What sort of gun is best for pigeon shooting? Well the short answer is “use the gun you shoot best with – you’re going to need to.”

  One of the great things about pigeon shooting is the almost total absence of snobbery. It really doesn’t make any difference whether the stock is black plastic or highest grade well-figured walnut costing more than a small family car. In a hide you can use what you want. There are however some advantages and disadvantages to different types of shotgun.

 Essentially the most popular choices are over & under (OU); side by side (SXS); or semi-auto (SA). At a guess I would say that more pigeon are killed by SA’s than the other two. I base that assumption on the number of SA’s I have sold as an all-round gun to those coming into shooting, but is it really the best choice for the hide?

 I have used all 3 types at one time or another but now use an OU almost exclusively. Again, this comes down to some science and some experience. Keeping an eye on my cartridge to kill ratios over the year (and any good sample should be as wide as possible to get an accurate result) I found that one year of SA shooting yielded a ratio of about 2.1:1. That improved sharply when I went to an OU. For what reason? I found my preferred choke for distance targets was hampering my shooting at closer range – I was missing the easy ones and killing the hard ones. If the birds are decoying well, this can be frustrating as it will be mostly closer shots.

 “Why didn’t you take a spare, more open choke and change it if that is the problem?”

Well, that is certainly one option but the temptation to blame the choke is a very bad habit that I have witnessed elsewhere and have no intention of repeating. Some shooters agonise over what choke to use as if that was the most important ingredient. I have found my cartridge/choke combination; I put them in; and leave them alone. If it goes wrong I prefer to concentrate on the basics of line, gun mount, gun speed, footwork and relaxation. The problem usually lies somewhere there. As a result, I find the option of a second barrel and a more open choke improves my shooting.

 So, if a second barrel is useful then why not a SXS? A SXS is easier to carry all day long; faster handling as a rule than an OU, and faster to load than an OU (although the semi-auto wins on ease of loading in a hide as it shouldn’t get tangled in the netting). However the trade off with all that lack of weight is that recoil can be a problem (see Newton’s 3rd law).

“Dry your eyes Princess – this is shooting, of course there’s recoil. If you don’t like it, put on a dress and swish around a bit on the badminton court”

Well, I don’t believe that decoying should be that degree of a stamina test. Headache, bruising, fatigue, flinching, and rushed shots, all result from too much recoil. None of them improve your accuracy, and you probably realise by now you need to put yourself in the best possible position to be able to kill the bird or you will miss or, worse still, wound it.

An OU also has the advantage of having wood between your hand and the barrel. On a hot summer day it doesn’t take much for the barrel to heat up to such an extent that holding a SXS would be unbearable even with a leather glove on your hand. If it is a very busy day and you touch the barrel by mistake on an OU, then you will find out just what that nice wide fore-end gives in the way of protection.

 The fore-end on a SA does the same job, although some SA’s can be fickle about their diet of cartridges and there is nothing worse than hearing a click when there should be a satisfying bang, and push into your shoulder.

 There are essentially two main types of semi auto. Recoil and gas fed semi-autos. Recoil cycled semi-autos have a sensitive spring in the bolt through which the firing pin passes. When a shot is fired the recoil compresses that spring and that energy released forces the bolt back. An extractor claw on the side of the bolt pulls out the fired cartridge, and a return spring in the stock forces the bolt forward picking up the fresh cartridge and loading it in to the chamber.

 The gas fed action works differently. These guns have two small holes in the barrel where some of the rapidly expanding gasses are syphoned off as they push the shot column up the barrel. These gasses then blow back a piston with a rod that in turn drives the bolt back and cycles the action. Burning gases leave residue and if not cleaned regularly, then the gun can jam.

 You will often here louder voices in praise of recoil fed action over gas fed actions. They are particularly popular with game keepers who use them as their tool of choice. As they get out of the gator or truck cab, they load and cock their gun. This hides a little-known problem with recoil fed actions, particularly relevant to a pigeon hide. If you are sitting down and you rest the butt on the ground with the barrel in the air, you often tap the butt with just enough force to activate the recoil spring and pull the bolt a fraction away from the breech face. This will lead to a jam.

 Gas fed actions must be kept clean and the hardened residue should be prevented from clogging up the barrel ports and the piston. Once bedded in though both types of actions  should have no problems with 28g loads which really is the minimum for shooting pigeons humanely.

 Another problem thrown (literally) up by SA’s is the half hour you spend on your knees in blackthorn picking up your empty cases scattered to the four winds from the ejection port.

 So, it is all down to personal preference and you can see my preferences above and the rationale behind them. 

One last point - it is a fact that it is easier to shoot with the single sight plane of an OU or SA, than the double sight plane of a SXS. It is simply the way our brains are configured – if you want to test that ask anyone, without telling them why, to pick up a table knife and point with it – I’d bet my boots on the result.