A lot of our hunts can be pretty intense and exhausting. Some elk hunts, by the third day I’m so sore I can hardly crawl out of my sleeping bag. You’ll be up two hours before daylight, hiking hard all day scrambling up and down mountains and hit camp well after dark. I love elk hunting, but it’s tough.
So if you need a low-key, lotta-shooting hunt, check out pigeon hunting. They favor an agricultural type of setting. They love roosting in barns. They make a mess when roosting on the farmers equipment and spread diseases by messing in the feed bunks at feedlots.
Very seldom will a farmer or rancher turn you away from hunting pigeons on his property. Especially if you tell him you’re hunting with airguns. I received two airguns from Pyramyd Air. THe Ruger 10/22 Air Rifle is the spitting image of its cousin, the famous Ruger 10/22. I could not wait to test it out. Who doesn’t love the 10/22? It is the most popular .22 ever made.
The Ruger 10/22 Air Rifle is a CO2 air gun. It is a pellet gun powered by two 12-grain CO2 canisters and comes in the popular .177 caliber. It is a plinkers delight.
I also received the Gamp Swarm Whisper. It is a break action .177 pellet gun, but is unique in that it utilizes a 10-round rotary magazine. If you’ve ever hunted with a break action then you know how frustrating it can be digging a pellet out of your pocket and fumbling it around while the pigeons are in attack mode. The designers at Gamo were ingenious to come up with the clip. I believe they were the first ones to do so on a break action. Look on gunpowdermagazine.com for an upcoming product review on the Swarm Whisper.
My wife, Katy, went with me on this hunt. We sighted in the two airguns and then hit the feedlot. There were more pigeons than I’d ever seen before, so the shooting was good. We hit the barns first, but they spooked out before we could drill any. After spooking out, they landed on the nearby silos. We picked off one, waited a few minutes and a few more would land. This repeated itself for 20 to 30 minutes, and then we went out to hit the feedlot.
There were a few Eurasian doves, but we didn’t get any of them. The pigeon shooting was hot. I bet we had well over 100 shots. We’d catch them feeding on dropped feed in the alleyways or out feeding among the cattle. With an air gun, the cattle never blinked an eye — air guns are a great way to hunt around livestock. There is no loud report to spook the cattle or horses. I’ve shot thousands of times around livestock and never spooked them. Of course, as a kid, our cattle and horse got shot around so much they never even flinched, much less spooked. They got used to it.
After firing a few shots, the pigeons started getting semi spooky. But right now, there are a lot of young ones out there, so they’re a little slower thinking.
If you decide to grab an air gun and go hunting, I’d recommend a break action. They’re more powerful than a lot of other models of pellet guns, and with the 10-shot rotary magazine, the Gamo Swarm Whisper is a good choice. I would suggest you look at the Swarm Maxxim, though, since it is available in a .22 caliber. The .22 caliber will flatten a pigeon better. And grab some good pellets. Something like the Crosman Premier Ultra Magnum 10.5-grain pellets.
For whatever reason, many people seem to freak out the over the suggestion of eating pigeons. They are just an over-sized dove, and like I said above, we encountered a lot of young ones on this hunt. They are more tender than an older bird. The weather is warm right now, so it would be smart to take a cooler to help preserve them while out in the field.
I make all of mine into poppers. I slice each breast into two or three pieces and marinate in some kind of vinaigrette salad dressing for a couple of hours. I then slice a piece of bacon in half and wrap it around a piece of breast, slice of jalapeno and a slice of onion and wrap it up and pin it together with a toothpick.
You can fry them in a Lodge cast iron skillet, but they are six time’s better if you cook them on your smoker or grill. Have fun and happy eating.
Tom Claycomb lives in Idaho and has outdoors columns in newspapers in Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Colorado and Louisiana.
