doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com 20 gauge pigeon guns???

For those interested this is a pigeon ring (box birds). Each trap contains two spring loaded compartments. This particular location used nine traps per ring. I have seen seven, and I have seen five used before. When it's your turn you will shoot a round of five birds. You will call pull and the bird will be released randomly from one of the available traps.

At this particular location the fence is abour 18" high, and this is typical at most places I have shot. As Destry pointed out, it's very easy for a crippled bird to get over the fence. He's only dead if he is retrieved by the bird boy from inside the ring. Doesn't matter how dead he is outside the ring. I actually saw a bird boy accidently kick a bird out of the ring while trying to catch him. Fortunately the shooter wasn't close to being "in the money", but he was still pretty ticked off.


The shooter is standing on the yardage line, probably at 33 yards from the center trap. Most matches are 25 or 30 bird races, but I guess they can be anything the host wants them to be. If you run any of your rounds of five birds (except the last round), you back up a yard for the next round you shoot, and so on.

If the bird comes out of the far left or far right traps, heading for the closest fence; you've got some quick shooting on your hands.

Hack

If you look where the shooter is shooting you may be able to see that he has just shot the tail feathers out of this pigeon. I don't remember what happened on the second shot.

Hack

All rings are a little different it seems like. That one has the opening in front of where the shooter stands closed off. Every one I ever shot in had that open oddly enough.

It's amazing to see the hawks start circling when the first few shots go off. The local raptors are always keyed in to the pigeon rings. I saw one swoop right into the ring and pick up a cripple off the ground once several years ago.

And at Philly this past January I had some picked geese in a box in the back of my truck. It was below freezing so I didn't need a cooler. A hawk landed in the bed and actually ate about 80% of one, even pulling it completely out of the plastic bag it was in. I didn't see the bird do it but the evidence was plain.

DLH

I wouldn't bet against an open barrel and a mod barrel for columbari birds. A really quick shooter can have relatively short shots, as opposed to box birds, and may well wish for bigger patterns.

A 7# gun is heavy for a 20 bore, yes. But it is still 10% lighter than a 7 3/4# 12 bore. A person of small stature and/or lower physical strength might well find that to be the difference in being competitive. As has been pointed out to me several times, a 20 bore gun can have gripping areas more suitable for smaller hands, too. To assume that nobody would use a gun that was not a "real man's gun" is to forget that this is not the NFL and not all shooters are of heroic proportions.

Barrel length's tend to run more in the 28 to 30 range, as opposed to the 32's & 34's in sporting clays. At one time Krieghoff made a "pigeon" version of the K-80 and the barrels were no more than 28", and I believe they might have been fractionally less.

Hack

By the way, the description from the Julia catalog (above in this string) is contradictory. In the first sentence it says barrels are cylinder and modified, but later it says " Bore restrictions: top - .033, bottom - .018" which is more like modified and full.

There was a well known pigeon shooter from Illinois (the name escapes me) who shot a 26 inch gun at them. Long barrels are the norm though, you seldon see anything under 30 inch.

Rocket,
I never said anything about anything being "a real man's gun". I've just been to quite a few pigeon shoots and you don't see little guns in use. Your opinion that they'd do the job and the reality of pigeon shooting are pretty far apart. Some of your boys are taking this for anti-smallbore sentiment but it's really not. It's just the facts of the game as least as I've seen it played.

Take notice of what Hack has to say, he's obviously a real pigeon shooter and knows what he's talking about. I'm more somebody who occasionally shoots at pigeons but I've been there and done it at least.

Destry

P.S. When you go to the Labor Day Tournament in PA and you don't see anything but 12 bores that says a lot. Folks come in from all over the world for that one.

If you think it's a tough sport, just imagine what the pigeons think about it!

Which kind of brings us back to the original question: there are a number of older 20 gauge guns of pigeon shooting shooting proportions with no safety, so it seems to me that SOMEBODY must have shot pigeons with 20 gauge guns. Either that, or they foresaw the advent of sporting clays 60 or so years in advance. These make pretty decent clays guns. BTW, I shot pigeons in Mexico many years ago and thought it was spectacular, but pricey, fun. What's the going rate (approximately) these days?

Any chance they were duck guns, made for sitting in a blind?

Maybe some guys though safeties were for walking in the field.

That 34" DHE 20g at Julia's weighs 8lbs and has 3" chambers.

OWD