Yesterday’s session

[oldypigeonpopper]

Hello, It is a shame that now people turn their nose up at eating Woodpigeon, From what i read there are fewer Game dealers wanting Pigeon and now need to be shot using steel cartridges , Back in the 1970/1980/1990 you could find a buyer whether game dealer or someone local, Pub or neighbour , I never shot that many to warrant a game dealer but when word got around in the Village a knock on the door and they all went , no money but happy to give away save leaving in the Ditch, Oh and no one worried about lead shot, I did have a few people like Rabbit and happy to pay a shilling or 2, That payed for my 410 cartridges

Edited August 27 by oldypigeonpopper

[yickdaz]

I don't do it for money not as if I could pack my job in and make a living but if I can recover most of my cartridge bill I'll do my best to sell them

[marsh man]

1 hour ago, yickdaz said:

I don't do it for money not as if I could pack my job in and make a living but if I can recover most of my cartridge bill I'll do my best to sell them

I am sure that is the way it have always been , for many , many years the thought of ever dumping the bag never entered your head , for small to medium bags it was dead easy to cool them down overnight and the next morning they were laid out nice and neatly in the chest freezer , I had the fairly big Walls ice cream freezers with the sliding rubber lids on top , this would hold just over 300 and we often made a day out when it came to offload them , the money made would be spent on one or two slabs of cartridges as they were a lot cheaper then than they are today .

Also in the early days we were never in the position where we could afford to stock a load of cartridges , if we had a unopened slab at home with one or two boxes of 25 then we thought we were doing well , it wasn't till the demand for shot pigeons reached it's peak in the 70s that we started to buy the Baikal cartridges by 1000 , we were getting 40p for a fresh Pigeon and were buying the cartridges at £40 for a wooden crate that held a 1000 , sometimes we would splash out and buy the Style cartridges from Richardson's at £12.50 a slab which they would bring down to the clay ground with no charge for delivery .

Now the best you can do is to hopefully get some money towards the cost of the shells and having the satisfaction that the Pigeons you have shot are not going to waste . as much as I loved shooting in the past I could not afford to shoot fairly big numbers with no returns on the cartridges we were buying , another advantage we had was at least six dealers within a maximum of 30 miles away and the nearest more or less on your doorstep , Happy days that are unlikely ever to return . 

[Krico woodcock]

Definitely takes some grit between the teeth,  and stamina to shoot those large bags you's boys over there shoot.  There must be massive numbers of pigeons in some parts.  If I shoot 100 to my own gun in a day I'm having a red letter day, I've shot plenty of 100+ to my own gun over years, one afternoon, after work on a Friday,  I was set up just before 3.30, by 6.10 I shot 240 pigeons,  this was on a smallish cut rape field,  and as quickly as I could get cartridges in my Remington 1100, the next pigeons were on the way. This was as hectic a stint a shooting as I ever had, and to be honest,  it completely took the sting out of my tail for a pigeon,  I didn't want to see another for 3 weeks after it. That was near 20 years ago.