Sunday morning I was out at our property pellet testing and checking the velocity on my recently modified 850. I had earlier flushed the pigeons out of the grain bin and had kept an eye on where they were going. They headed across the road to a neighbor's barn about 1/4 mile away and landed on the roof. Our neighbors own the nicest mini-mart/gas station in town and I stop in nearly every day for food, snacks, beverages and/or gas, both at work and on my own time. They have always been very nice and cordial to my wife and I.
Today I stopped there for lunch and aked if they would give permission to shoot some pigeons off their barn. They were both excited about getting them out of there and said to stop by any time. I asked about tonight after work and they said that was fine.
Tonight about 5:00 pm I stopped by our property and opened up the grain bin and shot one pigeon that wasn't fast enough to fly the coup, so to speak. I watched as they headed over to the neighbor's barn. Hee Hee Hee!
I stopped at their house to check in and they seem just as excited or more to have these flying pests gone. The husband opened up the barn door and you could hear a few flying around inside and bunches of them cooing upstairs. This is an 80 year old, two story barn in great shape. I shot one that landed on a stair rung and it dropped. I asked if I could look upstairs and he said "go ahead, that's where they roost". As I climbed the wall-mounted ladder and poked my head and shoulders above the second floor, the ceiling/walls came alive. There must have been 200 pigeons in there!!!! I went back down and let him know what I saw and he basically said 'have fun'. I then went back to the truck and dumped the rest of the tin (50-60?) of Superpoints in my coat pocket.
The shooting was fast and furious, 4-10 yards and much of it overhead. I tried a few body shots but they didn't drop very fast. The points seemed to go right through and hit the wall. After about 30 kills I ran out of pellets so I ran back to the truck and dumped in a couple hundered H-points in my pocket. These are the most accurate pellets in my gun and hit harder that the points, but the range is more limited. My gun wasn't zeroed for this pellet but at 5 yards it didn't really matter. I leared quickly that the pellets would hit 3 mil-dots low at this range. Most of the pigeons were head/neck shots would drop like a sack of potatos with a flopping after they hit the floor. The sounds of the shot, hit and the pigeon hitting the floor was about a 3 second tune and became very predictable. "SHUNK" "WHOP" "KA-THUD" I know you could hear the tune outside and the owner must have been chuckling.
There were many small holes and cracks in the roof. That's how they get in there. About 3/4 of them escaped in the chaos. Occasionally, you would hear some land on the roof and it would poke it's head in or walk over a hole. That was extra challenging as they only appeared for a second or two. Mr. pellet would come whizzing through the hole. On the outside there were numerous dead birds on the ground. One was about 50' away from the barn surrounded by a ring of feathers on the ground. It must have died in the air and taken a nose-dive into terra-firma. There was a flock of 30+ flying around that wouldn't land, for good reason.
When the barn was cleared out I picked them up per the owner's request. There were 49 from here plus the one from my grain bin for a grand total of 50 pigeons. WadeS returns from vacation friday and I've already asked for us to go back this weekend and clear out more.
:emoticon:
One was intersting looking, white with tan markings. Oh, and a little red.
