I've decided to travel and buy some pigeon shooting days with a professional guide. He charges £120 for a decent day pigeon shooting – a 'decent day' being 80 plus birds or one based on the number of cartridges fired.
Would you like to speak to our readers? We offer sponsored articles and advertising to put you in front of our audience. Find out more.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.
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