A very different field
As I turned the pages in Archie Coats’ book, Pigeon Shooting, I came across the phrase ‘rabbit clearance society pigeon poking programme’ — quite a mouthful and certainly something you wouldn’t hear in the 21st century. However, it got me thinking about how things have changed for the modern Gun.
Archie’s book is regarded by many as the pigeon-shooting bible. The tactics Archie used have become the basic skills for all pigeon shooting and the phrases he coined are still used as part of the pigeon shooter’s idiolect.
Old articles and books such as Archie’s are the only forms of literature that offer an insight into pigeon shooting back in the 1940s and explore how things have changed over the past 75 years. Though there have been
