A Friendly Warning.

[oldypigeonpopper]

hello, we all know pidgeon shooting can never be guaranteed, but a guide who sets you up and the **** off is not ideal in my book, was there no other fields suitable, keep an eye on here as some good PW members do offer pigeon shooting,  

[johng]

Yes it was early August 2017 and when we arrived at the farm there was not 1 pigeon on the combined rye field, my friend ( the non shooter ) like myself has shot pigeons for years and we very nearly did not stay or pay, but having driven up from Devon to just outside Marlborough Wiltshire I let him ( the guide ) persuade us that the manager had seen loads there the day before; so against our better judgement I payed and stayed ( bloody idiot ) I should have known better. Yes as someone who travels to shoot I would love to have a section on here where like minded people could check out GOOD AGENTS AND GUIDES.

[johng]

I would greatly appreciate any pigeon shooting even paid for, providing I get some shooting. I am happy to travel, ( maybe not quite up to Scotland ) so I will keep an eye out on here. There were 2 other combined fields of barley and a few rape, the shooting was so exciting my non shooting friend took my Landy and looked around. He did not find a single pigeon on any of them.

[Ultrastu]

I sympathize with you very Much  .

Just wondering how anyone can charge you 150 quid to drop you off in a field all day .? 

Where is the cost to him .? 

Unless he rents that land ?(i doubt it) 

And even with the supplied equipment 

And his time to drop you off and pick up i cant see how he could charge more than . £50. Its not like he has blown a whole day baby sitting u and not been earning else where .

 

I sympathize with you very Much  .

Just wondering how anyone can charge you 150 quid to drop you off in a field all day .? 

Where is the cost to him .? 

Unless he rents that land ?(i doubt it) 

And even with the supplied equipment 

And his time to drop you off and pick up i cant see how he could charge more than . £50. Its not like he has blown a whole day baby sitting u and not been earning else where .

Where do you live mate ? 

[johng]

I am in Devon but happy to travel for reasonable shooting.

[Wilts#Dave]

Really does wind me up this sort of thing, same goes for poor pheasant shooting when you’ve paid good money. 

I know nothing is guaranteed but I could guarantee more than 8 shots for the day if I chose to take people out for money (which I wouldn’t do anyway) as I’d have done decent recce work beforehand. 

Sounds like the area had been overshot and there was nothing left for your visit so he just left you there in hope you might be lucky! Feel for you as that’s an expensive and disappointing mistake, as well as a poor show on A1 decoys part.....sounds like they shouldn’t be advertising such a service and stick to decoys. 

[johng]

Yes it was very disappointing, I have been decoying long enough to know nothing is guaranteed but 8 shots on a £150 day is worse than disappointing.In all honesty A1 is less to blame than the guide; A1 put their trust in him and not only did he let me down he let them down.

 

Edited March 3, 2018 by johng

[Gerry78]

Johng you pay your money and take your chances as with any field shooting BUT THE GUY should do the descent thing and give you a free day at the pigeons as a good will gesture I brought a friend wildfowling out years back he bought a visitors day ticket with the club i shoot he only shoots[ clays ]we sat in the hide and never fired a shot DUCKS just weren't flying i seen the disappointing look on hes face Now tried explaining they were wild birds same as woodies The following month i payed for hes visitors ticket as a good will gesture and we had a great morning flight SO EVEN THOUGH were chasing wild game for the sake of keeping hes good name he should come across with a free day GOOD LUCK

[johng]

Thanks for the good wishes.

[lakeside1000]

Sympathy for you but these things happen, I have hundreds of acres of shooting where I know there are good pigeon numbers, but for the last few weeks I have almost blanked on several occasions ,just no birds moving or feeding somewhere else, even the crows keep hiding from me,  I hope someone on here will give you a day or two out ,I used to take people out for the odd day but so often there would be no birds and I always felt bad for them not getting amongst the birds, I never charged for it but still felt bad, It still surprises me just how much some are willing to pay just to shoot a few pigeons, I did pay on one occasion for a day out with fenny, but it was 3 years ago and just £15 and I managed to pick up 21 birds, good value when you have no permission's of your own.

Edited March 4, 2018 by lakeside1000

[johng]

Thank you, having been shooting for many years I do know these days happen, but having spoken to the guide by phone and been assured there were good numbers there, myself and my friend travelled up. Many times before I have travelled and been told   " no guarantees "  and fair play it has been my choice to go. In this instance I was told they were there; that is the frustrating bit, and £150 is quite a large amount of money, to be basically abandoned with nothing to shoot at. Anyway it has happened and the purpose of this post was really to assure other " pay to shoot members " just be wary; don't get caught out as I did. There are those out there that will take your money and not honour promises to provide another day FOC. I did not post this to get  offers of shooting, that was not my intention. However if someone does offer shooting I am not stupid enough to turn it down.

[Bazooka Joe]

What's amazing is that they haven't posted with an explanation of some sort...

[johng]

Yes I thought either the booking agent or the guide might have taken the trouble to at least respond. Maybe they have not seen the post or maybe they are too ashamed to except any responsibility. Who knows ?

 

[marsh man]

On ‎03‎/‎03‎/‎2018 at 17:30, johng said:

Yes it was very disappointing, I have been decoying long enough to know nothing is guaranteed but 8 shots on a £150 day is worse than disappointing.In all honesty A1 is less to blame than the guide; A1 put their trust in him and not only did he let me down he let them down.

 

Hi  johng  , Did you provide your own gear or was the decoying gear provided , if the hide and decoys were set up before you arrived , was the hide area used and were there wads amongst the decoys , I was just thinking weather the field had been shot a day or two before it was your turn to shoot it.

If you provided your own gear then it was an expensive day.

Your guide should have checked the field himself the day before rather than take someone  elses word for it to make sure it was worth putting two people on a field with light pigeon activity .

 He should also had a plan b and possibly a plan c just in case things go wrong as they often do , such as baling the field up , taking bails off or cultivating on the day that has been booked .

As an example , I invited a member for a days pigeon shooting who lived in Essex , which was about 80 miles from mine , I spent the best part of the week leading up to the Saturday to find a likely field , in the middle of the week I had my eye on a fairly big barley field that had been cut and baled , this field was ideal , I had shot it a number of years and knew it would produce a decent day , more so if the bails were left on , speaking to the farm manager he said it would leave carting the bails off and the cultivating till the following week ,

I checked it again the Friday and there were a nice lot of pigeons using it , this will do nicely  , I could drive to the middle of the field , set up around one of the big bails and the member should enjoy a fair bit of shooting , then getting home and putting the weather forecast on , disaster struck , the forecast was heavy thunderstorms throughout the day.

What should I do ? , let him drive up and sit about in thunderstorms or cancel the day and make arrangements for another day the following week , so I gave him a ring and told him the situation , he decided to give it a miss and come the following Saturday.

A week in farming is a long while and by the following week the field I had lined up had been stripped of bails and cultivated with not a pigeon in sight , but like I said in my first post at that time of the year there are options that come and go on a daily basis and I soon found another barley stubble field.

The Saturday arrived and this time the weather was a perfect summers day , the member came up to mine , we had a bit of breakfast and I took him for a tour of the area before we went decoying just after dinner , we then had a afternoon shared in the same hide , the pigeons played ball and we ended up with around seventy all free of charge .

 Hopefully johng , your next day will be as good as mine  if not better, GOOD LUCK

[Blackpowder]

Sorry to hear of your lack of sport johng. I would hate to try and earn a living as a pigeon guide trying to put clients on a pigeon favoured field or under a likely flight line.  Its an unpredictable sport the pursuit of pigeon(s) roost shooting perhaps could be foreseen but otherwise this birds habits are best described as variable.  In all field sports where you pay your money I think driven pheasant or fishing a stocked trout lake are the two options where you can expect the sport promised with a degree of reliability.

 

Blackpowder

[johng]

The guide provided the gear which he set up on the day, 1 magnet and 18  decoys, the gear apart from the magnet, was not special :-  tatty plastic decoys, torn nets and plastic barrel seats ( with some padding );  but we found a couple of old shells which were starting to rust so it had been shot earlier.I have plastic ,shell flocked, full bodied flocked, FUDs, enforcers and even flexicoys; also magnets, floaters, flappers, peckers, several Denny's dippers, plenty of good netting  and comfortable seats. All I need is pigeons, LOL.

[sako751sg]

On 3/3/2018 at 10:27, JDog said:

I still worry that my invited guests, who are my friends, will not get enough sport to make their journey worthwhile. There is a limit to the number of jokes I can tell or hand stands and backflips I can do to keep them entertained.

As far as Johng is concerned this matter is disappointing but it should have been resolved months ago. There is no way that the Agent would have kept hold of my money for this length of time.

Im the same.

Ive someone off here coming the first week in April for the roe bucks and the lads that gave us the CWD and Muntjac later in the season and im already getting sleepless nights thinking about it.

To have to provide as a job i couldnt do and would be mortified if a day ended up being keech.

Edited March 5, 2018 by sako751sg

[The gouse]

8 minutes ago, sako751sg said:

Im the same.

Ive someone off here coming the first week in April and the lads that gave us the CWD and Muntjac later in the season and im already getting sleepless nights thinking about it.

To have to provide as a job i couldnt do and would be mortified if a day ended up being keech.

Your giving some lucky person some shooting for free for some pigeon shooting that as know pressure? He will be happy to get out there.

ive got chaps coming on Saturday off PW will they get some good sport???? All I can say the field is gray.

 Johng paid good money for good pigeon shooting and did not get that with a company the provides the service.

if it’s your livelihood you would make sure you give them some sport. And the company involved as been on PW today and replied to another posts.

 

 

[marsh man]

There must be several members on here who have been with some very good guides , a good guide cant always produce a good bag pigeons , they can only do there best with the land and the crops available at the time the guest(s) are coming ,

So it would be good if they let the forum know what sort of day they had , not necessarily how many pigeons they shot but how good a guide he ( or she ) was , like from the time he met you , showing you any flight lines , foot paths , land boundaries , if he kept in touch during the day........ and so on .

We hear about the bad days , now lets hear about some of the good days. 

 

[Mightymariner]

That's a good point. Would be interesting to hear the flip side.

i would add that £150 is top end for a pigeon day, so I would expect premium service throughout.

[johng]

I am still hoping to get some kind of reply from the agent; but so far nothing.

[Walker570]

Guiding for anyhting is the most nerve rattling job you can do, even roe stalking where you know for certain the animals will be in the area. They have little trap doors and seem to be able to vanish just when you have a client visiting.  However, what gets me about this is the complete disregard for the client both on the day and since.  I did go with some freinds to Sctoland, West Coast for some woodcock and the guide boasted just how many they had. He outlined that we could bring our own dogs but would also have beaters and dogs as well.

the whole deal was a sham and eventually with a day to go I took him on one side and 'politely' told him what I thought and to get on the phone and organise a decent last day for us or he was going home with empty pockets. One of the guys that turned up with a dog told me he could not believe he had booked us that weekend as five French guns had been shooting the whole area Monday to Wednesday and taken a truck load of woodcock back to France.   They are about unfortunately.

The Americans have a magazine ..I forget the title now ...but it consists of reports of hunting trips around the world by hunters, warts and all. I think it is on subscription. Always though it was a good idea ... no different than today looking up the 'reviews' when about to purchase something.

52 minutes ago, Mightymariner said:

That's a good point. Would be interesting to hear the flip side.

i would add that £150 is top end for a pigeon day, so I would expect premium service throughout.

Yes, for that you would have my undivided attention all day and probably a tasty steak sandwich delivered to your hide for lunch.

Edited March 5, 2018 by Walker570

[marsh man]

What exactly is the criteria for a guide? , surely he need to be at the top of his game both in field craft and from the safety point of view , if he allow two people in the hide at the same time and they are new to the game , do he give a briefing before they slip there guns ? , do he give them his mobile number , do he need any certificates as he is taking out paying guests ?  and last of all , do he need a liability insurance ?

In this day and age of claiming in the advent of a accident , would he be liable ?

 

 

[motty]

1 hour ago, marsh man said:

What exactly is the criteria for a guide? , surely he need to be at the top of his game both in field craft and from the safety point of view , if he allow two people in the hide at the same time and they are new to the game , do he give a briefing before they slip there guns ? , do he give them his mobile number , do he need any certificates as he is taking out paying guests ?  and last of all , do he need a liability insurance ?

In this day and age of claiming in the advent of a accident , would he be liable ?

 

 

I am sure that most credible guides would have their own insurances or at least insist that clients have the relevant insurance.

I am glad that I don't have to rely on guides for shooting.

As has already been said, any guide worth his salt would have plan B, C and D up his sleeve. During harvest, I would be almost able to guarantee a reasonable day in the field on my patch, so a guide should be able to.

[johng]

As it happens one of us was not shooting and I am a BASC member so I have insurance; not that the guide checked either my shotgun certificate or my BASC membership card. It was this is the place, I will set everything up for you and I am off. He never rang to see how it was going and it was only by chance we met him on the way home at around 4.30 pm. By then we had totally given up the idea of shooting anything. Eight shots total : -  two at pigeons ( Mr Digwood might have stood a chance at hitting them ) I had none but desperation had set in; the other six were at blacks and I did shoot two of them; again probably more by luck than good shooting as they were well out from the mess the guide called a hide.