I love a good pigeon shoot. I shot a banded one in October. Someone's racing pigeon, no doubt.
If it was shot in october, good chance it was wild by then. I would shoot a ton between june-August and that is when the guys who raised them really started to thin the herd and get them out of the coup. I did a lot of research on that deal, because I was killing 20-30 a summer and started to feel kind of bad about that. If this was someones prized possessions, I didnt want to be just out killing them. Plus, I got to the point, I could call them out of flocks, they are a much different animal. Fly much smoother, wing beat is much different, longer necks in flight as well. This sounds weird to say, but they just look cleaner as well. I told that to a guy and he started saying he was shooting the "clean birds" out of flocks, and he really started to collect quite a nice collection of pigeon bands. So I figured if I could leave them be, i would, but I also figured if it was a good racer, it wouldnt be mixed in with dairy pigeons that came in from the closest city. You could literally watch hundreds come from the city to this dairy. It was truly overrun, but I had to know what the deal was behind these pigeons with leg bands.
So what I figured out is most coups will hatch their new birds in February/March. Generally they are training by mid April. By June the handlers know which ones are getting kicked and which ones are being taken to races. 80% of birds dont get to stay in the coup, according to the local old man that I spoke to from around here. So I no longer felt bad anymore. There were some days, like 4th of July, when we hunted one year and it was obvious it was a race day. We killed 7 and all were double banded with the magnet detachable band on their legs. The magnet records a time when the bird goes through the door on their coup to record when they made it home. Sometimes the birds beat the handler home after they are released from their starting location, so its a way to record how fast the bird made it back from the race. I only hunted that one 4th of july and never again because i didnt feel right killing birds who might actively be in a race. Also, that day, they were all older birds. None killed that day were that years color band. Theres a rotation of 5 colors (white, yellow, blue, green, and red). So I would look up what the color was for each year, and then I would know if i was killing babies or older birds. The year is stamped on all the bands as well, but I still would look it up because some handlers would get custom colors done for that year and go against the standard color for that year. The oldest pigeon I ever killed was 17 years old. Since bands are sealed and they have to go on as chics, its safe to say that bird was truly that age.
Then there were show birds that got out of coups and we killed every so often. those would have odd colors sometimes or mini bands/zip ties. But the coolest two I ever killed were tumbler pigeons. They would do backflips mid air down into the decoys. Just literally be flying one second and then just look like they were tumbling out of the sky and then about 8 feet above ground they would put their wings out and glide down into the decoys. I did kill an old bird one time that had 5 leg bands. I couldnt figure that one out. only thing i could thing was the handler put that many on its legs to mimic a GPS band and the weight of it. no idea there, but it had a white band and 4 green bands, 3 of which were aluminum.
