Shooting pigeon from a butt
Swapping a hide for a “grouse butt” took a lot of thought, observation and planning – but would it produce good sport?
Tarquin Millington-drake spent a day with pigeon supremo Tom Payne
etting into a grouse butt has to be one of the great fieldsport moments. It is the anticipation of the intense excitement to come. Grouse butts have huge character: old wood, wonderful stone, heather – none are the same. You have to get to know each in terms of its construction, its height, the fauna around it, where best to put
Gdogs, gun sleeves, where to lean and how much room there is. Then there is the landscape around them, which shapes how the birds will come. If with a loader your discussion will surely be about how the birds fly, what dangers there might be, where flankers might pop up from. For a short time, it is your home. It is the same as getting into an Alta boat on the glorious big fish river in the north of Norway. Same anticipation, same history and the same settling-in process getting everything the way you like it to make the cast or the shot. There is no grander sport in either world – or is there?
A pigeon hide does not have the history of a grouse butt or Alta boat but it does have the same homemaking requirements, perhaps even more so. A pigeon hide often needs some clipping and ground excavating to get it level for the most important aspect of