The home of Shooting Times and Sporting Gun


Are professional pigeon shooting guides worth it?

He works on a 3 to 1 average. Would you consider this a fair way of doing it, and good value?

Pigeon shooting
PETER THEOBALD
Most professional outfits charge a flat fee, typically £100 plus for a day’s decoying, but I do not know of any that would consider firing 240 shots in a day to be a reasonable base for their fee.

I would have thought that firing 50 shots constitutes a ‘decent’ day, and you would be expected to cough up.

I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of days in a year where I fire more than 200 shots, and would consider these days to be of the red letter variety.

Compared to driven game shooting, a day in which you fired 50 cartridges, even at the ratio of one bird per three shots, is likely to result in a bag of 170 for 10 guns, and would cost you a minimum of £350 plus tips.

On that basis, I think that pigeon shooting through an outfitter, is incredibly good value.