Feral Pigeon Hunting

     Today I headed out to a dairy farm near Ruckersville, to try for some pigeons while they weren't milking the cows. This is a mid-day hunt, 11:30 to 1:30, so the birds are all roosting in the barn or on the silos, but the bright side is that we can sit 40 yards away from the silos and barns and pass shoot while they fly around. We put out decoys, but only had one bird commit in our 2 hour hunt, it died very quickly with two shots of 2-3/4" #8s. My dad would jump the birds out of the barns and sheds, and we would try to take down a couple while they circled around. We had 3 groups of around 100 flying when we began and killed 5 in around 2 minutes, but then the action slacked off and the birds "wised up" and stayed close to the silos when flying, presenting us with few shots. I was amazed at how well these birds can take a hit and not go down, even at a moderate range, a cloud of feathers would appear but the birds would keep on going! Part of this is obviously from not leading the birds enough and hitting tail feathers, but we will probably have to step it up to #6 shot next time. The total ended up at 18 recovered pigeons, with 5 in the slurry store (manure pit) that weren't retrievable, one that ran into a groundhog hole before I got to it, and a few that coasted away into far away fields and were picked up by very happy hawks before we could retrieve them. I was very pleased with our success, and we now have a good idea on how to hunt it when we go next time, which probably won't be for another month. Thanks for reading!

 

Our 18 birds of the day, we cleaned every one and even got the legs as well! No wasted meat as apposed to what usually happens to feral pigeons. They taste great!