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.