Pigeon shooting: Pigeon shooting: pop-up pigeon hide

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Pigeon shooting: pop-up pigeon hide

Pop-up hides are relatively new to pigeon decoying, but are finding many fans.

By Ian Mason

Friday, 10 September 2010

Pigeon shooting: There’s nothing wrong with pigeon. Fantastic quarry; wary, testing to shoot, and in terms of intelligence, PhD material compared with pheasant or grouse.

Pigeon shooting - building a pigeon hide.
Despite a gloomy weather forecast it turned out to be a glorious day for decoying; bright and breezy with the wind carrying shot noise away from the roost wood.

It was also a perfect opportunity to try out some of this year’s Game Fair purchases; a monster pop-up hide, and a rather curious pigeon-decoying contraption.

TESTING
The testing ground was 45 acres of freshly cut wheat stubble near Reigate, Surrey.

The field was by no means ‘blue with pigeon’ but a flight line running diagonally from roost wood to water was well trafficked, with birds steadily dipping onto more sheltered parts of the stubble.

First up for testing was the hide. Normally I’d build a narrow, five-pole hide with a dipped front and scrim roof.

However, a large pop-up hide on display at this year’s Game Fair intrigued me.

As the photographs show, it’s compact to carry when folded, highly portable, erects easily in under a minute and boasts drawing room proportions compared with my regular construction.

ASSEMBLING THE HIDE
So how did the pop-up fare? On the plus side, it’s light (8lbs compared with 13 lbs for my standard pole set and camo nets).

Erection was simplicity itself.

Pigeon shooting - pigeon decoying

With a small tent peg at each corner the hide was easily tethered despite a healthy breeze.

Later, when gusts strengthened, the windward side tended to collapse in like an inverted umbrella.

However, one of the supplied guy lines attached to a central hub plus another tent peg easily solved this problem.

ALL-ROUND VISIBILITY
There are acres of room in the hide. I also liked the fact that the lower half was totally obscure so that lunch, ammo, and assorted bits of kit could be stowed out of sight.

The lighter mesh top half of the fabric gave superb all round visibility and pigeons did not spot me provided I sat still.

Pigeon shooting - pigeon decoying

The hide could easily accommodate two Guns taking turns to shoot.

It can also be pegged out in a straight line against a hedge to form a long screen for two to three wildfowlers. And the down side?

The hide is a fixed height so a smaller shooter may have a problem getting their gun over the mesh for a low incomer, whilst a taller shooter may find the sides a tad short.

But for Mr Average, there’s no problem.

With such a large hide, I would like to have seen some built-in means of screening the rear top half to conceal the occupants from pigeons drifting over or approaching from the rear.

In the event, some clothes pegs and a piece of scrim did the job.

The hide was on a Game Fair special offer of £50. The full retail price of £59.50 compares favourably with the cost of poles and netting. I purchased it from Mike Slater of Riverside Outdoor.

Mike and his business partner Gary are keen pigeon shooters and always on the lookout for new decoying gear.

However their other offering surprised me.

Called the ‘Triple Play Motion Doves’ this nifty gadget hails from Wisconsin, USA where it’s made for dove shooters.

Mike imports it and repaints the doves as pigeons. I know... it sounds daft, but it seems to work.

RAN ALL DAY
Three full-bodied deeks are attached to a central hub by short arms. The hub has spikes to drive into the ground.

The decoys rotate at intervals, spinning and turning at the same time.

The net effect is to simulate three birds walking around feeding.

From a distance it’s quite realistic and despite the dove bodies being slightly smaller than pigeon decoys, this is hardly noticeable once the ‘doves’ are in your pattern.

It ran all day on the four AA batteries supplied.

Pigeon shooting - pigeon decoying

Mike is offering the Triple Play for £49.50.

It proved useful as a simple way of getting movement into a decoy pattern without using a rotary, which can sometimes seem to scare away more pigeons than it attracts.

So how did the day go?

I was covering the stubble with fellow shooter Nigel Light.

We tossed a coin for the more heavily trafficked sheltered part of the field, won by Nigel.

At both of our hide locations the outcome was similar.

In the morning pigeon seemed reluctant to commit to the deeks.

However, as more shot birds were added to the pattern, the confidence of incomers grew and they would commit to landing.

It wasn’t a red letter day, but with 50 shot and picked, including some memorable high crossers tempted off the flight line to check out our decoys, it was a splendid way of spending the Twelfth.

Riverside Outdoor
07779 934563
www.riversideoutdoor.co.uk