This was a surprise to me.

[Gas seal]

Hi JDog I’ve taken many family members and friends out pigeon and corvids shooting over the years and I’ve seen this before. I took a friend out shooting jackdaws for the first time and he shot them from the start. I found some of the more experienced shooters couldn’t hit pigeons and then started to (poke) at them more so when decoying, and over thinking making it worse. As marsh an said it’s about the timing and reading the birds. I kept pigeons when I was at school and I kept them from landing on the house roofs and I did it for other pigeon keepers so the pigeons would land on the lofts not the house roof on race days, no time lost. This was an advantage when I shot woodpigeon or any other birds. I hope you invite your friend out for another go ,I’m sure  he just needs a bit of confidence .

[pigeon controller]

On 30/08/2023 at 22:52, bunny_blaster said:

I’ve never worked my average out to be honest. Without sounding big headed i like to think I’m a fairly decent shot but I’m shooting 3 days a week on average. Let’s say out of 50 decoyed pigeons I’d like to see 45 of them on the floor. The day PC and I shot 800+ I took 520 of them for I think 625 shots, I remember this as I had 600 shells in the truck and used the last one with 499 down. I rang PC and told him I’d finished and what I was on and he walked a box of cartridges over to me saying you can’t finish on that number! My best cartridge to bird ratio I’ve ever done was 133 pigeons for 136 shots as that’s all the cartridges I had with me. It was small corner of a field of spring rape they had grazed off low and every shot was the same and nothing was more than 20 yards away

I can vouch that Ben is a good all round shot on any platform. With respect to pigeon shooting he has “ Young Eyes” and see the target bird well before me. He loves to take high crossers which in turn give him a good eye.

With respect to bird to cartridge ratio I have previously report my best day when I was requested to shoot a hole in barley below a sitting tree and to prevent crop damage due to picking up had to shoot the same shot over and over to drop them in the hole. The shooting position was at the far end of the field and I carried five boxes of shell and shot 124 birds, as I called it “tin can shooting”

My shooting nemesis are corvids, it take me a few shots to get into them as I think they are slow and do not adjust to the right lead.

[marsh man]

1 hour ago, pigeon controller said:

I can vouch that Ben is a good all round shot on any platform. With respect to pigeon shooting he has “ Young Eyes” and see the target bird well before me. He loves to take high crossers which in turn give him a good eye.

With respect to bird to cartridge ratio I have previously report my best day when I was requested to shoot a hole in barley below a sitting tree and to prevent crop damage due to picking up had to shoot the same shot over and over to drop them in the hole. The shooting position was at the far end of the field and I carried five boxes of shell and shot 124 birds, as I called it “tin can shooting”

My shooting nemesis are corvids, it take me a few shots to get into them as I think they are slow and do not adjust to the right lead.

Good to hear from you again P C , are you back from the problems they have been having in Grecce ? , what with the wild fires and now with the flooding it must have a huge impact on the holiday industry , it used to be most years we would have some form of a weather record but now it virtually every month , even now we have gone through five days of temps reaching 30 degtees and tomorrow again in the 30s , make you wander what is next on the list , will we have have a record rain fall when this hot spell come to a end ?.   MM  

[pigeon controller]

18 minutes ago, marsh man said:

Good to hear from you again P C , are you back from the problems they have been having in Grecce ? , what with the wild fires and now with the flooding it must have a huge impact on the holiday industry , it used to be most years we would have some form of a weather record but now it virtually every month , even now we have gone through five days of temps reaching 30 degtees and tomorrow again in the 30s , make you wander what is next on the list , will we have have a record rain fall when this hot spell come to a end ?.   MM  

I’m still out in Greece for two days we had thunder storms above us , literally shaking the building . The tourist cafe’s and restaurants are all  winter mode wit all the outside seating covered. I’ve been painting and carrying out essential maintenance inside plus walking 7 kilometres a day to move my meds around my body. The evenings are spent eating out and having a few beers with the locals and bragging with pictures off my phone. They do not decoy at all just flightline shoot at migrating birds. No birds on the stubbles only feral.

I’ve tried to reply to lots of topics but get bombed out by the server, be back soon , so leave a few for me!!!