doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Pigeon shooting

Buzz, the closest I ever got to the races was back in the seventies at Hegins, PA. An old timer told me when I asked about the "$", he said "Son, you�re watching guys shoot that have ice water cruising through their veins.�

John Mc, neat story about the 11 year old. I was 15 when my Dad took me to a shoot at Drifton, PA, outside of Hazleton. In that area, one shot, low gun shoots were still prevalent, and probably are today. It was the first shoot I had entered. My gun of choice was my 26" 16 gauge W&C Scott, bored full and full. It was not exactly the gun of the day. However, in the first race of my life, I killed seven of ten and was pretty happy, even though I was a bird or two out of the money. Shoot birds were a dollar and juniors didn't have to play the money. I really enjoy the old one shot shoots, but I think they pretty much ended south of Hazleton when the Labor Day Shoot at Hegins ended.

I also prefer a MX-8, 31 1/2" bbls. 7 1/2 shot. Like Smallbore I killed the first five straight I ever shot at. My technique is to basically "waste" the first shot, shooting the first barrel as fast as I can after picking up the the bird. Even if I do miss him with that shot my second shot has a better chance of killing him inside the fence.

Background and wind are huge in flyer shooting.

After killing that first straight I walked back by the other shooters and one older guy said to me "Son, this may just be the worst thing that ever happened to you ". He may have been right.

SRH

My dad and I used to hunt pigeons feeding on grain along railroad tracks on the Columbia River when I was a kid. It is/was great year round sport, and they were great eating too, as one might imagine. I generally try not to shoot anything I don't intend to eat, although I've shot lots of smelly pen raised field trial quail, many of which I didn't feel were fit to eat.

We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.
Henry Beston - from The Outermost House

I wish I could post this anonymously, because I don't want to take a side, but I can't post without giving up my identity. When we examine these wonderful birds in Audubon or under a glass after we kill them, they are beautiful and obviously a gift from God beyond compare. However, some day, as we do, they die. How they die is not pleasant, regardless of how it happens. In nature, these wonderful birds die horrible deaths, as they do at flyer shoots. It's the same at slaughter facilities or anywhere else. Almost any form of death is probably preferred by the pigeon to poison in an urban atmosphere, where many flyer shoot victims would die if they had not been trapped. I will continue to attend the occasional flyer shoot when I feel I can perform well.

Well said, Eightbore.

I can see where my posting the Henry Beston quote could lead to a misunderstanding. I have no objection to pigeon shooting. My post was in reply to Stan's post, specifically the part about animals having no emotions. I respectfully disagree.
I can understand Eightbore's reluctance to take a side. If you do, it can really draw some intemperate responses on this site. The theory of Narcissism of Small Differences may explain why.

I understand the theory of Narcissism of Small Differences. I won't explain why that theory doesn't apply here, but I will continue to explain that the end of a pigeon's life in nature is usually more violent and full of suffering than the end of its life in the ring. That's where I stand on the subject. I don't think game birds normally die of old age in sleep.