doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com ZZ Birds/Helice. Shot Today

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I suppose the average cost is $3 a bird. Last time I shot live birds (pigeons) it was $7 a bird.

In my area, live pigeons are $15-$20 a bird.
At my club you can pre-pay for helice targets and get the price down to $1.87 a target, still expensive, but if anything is fun, it's expensive.

Helice at our club are sold on ten-target cards. The cost for members is $20 per card and for guests is $27.50 per card. That's routine practice that is going on 5 days a week. There are some ad hoc fun races held on some days with our core of shooters and on most Sundays a fun race of 20 to 30 targets, but anyone can still shoot practice targets w/o joining in the race and jump in and shoot in whatever rotation the trapper is given the cards.

For typical USHA sanctioned shoots, targets run in the neighborhood of $185 for a 30-target race but that includes daily fees getting extra traps when required, having FITASC certified referees that are paid, usually at least one nice spread of horse divers, other amenities, &c.

The least expensive helice I've ever shot were $1ea. They were targets made in Mexico and sold here at one time that took a LOT of killing. The plastics used were not quite right and getting those wings to release the witness cap was often not successful. The favored ammo then was standard Remington Shure Shot© in #7.5. Those were 32-gram loads and legal at the time and the thinking was that its typically soft shot would impart 100% of their energy to the target and not penetrate the tough plastics employed. Today, they have specs for target composition, &c. And they are much better than they used to be in not only in composition but erratic flight characteristics. Maximum loads for competition are 28 grams or 1 ounce.

If just shooting practice for your own amusement you could still shoot 32-gram loads, but I don't know of anyone doing that.

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Last time that I shot flyers the birds were $13.75 ea., and it was a small private affair. Don't recall exactly but probably seven or eight years back from now. They were $11 ea. the year before that at the same place. When I was first invited to shoot there, they were $4 apiece. And when I first shot flyers in the 60's, they were typically $3 apiece.

That's why they call pigeon shooting the "Sport of Kings"

Brother Drew, great pictures of the shoot in Arizona, the one picture looked out of place with shooters eating, that picture is from the Carlisle Spring Shoot that Pastor Charlie puts on every April.

Drews photos are AZMIKE's shoots in Double Adobe, AZ.

At my club its $20/card of 10. So, $2.00 for those of us not so good in math. At least that is what my calculator says. Not able to verify results.

John
Houston

Get to Houston, we can go shoot.

The working side of a Helice launcher.

Do you call for the bird? And do you start at low gun? Looks interesting, but I can't say that I've ever tried it or even seen it.