A good companion?

Do gundogs have a place in the hide when pigeon decoying? Robin Scott, former Sportinggun editor-at-large

I’ve always argued that if you shoot you should own and work a gundog. I stand by it. The only possible exception are people on commercially let game days where their money pays for an army of pickers-up to find the fallen.

But that’s the only one. If you go rough shooting or wildfowling, it’s a given you need a dog. End of.

What about pigeons over decoys, I hear you say?

Very few woodie-mad friends of mine bother taking their dog into a hide at a weekend and say that they cope fine enough without it. What they’re actually saying is: “The bloody mutt ruins my day because it can’t sit still and wrecks the hide whenever a shot’s fired.”

I totally get the point. However, a properly trained dog that’s steady to shot and fall can’t help but bring a new dimension to every day’s decoying.

By all means finish off a “walker” in the decoy pattern with a second barrel if you’re dogless, but what of a pricked pigeon settling in another part of the field and then drawing birds? Or perhaps a dead woodpigeon lain belly-up in the decoys and scaring incomers? Any decent dog will sort such problems in moments, not the torturous time taken to clear the field by someone in pursuit of a lively flapper.

I’m sure the many decoyers out there with a pigeon-savvy dog will agree that the sight of a human in the open can stop a pigeon flight dead in its tracks for hours at a time. Maybe kill it altogether. But these wary birds never seem overly concerned with a dog going about its business in the same way.

As if to prove the point, I’ve shot innumerable woodpigeon over the pattern while a dog has been hunting the outfield or returning with a bird in his chops – or even sitting outside the hide in full view, wagging his tail as birds came in.

That’s my boy!