Pigeon Shooting for beginners - easy as pie

In the summer , when the days are as hot as your barrels, pigeon shooting comes into its own. Since pigeons are capable of devastating agricultural crops farmers will often welcome responsible Guns, so how do you get started? One of Britain’s leading authorities,  JOHN BATLEY, provides a beginner’s guide.

Imagine this; the editor phones and casually asks for a complete novice's guide to woodpigeon decoying in only 1,500 words……  After some very careful thought I can do no better than offer the final two sentences of a book that I wrote on the subject a few years ago.  'I am a strong believer in fieldcraft.  Go out and practise it, enjoy the sport and its many rewards, and remember the most important rule: do your reconnaissance and look for pigeons in the air not on the ground.' 

There you have it, fieldcraft and reconnaissance: the be all and end all of pigeon shooting.  However, it's not quite as easy as that, you need a starting point, so let's start with the bird itself.