There are three kinds of pigeon shooting in this country: that from
traps; that against the farmer’s great enemy the wood pigeon (_Columba
palumbus_); and that of the wild blue rock pigeon (_Columba livia_)
along the cliffs. The stock dove (_Columba ænas_) is found amongst the
wood pigeons in small proportion to their numbers.
A few years ago the “trap shooting,” as it was called, was very
fashionable, and probably it will be so again, when the shooting schools
have sufficiently shown that they can teach anybody to hit targets sent
overhead, and cannot do much for any form of shooting that depends for
its accuracy and quickness upon balance and good walking powers. Not
that pigeon shooting is much of a school for this class of shooting
either, but it is shooting at birds going away from the gun and rising
at a fair range. At 30 yards rise the majority of those who shoot
pigeons fail to kill many more than half their birds with _two_ barrels.
It is a very poor shot indeed who misses as great a proportion of shots
at driven pheasants. Yet with this evidence constantly before the eyes
of everybody who reads his sporting papers, it is very frequently
asserted that driven game is much more difficult to kill than birds
rising in front of the shooter. Besides this, the pigeon springs from
the ground slowly compared with a partridge or a grouse or a snipe, and
it does not cause the sportsman to walk after it. The author has on many
occasions seen pigeons dropped within 3 yards of the trap constantly by
a man in good form, but he never saw a full-feathered grouse, partridge,
or snipe knocked over as near as that to its rise. The difficulty of
shooting rising game is to shoot straight quick enough; that of shooting
driven game is to wait long enough and shoot straight. For the first,
there is an individual limit for each of us, which no amount of practice
seems to improve. There is, for the second, no limit to the cultivation
of patience.
But this only applies to the single shot of each kind. The difficulty of
driving is not in the shot, but in the shots. There is no limit to the
number of possible chances, and for this reason one cannot exercise
patience and let the game get very near, lest other chances should be
lost. The real difficulty, then, in shooting driven game well is to
shoot the far-off birds as soon as the gun will kill them, in order to
change guns quickly and be ready again.
In pigeon shooting the double rise is the most difficult. Few kill half
their birds at 25 yards rise, and still folk will talk of the difficulty
of driven game as compared with flushed game. The author does not
believe there is any pigeon shooter who can, even occasionally, kill a
dozen blue rocks in double rises at 30 yards. He knows there are plenty
of people who can frequently kill a dozen grouse, pheasants, and
partridges driven overhead. And yet a rising blue rock is not “in it”
with the spring of an October grouse, partridge, or snipe for quickness.
A ten-year-old boy has been coached at the shooting school to kill
driven game well, but nobody ever saw or will see a ten-year-old walk
after October grouse and kill them well. An old man of eighty has made
quite as good work as the rising generation at driven game, but not at
shooting over dogs.
Still, pigeon shooting from traps is only now regarded as a test of
skill by a very small and decreasing minority, and the reason is that
the coming game has been invested with a difficulty that does not
properly belong to it, and one that will grow less each year as the
prejudice against going to school to learn skill with the gun decreases.
At present it is not the townsman who finds driven game difficult, but
the countryman who has learnt his shooting on game, but only a little of
it, and who is “above” going to school again.
The rules for pigeon shooting can always be had from the Secretary of
the Gun Club, Notting Hill; they are slightly changed occasionally, and
therefore it is not wise to repeat them here. There are five traps, each
of which is supplied with a pigeon, and either of these birds is
released for the man at the mark to shoot at when he calls “Pull.” The
operation of the traps is done by hand, but a hand that does not know
which trap is to be opened.
Ordinary game weapons are of no use in these competitive pigeon matches.
Guns are used of above 7 lbs., that will absorb the recoil of large
charges of powder and shot, the latter of which is limited to 1¼ oz. The
usual plan is to use small-sized shot, so that there shall be many of
them in this weight of load, and to use enough powder to cause the light
pellet to strike with as much energy as pellets a size larger from a
game gun and charge of powder. Pigeon weapons used always to be
chambered for 3 inch cartridges, but whether this will continue, now
that concentrated powders have come in and are much used for pigeons, is
doubtful.
Some very wonderful scores have been made in America by professional
pigeon shots. Probably nothing is more deceptive than the scoring of
long runs at pigeons, which may be the best blue rocks or very
blundering slow-rising fowl. In America they have not had a very good
class of pigeons, and their records are consequently not fairly
comparable with those made in England at best blue rocks. The American
birds are of the English race, but not of the blue rock variety. The
latter are a domesticated breed of the wild rock pigeons of the coast
caves, where its pursuit is vastly more difficult than shooting its
cousins from a trap.
The records of kills of even best blue rocks do not tell us very much of
the form of the men who made them. Some apparently very wonderful
shooting was done half a century ago, at 40 yards rise. Later, guns were
reduced in bore, and in weight and load; boundaries were shortened, and
12 bore charges of nitro powders were improved, so that conditions have
varied from time to time so much that nobody can say with any certainty
who were the best pigeon shots or at what period they lived. Probably
Horatio Ross got out of a gun as great a proportion of its accuracy and
power as any man who ever lived, and although the numbers of gunners who
can shoot driven game well has greatly increased, the number who can
shoot pigeons even moderately well has very much declined in England.
Our countrymen now lose the Grand Prix de Monte Carlo with nearly as
great certainty as formerly they won it. This does not appear to be
because the competition is more severe than it was, for the author knows
some winners of the Grand Prix whom he could not call first-rate shots.
One of the writer’s first pigeon shooting matches was at a private house
party at Vaynol Park. His experience there serves to illustrate the
differences between good blue rocks and what are usually called “owls”;
this term means any bird either bigger or with more white in it than a
blue rock has, also it serves to show that an occasional “owl” is a good
test of ready marksmanship. The writer had won a single stake, and only
required one more bird out of the double rise stake to win that too. It
was getting dusk, and the birds had been very smart. When the traps
fell, two white ones came out and circled round to right and left as
slowly as they could. Of course the shooter thought it an obviously soft
thing to get them both; but “certainties” in shooting have a way of
following the example of racing precedents. He missed both quite easily,
and had to pay instead of to receive—except in “chaff.”
It might be thought that something should be said on the ethics of
pigeon shooting, since the exigencies of polo have abolished it at
Hurlingham, and the screeching brigade have rendered this as a moral
victory in the press.
The author has bred pigeons in Lincolnshire dovecotes for this sport,
and is not a bit ashamed of the fact. Moreover, as Edward VII. was at
that time shooting them, the company is good enough.