GETTING IT ALL THERE AND GETTING IT ALL BACK AGAIN – KEEPING YOUR CAR FREE OF BLOOD IN THE PROCESS

When it comes to kit I use one of the most useful things I have is a plasterer’s bath. This blow moulded heavy duty plastic bath is designed to stand rigorous use. Everything goes into it and it is dragged to the site of the hide. Because it is flat bottomed with rounded sides it has little friction and does little damage to low crops. At the front I have drilled two holes either side and have some rope with a length of hosepipe to stiffen it and act as a comfortable hand hold. Step in, put the hosepipe up to your hips and walk on or off the field – a little like an Arctic explorer.

If it doesn’t fit into the bath – it doesn’t go with me. I know one shooter who has a quad bike and a trailer to hump all his kit – that might mean he has too much gear – there is a limit.

Also on hot summer days the birds I shoot go into the bath under a fly net with a bungee keeping it sealed. On days such as this I pick up every 25 birds and put a layer of ice packs (crushed litre water bottles from the freezer kept in a cool bag) on the bottom, a layer of pigeon, layer of ice, layer of pigeons, and so on. This is the best way I have found of keeping flies of the birds and getting the temperature of the carcasses down as quickly as possible. Also just step in to walk the whole lot of the field at the end of the day. (I go back later for the kit apart from my gun and cartridges).

I also use this as a deer carcass tray. It catches the blood and washes out with no nooks or crannies for bacteria to fester in – I would be lost without it now.

£32.99 inc P&P from Transtools on Ebay – and delivery was fast too

Follow this link: Transtools plasterer's bath

EASY DIY NECK PROPS

So following Wally and his one decoy using neck props on dead birds to get their neck collar to look right is to my way of thinking the best decoy. The most simple neck props are from wire coat hangers and you can cut four from each hanger. Just remember to collect them when you pick up your birds as combines don’t digest them well. Also pick up you birds by the wing rather than the neck to preserve that collar as it is the flock recognition symbol they use when feeding. Also only can you carry more birds this way. Don’t have all the head bolt up right as that will look like a flock about to leave the field and you want to give the impression of a flock busy feeding. The top spike goes straight through the base of the head into the skull. You can carry them in a old plastic bottle to avoid running you hand through as you reach into your pocket to get one out (I've been there and you can have more fuN than that in your life).

A BIRD IN THE RIGHT PLACE BEATS A DOZEN IN THE WRONG ONE 
I remember being taught a valuable lesson when I was 16. A friend and I had been decoying on a farm for a year or so and had always been the 4^th or 5^th to shoot any promising field. Determined to be ahead of the game the next time we got to a field of freshly drilled barley earlier than the boys on the farm this included an old roguer called Wally. Wally had been shooting this particular farm for 40 years (legally and otherwise) and he was none too pleased to see us on the field before him. Despite this he did something he had never done before and offered us some useful advice. As he never gave anything away for free and it puzzled me at the time. We moved our hide as he suggested and Walter retired to the other side of the field. He had no kit with him other than his trade-mark roll up glued to his bottom lip, his old side by side, two belts of cartridges and a game bag with some extra cartridges in it. He shot one pigeon as it got out of the oak tree on his way to the other side of the field – this was his only decoy. He set it out the other side of the field and shot 84 pigeons that afternoon gradually building his pattern as he went. We shot 14.

Wally knew his subject and he had learnt it from a lifetime of observation. Looking back now I believe the reason he offered his advice was because he knew we were in the wrong part of that field and that he was about to teach us a lesson. It was the only time I ever saw him smile.

When you buy your cartridges you should bear in mind that shot sizes vary in the different parts of the world. 0.3mm may not seem like much but there is a difference in lethal performance between UK 7’s and UK 7.5’s at different distances. The charts below give a useful round up although there are differences between them.

HOW THE CHINESE MIDDLE CLASS AFFECTS THE PRICE OF YOUR CARTRIDGES

Rumour has it the chattering classes in China are buying 38000 cars a day. Cars need batteries, and batteries need lead. That is one of the reasons the price of lead on the London metal exchanges shows no sign of returning to earth. Cartridges are getting more expensive but it should not be an excuse to cut corners with your ammunition. A box of any old rubbish shows no respect towards your quarry – fine for busting clays, but we are dealing with a living being here and you are trying to be as efficient as possible.

Cartridges kill cleanly (rupturing the major blood vessel and organs, see previous post) by a combination of 2 factors.

Pattern and penetration (P&P). Many things affect these two overriding factors and there are trade offs with different combinations. To start with we should define some terms.

• Pattern – the collection of individual pellets that make up the shot weight (oz or grams) and act in a similar way to a spurt of water from a hosepipe
• Penetration – the depth to which those pellets travel within the carcass having gone through atmosphere, feathers, skin, tissue, and bone to reach vital organs and vessels
• Shot size – the diameter of the individual pellets that make up the shot weight
• Choke – the constriction at the muzzle of the shotgun that regulates the spread of the pattern at any given distance
• Wad – the part of the cartridge that provides a gas seal for the burning gunpowder moving the pattern up the barrel in a uniform manner – falls away quickly after leaving the barrel.

Moving away from dictionary corner we will start with pattern.

The law of averages says that the more pellets you have in your pattern the greater the chance of damaging one of the vital areas and killing cleanly. This is true – up to a point. The more pellets, the heavier the shot weight and the more the recoil (push a heavy weight forward at high speed and a greater force comes back into your shoulder – Newton 1^st Law once more). That’s why I only ever had one customer who bought 36gm 6’s for decoying pigeons. That cartridge is simply not comfortable to shoot all day. The usual choice is no less than 28gm and no heavier than 32gm. I could not shoot 32gm all day – I don’t have my dentist on speed dial. (George Digweed I know shoots 35gm 5’s all day long, but then George is a more substantial chap than I am, uses a heavier gun and is the finest shot of his or any other generation. He alone has the talent to shoot at the ranges he specializes in, and he does it well. He has spent years perfecting the setup he uses, practicing the art, and it is not for us to try the same.) 28gm of 5’s will contain fewer pellets than 28gm of 7’s because of the diameter of the pellets. So here is our first trade off – 28gm is a very comfortable load to shoot but does it have the required pattern at a further distance?

More has been written about choke (and I bet W.R. Pape and W.W. Greener are still slugging it out in the afterlife as to who invented it) than we have room for here and most of it is boring, analytical, impractical guff so read around if you want to. What choke you use affects the pattern a shotgun throws. Different barrels will behave differently with different cartridges. It is up to you to test your barrel, choke, cartridge combination by pattering it (subject of a future post). Essentially the tighter the choke the more constricted the pattern down range and the higher the odds of a clean kill. The trade off is that very tight choke can alter the pattern in unforeseen ways. Put your spray nozzle on the end of a hosepipe to see what I mean – main jet goes further but drops of water split off more than an open end – the uniformity changes. Also bear in mind that a pattern plate isn’t what actually happens when you shoot a moving target – try hitting a wasp with the jet from your hose to see what I mean.

Shot size and penetration are intertwined – the larger the shot size the greater the mass. The greater the mass, the greater the retained energy at distance. Bigger pellets punch through the surface layers better than smaller ones to reach the vital areas. This also feeds into the trade off as I said – bigger pellets, fewer of them, fewer pellets less chance of damaging the vital organs.

The type of wad can also have a (smaller) bearing. Fibre wads are more environmentally sound but throw slightly more open patterns than plastic (or photodegradeable). Plastic wads according to some commentators throw less uniform patterns. There were rumours around a few years ago of someone developing a vegetable starch wad but I have heard little progress and nothing has yet come to market.

My own preference is for Rio (Spanish made) 28gm 7.5’s (actually 2.37mm - an English 7+) in my more open barrel (1/4 choke) and Rio 30gm 6’s (which are actually 2.75mm - an English 5) in a tighter barrel (5/8ths) – this gives me the best of both worlds. This way I fire a greater number of the more comfortable cartridge, but still have the ability to deal with the very testing second bird of any potential right and left.

THE THEORY BEHIND A CLEAN KILL

This should always be our objective but how do cartridges do it? What separates a good cartridge from a bad one?

The cleanest, quickest death possible in pigeon shooting is always achieved by rupturing one of the major blood vessels or vital organs. This leads to a sudden and fatal drop in blood pressure – death is instantaneous. To achieve this pellets must damage either the blood vessels in the brain, the neck, or in and around the heart/lung area. Pigeons are difficult to kill because none of these areas is very big. If you put both your thumbs together and imagine another thumb top joint in the middle the top joints are roughly the size of the heart/lung area. Imagine a thumbnail a few cms above that and you have a rough idea of the size of the vital areas you need to hit to kill cleanly – 35 meters away – doing 45mph.

A pigeon directly over head also gets considerable protection of those areas from their large chest muscles (the tasty bits). If they have been feeding on sugarbeet tops in the winter, a full crop can protect the major vessels in the neck like armour plating. That’s why some guns go up shot sizes and weights for this type of pigeon shooting. The next post will explain why. Conversely if you are shooting pigeon with an air rifle the cleanest kill is shooting through the back between the wings – a direct line to the vital organs and vessels.

KRISTOFFER CLAUSEN PIGEON SHOOTING PART 2

WHAT GUN?

What sort of gun is best for pigeon shooting? Well the short answer is “use the gun you shoot best with – you’re going to need to.” Another wonderful thing about pigeon shooting is the absence of snobbery. It really doesn’t make any difference whether the stock is black plastic or highest grade well-figured walnut costing more than a small family car. In a hide you can use what you want. There are however some advantages and disadvantages to different types and in an effort to retain your valuable attention I will go into more detail.

Essentially the most popular choices are over & under (OU) side by side (SXS) or semi-auto (SA). At a guess I would say that more pigeon are killed by SA’s than the other two. I base that assumption on the number of SA’s I have sold as an all round gun to those coming into shooting. But is it really the best choice for the hide?

I have used all 3 types at one time or another but now use an OU almost exclusively. Again this comes down to some science and experience. Keeping an eye on my cartridge to kill ratios over the year (and any good sample should be as wide as possible to get an accurate result) I found that one year of SA shooting yielded about 2.1:1. That dropped sharply when I went to an OU. For what reason? I found my preferred choke for distance targets was actually hampering my shooting at closer range – I was missing the easy ones and killing the hard ones. If the birds are decoying well, this can be frustrating as it will be mostly closer shots. “Why didn’t you take a more open spare choke and change it if that is the problem?” Well that is certainly one option but as a weak minded individual the temptation to blame the choke is a very bad habit that I have witnessed elsewhere and have no intention of repeating. Some shooters agonise over what choke to use as if that was the most important ingredient. I have found my cartridge/choke combination, put them in and leave them alone. (More on these subjects in future). If it goes wrong I prefer to concentrate on the basics of line, gun mount, gun speed, footwork and relaxation. The problem usually lies there. As a result I find the option of a second barrel and a more open choke improves my shooting.

So if a second barrel is useful then why not a SXS? A SXS is easier to carry all day long; faster handling as a rule than an OU and faster to load than an OU (although the semi-auto wins on ease of loading in a hide as it shouldn’t get tangled in the netting when loading). But the trade off with all that lack of weight is that recoil can be a problem (see Newton’s 1^st law).

“Dry your eyes Princess – this is shooting, of course there’s recoil. If you don’t like it, put on a dress and swish around a bit on the badminton court” Well I don’t believe that decoying should be that degree of a stamina test. Headache, bruising, fatigue, flinching, and rushed shots, all result from too much recoil. None of them improve your accuracy and you probably realise by now you need to put yourself in the best possible position to be able to kill the bird or you will miss or worse still, wound it.

An OU also has the advantage of having wood between your hand and the barrel. On a hot summer day it doesn’t take much for the barrel to heat up to such an extent that holding a SXS would be unbearable even with a leather glove on the hand. If it is a very busy day and you touch the barrel by mistake on an OU then you will find out just what that nice wide fore-end does in the way of protection. The fore-end on a SA does the same job although some SA’s can be fickle about their diet of cartridges and there is nothing worse than hearing a click when there should be a satisfying bang and push into your shoulder. Another problem thrown (literally) up by SA’s is the half hour you spend on your knees in blackthorn picking up you empty cases scattered to the four winds from the ejection port.

So it is all down to personal preference and you can see my preferences above and the rational behind most of them. One last point - it is a fact that it is easier to shoot with the single sight plane of an OU or SA, than the double sight plane of a SXS. It is simply the way our brains are configured – if you want to test that ask anyone, without telling them why, to pick up a table knife and point with it – I’d bet my boots on the result.

PROS	OVER & UNDER	SIDE BY SIDE	SEMI-AUTO
Recoil Absorption	*		*
Ease of loading in confined situation			*
Fast handling		*	*
Choice of choked barrel	*	*
Protection of leading hand	*		*
Single sight plane	*		*
Reliability	*	*
Control of spent cases	*	*
TOTAL	6	4	5

Cleanly killed

Incoming

Spent cartridge from a Benelli Super Black Eagle II and the bird it killed in the air

ETIQUETTE

The very best at what they do almost always struggle with the concept of humility. This is most noticeable in the sporting world and of course it includes the best shots. Last night I watched Barcelona put Bayern Leverkusen to the sword in the Champions League (7-1 in the Champions League) and I felt privileged to see not only one of the most complete team performances of all time but also one of the greatest displays of individual talent ever to grace a pitch. It was not just the way Messi played, or the fact that he scored 5 times in a Champions league match (the only man ever to do so). It was the way he conducted himself throughout the game. He never rolled or dived; he played one touch football with his midfield all night and when he scored there wasn't a hint of running to the adoring fans, or worse still a pre-rehearsed goal celebration, he simply turned to his team mates who had set him up, smiled and pointed at them as if to thank them for allowing him to shine so brightly. The match was followed by an in-depth look at Messi's career up to now (he's still only 24) and what was noticeable is even off the pitch the humility stays with him. Accepting all his 3 Balon D'Or awards for best player of the year first and foremost he thanked his teammates - sincerely - seemingly embarrassed to be singled out.

One of the best game shots I have ever seen, who is a gentlemen if you met him in the street, has a malevolent streak when you put a gun in his hand. Somehow he can't help himself but take the piss out of those less practiced, and accomplished than himself. Now a bit of banter is a good thing - but this is barbed and unrelenting and I cannot fathom where it comes from. I wonder if he watched the match last night? I have thought about asking him to share a hide with me as decent game shots, so used to shooting everything overhead, often struggle in a hide, and it may be a valuable lesson, but that just wouldn't be Messi, would it? 

This is one of the best shots I have seen of a Woodpigeon in flight. He nearly has the perfect shot which I will get one day of the winter sun reflecting of the gloriously rose pink chest of a pigeon with a full crop coming into roost. Roost shooting will always be my first love – that’s where it all started for me.

Although the photographer seems to be ashamed of the fact that it is ‘just' a woodpigeon and not a Sparrowhawk or Peregrine (this attitude has been fostered over the last ¼ of a century by some false conservationists who only see raptors as bankable income – those of us who have worked with international raptor conservationists are not taken in by that.) His site is well worth a visit if you have the time www.gregmorganphotography.co.uk

KEEP IT LEGAL PEOPLE

In the UK we are allowed to shoot woodpigeon all year round. We are the only country in Europe that does not have a close season for Woodpigeon. The reasons for this I will come onto later but we ought to begin with a bit of law. Stick with me here people because if you go out and shoot Woodpigeon you better know this stuff because you need to have it completely clear in your mind if you ever get asked a question. The legislation that allows us to shoot all year is called The General Licence (GL) and there is generally quite a bit of misunderstanding about it. First of all there are many general licences and are the principal tool by which wildlife managers are able to deal with problem or pest species that enjoy protection elsewhere in law. All of them are reissued every January 1^st by Natural England. (NE) The one that concerns us is GL04. You can find it HERE on NE websiteYou must read it and understand it; you don’t have to have a copy of it but the law requires you must be familiar with its terms. I will summarise but it is up to you to read it - in short if you are asked why you shot that pigeon you must state “for the prevention of serious damage to crops”. For our purposes that is the only reason you can give. Anything else and you are not abiding by the terms of the licence. “But surely Wingbar, if pigeons are perching in a tree and shitting all over my car I can nail a couple with an air rifle to put the others off – that’s OK isn’t it?” No, it’s not – not unless you are also doing it to prevent serious damage to crops.

You also have to be an ‘authorised person’ – you have to have permission to be there. If you have ever been convicted under any of the wildlife legislation then you are automatically disqualified from being an authorised person (quite rightly in my opinion and you probably wouldn’t have a shotgun certificate anyway).

Of course it does throw up some questions – ‘What about roost shooting and flightlining – you are not actually on the field protecting crops are you? And what about stubbles – the crop has gone?.' Well I would argue that preventing serious damage to crops is a year round exercise and pre-emptive, pro-active prevention is within the terms of the GL and more importantly NE agree with that position. For more information please refer to BASC HERE who negotiate the terms of the licences every year on our behalf.

"'I am afraid I am none the wiser' 

 'That may be so my Lord, but you are certainly better informed'"

 Here endeth the lesson – let us play…

KRISTOFFER CLAUSEN

I am a fan of Kristoffer Clausen’s videos and believe them to be some of the best on the tube – if you are new to pigeon decoying this will give you an idea of what goes on (in Norway at least).

CAMOUFLAGE

Although this will be regarded as heresy it is one of the greatest myths of pigeon shooting that in order to be successful you must be dressed head to foot in realtree camo gear. In what now seems like a previous life I spent a decade in the guntrade selling this gear and loyalty to the firm prevented me from saying what I am about to tell you – you don’t need it – drab colours will do. Sit still in a good enough hide (more about this vital topic in future) and look through the hide not over it and glance down with satisfaction at the cartridges you were able to buy because you didn’t spank the money on pointless camo gear. If you must have some then buy a 3XL camo T-shirt and wear it over the top of whatever is comfortable. That way if you rip it you haven’t lost £250. I remember one young trainee ‘keeper who took off his coat in a wood, hung it up and couldn’t find it again. Another individual made the same mistake with a camo semi-auto and had an extremely awkward time explaining himself to the police.

Slightly off species but professional deer managers use this technique on a regular basis – if you look and act like a dog walker, deer will stand long enough for you to take a shot, sometimes several as they don’t perceive you as a threat. If you crawl about in the undergrowth dressed in camo and your stalking technique isn’t spot on you might see them run but chances are they’ll be gone before you knew they were there. Another friend of mine and passionate wildfowler has used this on the foreshore to get close to geese – a blue anorak and he gets his Labrador to jump around like any tennis ball chaser and the skeins float over him at shootable height. He calls it hiding in plain sight.

Looking at this title picture of part of the estate I shoot over it occurred to me that you don’t have to go far and wide to have a good day out pigeon shooting – over the years these are some of the bags made at different times in this snapshot.

THE KEY TO SUCCESS

To shoot any Woodpigeon you first have to find them. Your success on the day you shoot is largely governed by the groundwork you put in before hand. There are no shortcuts. You might well be sitting there thinking ‘I’ll just go where the ‘keeper says the birds are'. Now go back a sentence – there really are no shortcuts. ‘Keepers and famers have different priorities to pigeon shooters. The farmer wants the birds off his crop – fine, that’s what you are there for – and the ‘keeper may well be under pressure from tenant farmers to get the birds off the crop too. Because of this when someone tells you the field was ‘blue with birds yesterday’ always reserve the right to make you own judgements. His version of blue may not be the same as your version of blue. You have to find out what the birds are doing, where, and when. A ‘blue’ field it might be, but if they are using it to rest and not feed then there is not a lot of point in lobbing out the decoys. What you are looking for with reconnaissance is a steady stream of traffic into a field over a period of time. Ideally there should be a line of flight from several fields away with them dribbling in in ones and twos. If they are just flopping out of a sitty tree it may not work. This is why it is important to make several trips to the field to find out exactly what they are doing. Vary the time of day you visit because it may be that it is an afternoon field and not a morning one or vive versa.

If you can get to high ground to start with and watch all around to find where the birds want to go – it may lead you to a part of the field in a hollow not visible from the road. It may be that the flightline is strong but the feeding field is one you can’t shoot. Be flexible – plan to get under the flightline instead and leave the decoys in the car.

Archie Coates (pigeon shooting’s equivalent of Moses – he handed out the commandments to the rest of us) used to say ‘Think like a pigeon’ – if you get into decoying you may find it so addictive that you have to make a conscious effort not to…

HOW DID WE DO?

So what do we as pigeon shooters think constitutes a good day out? How do we measure our success? Do we need to measure our success? In a modern sporting world riddled with statisticians doesn’t measuring every aspect of this art form somehow detract from the enjoyment to be had and lead to the kind of performance anxiety that seems to grip our national sides on a regular basis? All good questions and the answer is – ‘well yes and no’.

If it is done in the right spirit then a scientific approach to this game can be a valuable one and can be the revelation that leads to Damascene enlightenments. If not then you are liable to start forgoing shots in an effort to preserve a cartridge to kill ratio that only you will know about (no – trust me, she really doesn’t care). I have come to realise that the bag size at the end of the day can really be equated to cricket. Let me explain: 50 is a good knock; a century an outstanding one. 200 is a score of a lifetime and after that you’re talking rare events that live forever in the memory. But a well crafted 30 odd against good bowling on a difficult wicket can give just as much satisfaction as any of the big numbers – you just have to remember not to feel entitled to a certain number and to play the bowling as it comes down the pitch. That may be a little too curious a mixture of Zen and the British Empire but slow days in a hide allow a man to muse on these things. I will expand more on how the stats have helped and not hindered in the future.

DD shooting (at) a lovely incoming bird on a July pea crop. He had to leave early - I pushed onto 301

DO YOU SEE WHAT I SEE?

As this will also be about many things on the periphery of pigeon decoying itself I thought I would share something spotted in Saturday edition of the East Anglian Daily Times whose headline on page 3 read “This ‘lemon curd’ sours the perch for pigeons”. Steve Downes’ article goes onto detail a novel method of deterring feral pigeons in Sheringham in Norfolk. Bird Free Optical Gel relies on an interesting and as yet little known fact about pigeon sight – they are tetrachromats. Not only do they see the world in the red, green, blue, mixes as humans do, they also see the UV light spectrum as a fourth colour dimension. The gel reflects UV light so strongly that the manufacturers claim they think it is fire and so go nowhere near it.

This has all sorts of implications for pigeon decoying from the clothes you wear and what you wash them in (some detergents contain optical brighteners which do a similar job to the gel) to the decoys you use and net vs natural foliage. I hope to cover many of these topics in future posts.

Reflecting UV light from the white neck ring might be the key flock recognition symbol Woodpigeons use – why else would they have green iridescence above it?

INTRODUCTION AND WELCOME

The Woodpigeon is an extraordinary bird. Almost uniquely it has exploited man’s advances in agricultural technology to prosper. I know of no other bird that can provide the variety of sporting shots that the Woodpigeon can – I have shot them flying backwards (in a strong enough wind) and even managed to shoot one flying upside down as it barrel rolled out of the sky into my decoys. They say “Every day’s a school day” in my part of the world and that applies doubly when it comes to pigeon shooting. Just when you feel you understand their habits completely and your reading of field and flightlines has you wondering if you have enough cartridges – they’ll change the script and teach you a lesson. Some guns specialise in high west country pheasants, some in grouse shooting, others wildfowling, clay shooting or partridge shooting but the best all round shots that I have met (and by all round I mean courteous, spectacularly accurate countrymen; knowledgeable yet humble) have always spent a good deal of their time in a pigeon hide.

Decoying is a truly egalitarian sport. Throwing money at it, buying the best kit will never guarantee you a good day out. Of course you can hire a professional to take you out and put you in a hide, and they provide (for the most part) a good and valuable service introducing new people to this wonderful sport. But if you don’t get out and do your own work you are missing most of the point, the skill and the satisfaction. If you use a professional guide ask them questions – ‘why did you build your hide there and like that?’ – because if you don’t you’ve wasted your money and a golden opportunity to learn from their experience. If pulling the trigger is all you’re concerned about google your nearest clay ground there are some excellent ones around - this game is not for you.

One of the reason you can never rest on your laurels is that pigeons learn – fast. It is the principal reason they are so successful in this country and also the principal reason that non-lethal methods to control them quickly become obsolete. Gas guns, flags, streamers, glitterballs, and kites all lose their effectiveness over time unless they are used in combination with pigeon shooters to keep the birds honest. And that really is the point – pigeon shooting is a crop protection exercise and because of the crops we now grow this beautiful bird has exploded in population. I have been fascinated by them for the last 20 years and hope to share some of that with you in the coming posts.

WB 05.03.12