For the most part when I think of varmint hunting I assiate the use of rifles, however there is also a place for the scatter gun in varminting. Since 1965 I have been pass shooting wild pegions.Is there anyone else that has this affliction? It's about as much fun as you can have with your clothing still on!

well pidgeons and crows are about the closests thing I can get to what you guys call varminint.
I shoot them off distant hills with 6PPC and 7mmrem after sewing grains.
When they tire of that they take refuge in an old "borg" which is like a tiny medioeval village that belongs to my neihbur. So you get in there and flush (shoot with a .22) them out of the rafters, shoot them as they circle back...Yep is can be a lot of fun.
I haven't been over for a while so my neihburs are starting to ask me to come over and do a pidgeon run, they can get to be rather numerous, you can take 50 or so in a day's combined sniping, flushing, scattergunning then back to sniping when they lose their trust.

An Aussie in itialy with a 6PPC shooting pigeons. I would love to hear the rest of the story. Are you a benchrest shooter? Dec.21,03 using a Rem 870 and No#4 shot I dumped 71 of the air-rats, and two crows. Went out again yesterday and dumped about as many again and a bunch of starlings. The farmers love us for it.

Sendaro,

When I lived in Saskatchewan, pigeons were fair game.
I would go to abandoned farm houses,barnes and graineries. First, at a distance, I would shoot whatever was on top of the roof with a centerfire. Then I would go and throw rocks inside the building to flush the pigeons out and get some wing shooting with a smooth bore. Then I would go inside and finish off any birds that did not fly out. I was relentless and gave them no slack.

The best pigeon shooting I had was when pigeons, by the hundreds, would fly out of the city and feed on grain piles left out in the fields nearby. There were only a few piles of grain, so the pigeons were consentrated. I built a blind out of blocks of snow, only 10yards away from the grain pile. I would wait till you could not see the pile of grain for pigeons, then I would open up with an unpluged shotgun. It was a slaughter. After a while it just got to exspensive for the amount of ammo we were using. We were doing the city a favour because the over abundance of pigeons were causing alot of damage. One morning I killed around 350 birds. Many more dropped on thier way back from a pellet in the lung or gut.
Those were the days.

I sure hope there is no pigeon lovers around here.

Daryl

Weel it is more of a mass slaughter of pidgeons, doing a favour for the neihburs as they get into ther feed silos and shit all throught the stables. My old man like pidgeon soup but he can never get around to eating them all, I sometimes just uses them as decoays (you can even freeze them with this particular use in mind )

Yukoner: Did you get my e-mail?

EXPRESS,
Yes, I did get your e-mail. Sorry I have not respond. I am checking local game laws first.

Funny you mention freezing pigeons for decoys.... I had forgoten, that is what we did with alot of our dead ones. After several pigeon slaughters... the pigeons became cautious, then we used dead ones as decoys.

Daryl

Yukoner, We hand load the 12-ga ammo we use for the air rats. That's the only way that we can aford to shoot 150 to 400 rounds in a day. It's a blast. We do it much the same way starting out with rifles and then go to the Remington trombones. Last few years we found another untapped varmint shooting resorce. Starlings! They flock to the barns what the cows are being milked by the bazillions! If you can stand the cold and wind you can shoot up a 5 gal bucket of shells in about 2 hours. Yes it gets expensive, but mose things that are fun cost.

And you don't eat..... squab ?

Tried eating them back in the 1960's. Hard as a super ball, and tastes like a barn yard smells. I'll take a hamburger and fries please!

We do the same thing at a friends Dairy. A 5 gallon bucket to sit on and a 5 gallon bucket for shells.

We pick up the shells and the Mexicans pick up the Pigeons. I think they call that a 'Symbiotic Relationship'.

SHOOTING PIGEONS WITH A .22 SOUNDS LIKE A BALL. I USED TO LIVE IN A SMALL TOWN HERE IN IOWA AND LARGEST THING THERE WAS A GRAIN ELEVATOR. IF I LIVED THERE NOW YOU BET YOUR ASS I WOULD BE OUT THINNIG THE PIGEON POPULATION.A BALL WITH A 1022 CUSTOM.

THE 2ND AMENDMENT PROTECTS US ALL..........