Can you go pigeon shooting over water troughs?

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By Peter Theobald

Friday, 31 August 2012

A couple of books on pigeon shooting say it’s possible to get a good bag of woodies in hot weather when they visit water troughs or streams for a drink.

I live on some chalk uplands and often see birds dropping in on dew ponds around and about. Is it best to flight them, or decoy them at the watering hole?

PIGEON SHOOTING
Peter Theobald
I have identified watering locations, maybe twice in a career of 45 years, where I could have perhaps taken a bag of 30-40 birds.

I have not taken advantage on either occasion, for two reasons:

In my opinion, pigeons have a hard enough time on the fields where they feed, without getting bashed up when they go for a quiet drink.

On a more practical note, it is highly likely that you could push birds right out of an area if you constantly blew up their drinking sites, thus robbing you of far more productive decoying situations on their feeding fields.

It’s a bit like overshooting a roosting wood until pigeons forsake the entire area.

If your reconnaissance is good enough to identify such a site, and you are not concerned about decoying in the area, then there is no reason why you could not make a reasonable bag.

Decoys would be superfluous, as pigeons are coming to the spot anyway.