone pigeon along with advice on how to cook them, for free, as I feel everybody who kills wild birds should be an ambassador for our sport and show others that we have respect for our quarry. I am sorry Wymberley, that just because it is perfectly legal does not put it beyond criticism, as the comments from many pigeon watch members are proving! If anybody has no respect for the birds we pursue, then I suggest they shoot clay instead. I wouldn't say I was pleased to leave them, but if no one wants them I wont be taking them home. The game dealer doesn't want them, I can only take so much as pet and ferret food, I don't want them in my dustbin at home and the farmer doesn't want them in his slurry pit, so he's happy enough ploughing them in. And that's just the pigeons. Corvids I have no use for at all except perhaps the odd one as ferret food when I can't get anything else. Pigeons are a pest species; if you object to the methods used by some ( and I'm not the only one burying vermin ) then lobby to have their status changed to a game species, complete with open and closed seasons and then maybe more people will start eating them. You and others may regard them as a 'sporting' bird, and I'll admit, they can be very challenging, but they're still vermin and if I couldn't use them as dog food I wouldn't take any home at all. We shoot many rabbits also, the vast majority of which are head shot as that is the way our dealer prefers them. The heads are then removed in the field because we can get more in the freezer that way; we don't take the heads home. We don't take gut shot ones home either or those emaciated with mixi. If the antis or others are upset about this then tough ****; and as for 'having a foot in the wrong camp', well, that's a ridiculous statement; it's not Wind in the Willows out there. There is nothing I can do as a shooter, short of stopping ( and there's no chance of that ) that will endear me to the antis, nor them to me, so they are the last people I would consider. We have a very healthy population of Buzzards and Sparrowhawks around here; I very much doubt my methods over the years have had any detrimental effect on the raptor population at all. The only dead ones I see are usually lying under those electricity pylons with signs proclaiming 'Danger of Death'. Like I said, I simply can't take seriously any criticism from those who are shooting living creatures merely for their own entertainment, and if you're a shooter of live quarry, then that includes you. You can sanitise it or justify it to those people in your village you talk to in any way which makes it easier for you to live with, but when all's said and done you're doing it because it you enjoy it, which is a small point you no doubt neglected to tell them. I have yet to see any shooter saddened by pulling off that speeding, jinking high crossing shot as you whip the barrels through which culminates in that sudden explosion of small white feathers as the bird folds up and tumbles spinning to the ground in a graceful arc. You carry on doing what you're doing and we'll carry on doing what we're doing. I'll still be posting bag numbers on here on the rare occasions we get them, but I wont be relating what happens to that bag for fear of upsetting those of a more sensitive disposition. You never know, one day our game dealer may say yes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anser2 Posted August 30, 2015 Report Share Posted August 30, 2015 For me its simple ethics , if you cant eat them or fine an outlet for pigeons to reach the table then do not shoot them. I was brought up to respect wildlife not waste it. There are always dealers advertising for pigeons in the sporting press so there is no excuse for anyone to just chuck them away. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scully Posted August 30, 2015 Author Report Share Posted August 30, 2015 For me its simple ethics , if you cant eat them or fine an outlet for pigeons to reach the table then do not shoot them. I was brought up to respect wildlife not waste it. There are always dealers advertising for pigeons in the sporting press so there is no excuse for anyone to just chuck them away. Absolute rubbish. The 'holier than thou' attitude of some on here beggars belief. It's pest control; they need to be controlled whether there is an outlet for them or not. If a landowner phoned to say 'can you come and shoot some of these birds after my crop?' and I said 'sorry, can't do as I have no one to give them to', after he'd finished laughing he'd simply hang up and ring someone else. The landowners are more than happy to plough them in. They live in the real world where your 'sporting' sensitivities count for nothing. No one has yet explained what they do with all the corvids they shoot as part of pest control. How does the landowner feel when these aren't shot despite them hammering his crop, because you 'can't eat them or find an outlet for them'? Nor has anyone explained how they recover all those pigeons and corvids the landowner has asked to shoot over their standing barley or wheat. Last year we shot 158 pigeons and corvids over standing winter barley, but we never recovered a significant number as they were lost in the crop. The farmer was over the moon and bought us a couple of slabs of cartridges 'for next time'. Please, get a grip. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
silver pigeon69 Posted August 30, 2015 Report Share Posted August 30, 2015 (edited) Scully, i understand where you are coming from, but i feel that leaving the birds on the side of the field is not a good idea for two reasons. 1. i dont think it gives a good impression to non-shooters/antis and 2. if a rapture was to eat them, die from lead posioning and be tested by the numerous anti organisations, this would only give them and the Anti-Lead lobby more ammunition to use against us. Maybe a bin/dump/slurry pit may be a better option? edit: spelling Edited August 30, 2015 by silver pigeon69 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scully Posted August 30, 2015 Author Report Share Posted August 30, 2015 Scully, i understand where you are coming from, but i feel that leaving the birds on the side of the field is not a good idea for two reasons. 1. i dont think it gives a good impression to non-shooters/antis and 2. if a rapture was to eat them, die from lead posioning and be tested by the numerous anti organisations, this would only give them and the Anti-Lead lobby more ammunition to use against us. Maybe a bin/dump/slurry pit may be a better option? edit: spelling Fair enough, and while I can see where you're coming from, for any non-shooters to be on this land would be trespass as they would be way off any public footpaths, and secondly, raptors are ingesting lead shot carcasses the length and breadth of the country as no one recovers every shot bird no matter what they may claim, yet it took deliberate poisoning and persecution over decades to have any effect on raptor populations. I've no doubt the local badgers, mustelids of all description and foxes are making the most of them also, which isn't ideal admittedly. Whilst I could take bin liners full of breasted pigeons and complete corvids home, I wont; I don't think the bin men would be too chuffed after the local cat population has clawed open the odd smelly bag, and although we did have one farmer who was happy for us to chuck the odd fox in the slurry pit he is long gone, and others aren't keen, hence the ploughing in. Those we left from last weekends decoying have now been well buried and are already turning into fertiliser for next years Winter barley, at the landowners suggestion I may add. Whilst I can see your logic and I mean this with the utmost respect, I really and truthfully just don't care what antis or those who don't shoot think about what I do, I really don't. I'm not just saying that as some sort of belligerent attitude, I genuinely do not care. As I've already said, they are an ignorant idealistic cotton wool brained lot who have a skewed idea of what real life living in the wild without the comfort of electricity, regular food, medicine and family really entails. Their minds are already made up; they disapprove of what I do and nothing I am prepared to do will change that opinion because I'm simply not prepared to do anything to change it. After last weekends shooting on the drive out, we found a pricked pigeon more than 200 hundred yards away from where we'd been shooting. It had just been passed by a dog walker on the only public footpath which borders this particular piece of land; his dog was a Springer but he obviously wasn't a shooter as he'd simply ignored the bird which he couldn't have failed to see and he turned back to watch me as I got out of the vehicle and picked up the bird to finish it off. He had to stand to one side to let us pass down the narrow lane and I wound down the window to say thank you as we passed, but he could barely bring himself to acknowledge my thanks and I could tell he wasn't impressed. I just smiled pleasantly and didn't ask him where his bag containing his dogs **** was. I can only assume all of the dogs we see being walked on this path **** at home. I started this thread simply as an observation of how frustrating decoying can be, and really wasn't expecting holier than thou outrage about pest control. It's a funny old world intit? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
silver pigeon69 Posted August 30, 2015 Report Share Posted August 30, 2015 Totally agree with your description of Antis, however i beleive that there are alot of people who are sitting on the line, who are not sure which side of the line they should be(pro field sports/Anti). Thats why i think we should try our hardest to explain the benefits of what we do and try not to show the negatives of what we do. i know there are negatives to most things and many people would have different views if they witnessed those things but thats life. How many people would become veggies if the Lamb/beef carcasses were left on display in the field? Ps If you had **** fieldcraft and were a **** shot like me you wouldnt have this problem!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scully Posted August 30, 2015 Author Report Share Posted August 30, 2015 Totally agree with your description of Antis, however i beleive that there are alot of people who are sitting on the line, who are not sure which side of the line they should be(pro field sports/Anti). Thats why i think we should try our hardest to explain the benefits of what we do and try not to show the negatives of what we do. i know there are negatives to most things and many people would have different views if they witnessed those things but thats life. How many people would become veggies if the Lamb/beef carcasses were left on display in the field? Ps If you had **** fieldcraft and were a **** shot like me you wouldnt have this problem!! Fair enough. I'm sure you're not as bad a shot as you think. Just swiiiiiiingg! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
matone Posted August 31, 2015 Report Share Posted August 31, 2015 No one seems to get too incensed about foodstores dumping ton`s of food they can`t sell ! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wymberley Posted August 31, 2015 Report Share Posted August 31, 2015 No one seems to get too incensed about foodstores dumping ton`s of food they can`t sell ! +1 Seems to me that many of the posts on this thread reflect our commonly held attitude towards our sport which is the need to be defensive when, as I think Dr D is getting at, provided we behave correctly, there is nothing to defend. Unfortunately, as in the above example, what Scully descibed is sometimes unavoidable and is not done through choice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Neal Posted August 31, 2015 Report Share Posted August 31, 2015 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scully Posted September 1, 2015 Author Report Share Posted September 1, 2015 <script pagespeed_no_defer="">//=d.offsetWidth&&0>=d.offsetHeight)a=!1;else{c=d.getBoundingClientRect();var f=document.body;a=c.top+("pageYOffset"in window?window.pageYOffset:(document.documentElement||f.parentNode||f).scrollTop);c=c.left+("pageXOffset"in window?window.pageXOffset:(document.documentElement||f.parentNode||f).scrollLeft);f=a.toString()+","+c;b.b.hasOwnProperty(f)?a=!1:(b.b[f]=!0,a=a<=b.e.height&&c<=b.e.width)}a&&(b.a.push(e),b.d[e]=!0)};p.prototype.checkImageForCriticality=function(b){b.getBoundingClientRect&&q(this,b)};h("pagespeed.CriticalImages.checkImageForCriticality",function(b){n.checkImageForCriticality(b)});h("pagespeed.CriticalImages.checkCriticalImages",function(){r(n)});var r=function(b){b.b={};for(var d=["IMG","INPUT"],a=[],c=0;c=a.length+e.length&&(a+=e)}b.g&&(e="&rd="+encodeURIComponent(JSON.stringify(s())),131072>=a.length+e.length&&(a+=e),d=!0);t=a;if(d){c=b.f;b=b.h;var f;if(window.XMLHttpRequest)f=new XMLHttpRequest;else if(window.ActiveXObject)try{f=new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP")}catch(k){try{f=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")}catch(u){}}f&&(f.open("POST",c+(-1==c.indexOf("?")?"?":"&")+"url="+encodeURIComponent(b)),f.setRequestHeader("Content-Type","application/x-www-form-urlencoded"),f.send(a))}}},s=function(){var b={},d=document.getElementsByTagName("IMG");if(0==d.length)return{};var a=d[0];if(!("naturalWidth"in a&&"naturalHeight"in a))return{};for(var c=0;a=d[c];++c){var e=a.getAttribute("pagespeed_url_hash");e&&(!(e in b)&&0=b[e].k&&a.height>=b[e].j)&&(b[e]={rw:a.width,rh:a.height,ow:a.naturalWidth,oh:a.naturalHeight})}return b},t="";h("pagespeed.CriticalImages.getBeaconData",function(){return t});h("pagespeed.CriticalImages.Run",function(b,d,a,c,e,f){var k=new p(b,d,a,e,f);n=k;c&&m(function(){window.setTimeout(function(){r(k)},0)})});})();pagespeed.CriticalImages.Run('/mod_pagespeed_beacon','http://forums.pigeonwatch.co.uk/forums/index.php?s=6eea36a95673c792bba50671e7600c6d&app=forums&module=ajax§ion=topics&do=quote&t=319647&p=2895952&md5check=b30911e2c2f0635d3c949685ca6c6b6a&isRte=1,l8PuqRhht8,true,false,caZBuVNfFdA');//]]></script> &&0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oowee Posted September 1, 2015 Report Share Posted September 1, 2015 Sorry to disappoint JD, but I aint taking them home I'm afraid. I'd rather leave carcasses to rot in the field than in my dustbin. I'm with you on this (other than i put / hide the waste in the hedge). If i shot once a week maybe i could take a few home but there are too many to deal with at times. A few for dog food or eating sounds about right and if the game dealer wont take them they have to go back to the ground. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oowee Posted September 1, 2015 Report Share Posted September 1, 2015 For me its simple ethics , if you cant eat them or fine an outlet for pigeons to reach the table then do not shoot them. I was brought up to respect wildlife not waste it. There are always dealers advertising for pigeons in the sporting press so there is no excuse for anyone to just chuck them away. If i did this my farmers would find another shooter pretty quick. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jeffjjack Posted September 2, 2015 Report Share Posted September 2, 2015 Does that mean I have to eat all the rats I shoot?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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