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