Why we shoot pigeons
Peter Theobald explains why people shoot pigeons and his own motivations
The woodpigeon is a truly magnificent bird. It is one of our most sporting quarry species and makes for really good eating too. It is also our number one agricultural pest, causing millions of pounds’ worth of damage to farmers’ crops. This can cause conflict with conservationists, who believe that you should only use lethal methods of control as a very last resort, and farmers whose livelihoods depend on keeping pigeon damage to a minimum.
Caught in the crossfire of all this is the humble decoyer, who simply wants to be left alone to exercise his own moral judgement as to when and where he kills pigeons and enjoy his sport in peace. This is where the general licence intervenes, attempting to separate people who shoot pigeons for sport from those who do it for crop protection, or even those who want to pot a few to eat.
As it stands, decoyers are required to prove that all non-lethal methods of damage prevention have been tried before they resort to shooting. The unintended consequence of this is we would no longer be allowed to shoot pigeons coming in to roost even if they were stuffed to bursting point with some unfortunate farmer’s rape. Nor would we be able to decoy on stubble fields as the birds would clearly be doing no damage here.
Fortunately, someone with a modicum of common sense managed to negotiate
“To provide effective crop protection you need to kill large numbers of birds”
a clause that allows decoyers to kill pigeons “to prevent future damage to crops”. We still have to be mindful if we are approached by the police, asking us why we are shooting pigeons in any given situation. At no point should you admit that you are killing pigeons because it is a fantastic sport, nor that you intend to fill your freezer with highly nutritious protein. But quite how a prosecutor would begin to prove what you had and had not done before you resorted to shooting is beyond me.
It is interesting how the implementation of the licence has divided the pigeon shooting world, with many advocating a close season that allows the birds to breed in peace. Unsurprisingly, not a lot of these people turn out to be farmers, who generally want pigeons killed at every opportunity, regardless if they are doing damage at the time.
Then you have the sportsmen and women who just enjoy spending a couple of hours pottering round their permission to bag a few birds for the table, and have no inclination to spend six hours in a freezing hide trying to keep hungry pigeons off a vulnerable rape field.
The final category is the one that Paul and I fall into. That is, we do it for the sport primarily, with the added bonus of providing crop protection for the farmer.
You may think that these categories overlap, but, they don’t. For starters, the potterer does not want to kill large numbers of birds and most likely has no interest in the damage they may cause to crops. The close season enthusiast is also unlikely to be bothered about crop protection, as he is quite happy to ignore the devastation pigeons cause to growing crops between the months of April and August, the woodies’ traditional breeding period.
That leaves the likes of Paul and I, who recognise that to provide effective crop protection you need to kill large numbers of birds whenever the opportunity presents itself. Yes, scaring devices work in the short-term, but as I have said many times in these pages, you will not stop a pigeon feeding somewhere unless you kill it. Also, you are not addressing the basic problem of keeping the overall numbers of pigeons to a manageable level.
Professional
To prove that the sporting value of pigeons trumps virtually any other reason as to why we pursue it, it is the only pest species whereby the shooter is prepared to pay the farmer to protect his crops. If you want your rabbit numbers reduced, you pay a professional. And as a farmer I don’t recall anyone knocking on my door offering to pay me in order to get rid of rats for me.
It is because I am a farmer and a sporting pigeon shooter that I have a foot in both camps, though I have never let that diminish my respect for this fantastically adaptable bird. I would never relegate it to the status of other pests such as rats or corvids, where you kill them and burn the carcasses.
We do our utmost to retrieve and enter into the food chain every pigeon we shoot. And no wording of a general licence will ever change that philosophy.