Contact Us
Unlike many of our competition we have been involved collectively in the pigeon shooting and pigeon decoying world for many, many years. You may already have heard of us when we established The Pigeon Magnet as a brand name both in the UK and Worldwide.
We have also been professional pigeon guides for the last ten years under the name of ‘Philip Beasley Sporting Agency’ and ‘Thames Valley Pigeon Shooting’. Each year we shoot over a 200,000 acre area harvesting between 20-25,000 pigeons for our English and Continental clients. We also operate guided deerstalking under the name of Pro-Stalk for trophies and cull deer, assessment for the Deer Management qualifications Level 2 and introductory Deer Stalking courses for novice stalkers.
The formation of Pigeon Decoying was a logical progression for us. We have used our experience gained from former businesses and from our other businesses such as the pigeon shooting and stalking to create even more interesting and exciting new products… products that we ourselves and our clients wanted to use, and more importantly products that work and were realistically priced.
We are also in contact regularly with other well known shooting professionals such as George Digweed, Will Garfitt, Jim Albone and Peter Theobald and magazines including Sporting Shooter, Sporting Gun, Shooting Times, Shooting Gazette and Gun Mart for their valued opinions on our products. Having already established strong sales within Europe we are now looking to expand our business ventures into the United States and Argentina.
We can be contacted either by phone, email or post:
email: info@pigeon-decoying.co.uk
Pigeon-Decoying,
Box Farm,
Castle Street,
Marsh Gibbon,
Nr Bicester,
Oxon,
OX27 0HJ
Tel: +44 (0)1869 278946
Decoy Patterns
Getting the best from your equipment.
In this feature we aim to show you how best to lay out your decoys with various different methods. The following patterns and techniques comes from my experiences as a professional pigeon shooter developing, field testing and using the finished products that we sell at Pigeon Decoying .
Using Decoys and Rotary machines.
Try to setup your hide so that the wind is on your back. This is because birds, like aircraft, need to land into the wind in order to slow themselves down. If you can’t find a place where you can setup with the wind on your back then a side wind is perfectly acceptable but make sure you place your decoys and rotary machine about 15 yards upwind.
This is so that the decoying pigeons come past your hide before reaching the pattern, giving you time to get off two shots. If you setup the decoys straight in front with a side wind then by the time you’ve fired the first shot the 2nd shot would be at a bird a long way downwind and going like a bat out of hell!
The majority of the time try to use the simplistic approach and use a traditional horseshoe style decoy pattern when using any of the decoy machines.
 
| Peckers. I use pecking birds most often on drillings and stubbles but that doesn't’t mean you can’t use them on any other crop at any other time of year! Normally I use two or three with an intermittent timer unit. I try and spread them about the pattern and find they work very well by adding a lot of movement to an otherwise static decoy pattern.
Other things to bear in mind.
Although I have put these diagrams up here to help you get started please bear in mind that conditions vary daily and weekly and this will affect the pigeon’s activity and willingness to decoy tremendously. Always be prepared to try new things when out decoying and keep an open mind, and more importantly learn from your success or failures and try and analyse why.
Sometimes moving things around can make all the difference to your sport. Also bear in mind that you can have all the gadgets and gizmos in your pattern but they are no substitute for poor field craft!
Top Tip 1
A few shooters have asked me why it is that sometimes in bright conditions their Rotary Machine seemed to be putting the birds off from a long way rather than attracting them in to their pattern as usual. The usual cause of this is because you can get a reflection off the arms due to the slightly glossy powder coat finish (Unfortunatley its not possible to get a completely matt finish otherwise we would have done it!). What this means is that when the arms on the machine are spinning they can cause a glinting effect as the light reflects off them. You might not notice this from your hide but its startlingly obvious from a long distance. To stop this from happening you can do three things.
1) Get some fabric camo tape and cover the arms with it. Being a material and printed camo its the best choice.
2) Take some glue and coat the entire arm with it then glue on some dusty soil or even some dust from the hoover!
3) If you are in the field and you need an instant solution then get a big handful of mud and wipe it up the length of the arm.
Top Tip 2
If you are finding that for some reason the birds are particularly favouring one particular place on the field but you cant set up on the hotspot (maybe its too dangerous for example) then you can use the Rotary to push them away from that place by tieing two white bags on the ends of the arms and set the machine spinning. This will then push the birds away from the hotspot and hopefully into your pattern.
Top Tip 3
A sneaky technique if your flight line is coming from behind the hide is to place your Rotary machine BEHIND your hide on the other side of the hedge (assuming of course you have permission to do this) and your main decoy pattern in front of the hide. Because you put the machine on the side that the birds are approaching from it catches the eye of the birds and gets them heading your way quicker. Once they're near they will swing over onto your side of the hedge and back into your static decoy pattern presenting you with your chance.
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