Giles Catchpole: Decoying Pigeons Sucks - Here's Why [9 min listen]

Voices of the Countryside

Wood pigeons are rightly regarded as a top-tier sporting bird, but what with wasps, nettles, the need for truckloads of clobber and the quarry's uncooperative nature, decoying them can be a pain in the proverbial

Anybody will tell you that there is no better sport to be had than decoying pigeons. In fact, everybody will tell you that there is no better sport to be had than decoying pigeons. I've said it myself. And I'll stand by it: there is no better sport to be had than decoying pigeons.

If you leave aside shooting driven grouse, obviously. Your grouse – going downwind at a zillion miles an hour - across acres of glorious purple heather is a thing of rare excitement, right enough, but it also costs a zillion ducats a day to ambush it from a butt, so when we are declaiming about the best sport to be had, we tend – out of a perfectly reasonable urge to recognise that not everyone may be able to shoot driven grouse for several weeks each season – to temper our excitement and point instead towards shooting pigeons over decoys.