All this and more

Peter Theobald guides you through the essential kit and key props he uses for a successful day on the woodies

- Peter Theobald

I was recently asked what I considered to be the absolute minimum of kit needed for a successful day’s pigeon shooting. I surprised myself when I whittled it down to a gun, cartridges and a rotary.

When I started to take pigeon shooting seriously, in the early 1970s, there were no such things as electronic whirlies and flappers. In those days, no company specialised in pigeon shooting equipment, so my gear either came from ex-Army surplus stores or was homemade. There were few opportunities to make the huge bags we take for granted these days; a shoot resulting in more than 100 birds was worthy of red letters in the diary. Therefore we rarely needed to take more than 100 shells out to the hide, my cartridge bag being an Army ammunition pouch that held exactly four boxes.

If I expected a bigger day, I might have put another four boxes into my decoy bag. This was a postman’s delivery sack procured from a friend whose wife was a postman. It was perfect for my purpose; large and extremely tough, with reinforced stitching and a wide carrying strap. Do postmen still walk their rounds using this type of bag? It carried everything I needed for a day’s decoying. This consisted of 20 HH inflatable decoys, which flattened to next to nothing, a machete for cutting branches to make a hide – I couldn’t afford camouflage nets – 20 hazel sticks for setting up shot birds, four-string carriers to hold the bag at the end of the day and those spare cartridges.