In summer these birds are widely distributed through nearly every wood
in the country, and the majority of the large flocks we see in the
winter come from abroad. Summer gives shooting to anyone who has
patience to wait for a very occasional shot, but in winter great sport
is to be had wherever the big flocks are found. These flocks often
number many thousands of individuals, and do not visit the same spots
every year. The attraction is always food: acorns, clover-fields, and
turnip-fields are most attractive. If left alone, the pigeons would soon
clear a big field of every blade of clover or of every turnip leaf. In
ordinary weather they are very wild indeed, and must be attracted to the
hidden shooter with decoys of kinds. But in hard frost, when there is
some frost fog in the air, through which the birds look as big as
barndoor fowls with their puffed-out feathers, they are almost careless
of man or gun. At least, they are so occasionally, and in such
circumstances the author has shot lots of them from the roadside hedge
without any concealment, but by merely walking along and shooting those
which rose nearest to the fence. Another way of shooting them is to wait
for them to come in to roost. The latter gives a few very sporting
shots, but neither plan is likely to give great sport, and the best is
undoubtedly to be had only by the double means of the use of decoys and
a constant and simultaneous disturbance of the pigeons in all the
coverts of a neighbourhood by a number of guns.
In this way the birds are kept upon the move all the time, they are
attracted to your hide by your decoys or dummy pigeons, and many times
over 100 and sometimes over 200 pigeons have in this way been killed in
one day by a single gun. The shooting is all the harder because of the
necessity of shooting from a shelter, except in snow-time, when
occasionally a white nightshirt is a good substitute for any hide, and
the gunner may stand out in the open unobserved by the birds. Very tall
bamboo rods are useful to fix up dummy or stuffed wood pigeons, _head to
the wind_, on the tallest branches of the trees near by the sportsman’s
hide. Others can be placed upon the ground to give additional confidence
to the coming birds. Even better results can be obtained by the use of
one or two live decoys on the ground amongst the dummy or stuffed birds.
A live decoy is best used on the principle of the “play bird” of the
bird-catching fraternity. He is made to rise from the ground
occasionally, so that he flaps his wings and settles again. This is done
by the pulling of a string which is fastened to the pigeon and works
over a lever. Anything in the shape of a couple of sticks placed some
yards apart, with the string fastened to the farther from the shooter
and running loosely over the top of the nearer, will answer the purpose
of hoisting up the pigeon 4 feet or a yard. In tying it to the running
string between the two sticks, it is necessary so to arrange as not to
impede the wing movement and not to turn over the bird in flipping it
upwards. It is not the rise that must be looked to for attracting wild
ones, but the natural way the bird settles after it has been flipped
into the air. This will be seen much farther away than the dummies on
the ground, or even those in the trees, but it is not so much because of
the distance whence it is seen as because of the confidence it begets
that it is the best form of decoy. In this sport the quicker one shoots
the better, because there are always more birds coming, and if you wait
they may get near enough to hear the shot, or even to see the smoke,
after either of which those particular birds are lost for the day. The
best position for a hide is in the fence of a covert, near to not very
tall trees on which dummies can be placed, and where the adjoining field
affords food—for choice, a turnip or a clover field.
The shooting at settling pigeons as they steady themselves is child’s
play, but the ambitious gunner need not wait for this, and will have
plenty of opportunities of being dissatisfied with his own skill. If
there should be big hawks about, as described by Lord Walsingham of one
of his famous shoots, the gunner is likely to realise that even wood
pigeons can emulate the twisting of the snipe and the speed of a
down-wind grouse, and do it all at one time.
It may be asked whether wooden dummies are likely to take in the live
birds. There is no doubt about that, if they are set head to wind, as
the real thing always sets himself. Moreover, it has occurred that a
peregrine has so much mistaken the nature of these imitations as on one
occasion to dash at one of them, hurl it yards away, and suffer himself
to become a gunner’s substitute for the tardy quarry, and so to gaze out
of a glass case ever after as a warning to rash and greedy humanity.
The author believes that Mr. Mason of Eynsham Hall, who now has Drumour
in Perthshire, holds the record for a day’s wood pigeon shooting. He is
not very certain of the score, but believes it was 253 birds, if memory
is reliable.
With all the records of trap shooting before him, the author cannot make
up his mind to occupy space with them; for, as already said, they are
not comparable amongst themselves.