Episode #66 How To Trap Pigeons For Reliable Dog Training Birds

We get practical about pigeons, from surprising facts about what they can do to why they make tough, reliable dog training birds. We lay out a real-world trapping system that works in Arizona, plus the mistakes that quietly ruin your results or harm birds in the heat. 
• pigeons as hardy training birds for upland hunters 
• ten interesting pigeon facts including homing and intelligence 
• pre-baiting with corn or chicken scratch for one to two weeks 
• placing traps where pigeons already roost and feed 
• using bob door traps and leaving doors open early 
• providing shade and fresh water to prevent suffering 
• checking traps on a safe schedule to avoid stress and deaths 
• transporting birds home quickly and setting up a basic coop 
• ten common mistakes including impatience and skipping pre-baiting 
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Transcript

Welcome And Why Pigeons Matter

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome to Arizona Quail Today, your go-to podcast for all things quail hunting in Arizona. We're dedicated to educating and inspiring the next generation of quail hunters. A big thanks to our supporters and proud partners. Thanks for tuning in, and now let's dive in today's program.

SPEAKER_05 0:34

Alright, guys, welcome back to another episode of Arizona Quail Today. Today we are talking about pigeons. Pigeons are such an interesting bird. We're talking about trapping pigeons. I'm gonna give you 10 interesting facts. I want to give you uh ten tips for trapping pigeons, um, and then ten mistakes of trapping pigeons.

Music Break And Bird Memories

SPEAKER_05 1:03

But first, let's jump into a little bit of Alan Jackson.

SPEAKER_03 1:08

Some glad morning when his life is overway. Woo!

SPEAKER_05 1:44

Dude, that is so cool. I grew up as a kid in Arkansas, and we'd go up to like the Ozarks and and uh it was a huge ranch up in northern Arkansas. It was like my uncle owned it, and uh massive ranch. When I mean big ranch, I mean thousands of acres, and we'd go up there, it was a guest ranch, and so you had lots of cabins and horses, and we'd spend a lot of time up in the Ozarks and uh just exploring and those creeks, those caves, and then Friday night. Man, we'd go to Big Flat, Arkansas, and we'd be listening to families, generations of families, just picking and a grinning, just fly away, you could you could hear this song on Big Flat. You'd be hearing this. So I'll fly away. What are we

Ten Wild Facts About Pigeons

SPEAKER_05 2:53

talking about? We're talking about birds, we're talking about uh pigeons. So I trap pigeons for uh uh dog training, and I'm gonna give you ten interesting facts um about pigeons. First of all, I'll just say before we get into the interesting facts, I'll just tell you the truth is pigeons are incredible dog training birds, you know, for an upland game hunter, just because they're hardy, they're tough, uh, they're plentiful. You can usually find them in any city near you. Uh so really good. Uh I I use them here and there. Uh I do a lot of planted quail, and I've got a license to be able to do, you know, buy uh quail and have them planted out in the field. I'll I'll plant them myself. By planting, for those of you that are new. It means you you just locate the bird in the in the grass. You might put it to sleep and uh or dizzy it. And I'll talk to you about doing that another time. Uh but anyway, here we go. So ten interesting facts about pigeons. Um we'll try to do a little bit of background music in the background while we do this. Here's a goody. This is uh we're in the bird thing. So pigeons. Pigeons are likely the very first human uh first bird humans ever domesticated. Over five thousand years ago, way before chickens, uh, people kept them for food, for messaging, for messages. You know, you didn't have instant messenger, you didn't have text messages, you had pigeon messages. You instead of saying like DM me, like direct message me, you could just say PM me, bro. PM me. Get it? Pigeon, pigeon me. Pigeon message me, man. Come on, bro. Pigeon me. Pigeon me. Okay. Yeah, I don't know if you're laughing. Um yeah, so secondly, they possess an unbelievable homing instinct and able to return home from more than one thousand three hundred miles away, even when transported in ways that uh block their normal senses. So, like you could just put 'em in a box and blindfold 'em. You ever blindfold a pigeon? I'm just joking. Um that's crazy. Have you heard this song? This song is this song's weird. He sounds like a stoned-out hippie surfer. Who just has like bird is the word, is the is the song. Um yeah, so you can these birds have unbelievable homing instincts. They they can that's why, you know, you can use one repeatedly in dog training, and it it does work. Um as long as you don't tear it up too much. Um, I know guys that do that. I don't, I mean, yeah, I will. I guess I'll use it repeatedly uh for various things, but my dogs are a little rough, and so it can uh it can be a challenge. I need to. I've been out of views in pigeons for a while now, so um, but my dogs are about to get back into them. And I'm about to do a bunch of trapping. In fact, I'll tell you about that in a minute. But uh thirdly, I'd say pigeons have served as true war heroes in both world wars, carrying critical messages when radio has failed and saving thousands of soldiers. Um some even got medals for bravery. What? That is cool. In fact, I heard that Leonard Skinnard uh he made a petition, you know, during Vietnam when they were flying pigeons. And that's why he wrote this song to free all the pigeons around the world. So this one's to you, Leonard, and all those pigeons out there that just got free. Free as a bird. Okay, that was a total lie. But I I thought you were going with it for a minute. So, um, yeah, they did. They were true war heroes. Some even did get medals, from what I understand. Uh fourthly, they're smarter than most people think. They can recognize themselves in mirrors, tell them, tell the difference between paintings by Picasso and Monet. They understand concepts in space and time and even count. Dude, that's crazy. Uh, you checked, you fact-checked me on that. Uh here's another one. A pigeon can fly up to 90 miles per hour. This sounds crazy. I don't I don't know if that's true, but it's it's the research I did facet was reach altitudes over six thousand six thousand feet. They're tough. Uh they're like little athletes, so perfect for good dog work. Um, they mate for life, and both parents produce a special milk in their crop to feed the babies. Um, they're pretty dedicated parents. Pigeons see in four colors instead of uh R3, they can detect polarized light and low frequency sounds that humans can't pick up at all. So that's pretty interesting. They have built in a magnetic compass, and this is number eight. Uh built special cells in their body that help them sense the earth's magnetic field for navigation. Wow. Uh number nine, they breed incredibly fast. Uh they reproduce even around seven months, and they can lay eggs every month or so. So um that's why there's always so many pigeons, and you get a pigeon problem, you you have a lot of uh stuff, you got a lot of birds. Uh quickly, the flock grows. So um number ten, Charles Darwin was obsessed with with breeding pigeons and used them to help develop um to help develop his uh theories of variation and natural selection, so pretty interesting there. Okay, well gosh, that was uh just a little bit there and here's uh Johnny Cash wrote a song about birds. I've been on the bird theme this morning.

SPEAKER_04 10:19

Like a bird. He's on a wire, he's classic. Like a drunk in a midnight choir. I have tried in my way to be free.

SPEAKER_05 10:40

There you go. Maybe maybe you needed that. You've tried to be free.

Ten Tips For Trapping Pigeons

SPEAKER_05 10:47

Well, let's talk about trapping. So trapping, uh I'll give you 10 tips for trapping pigeons, say you want to do it yourself. So uh number one, pre-bate an area with whole kernel corn for one week or two weeks before setting any kind of trap. So it doesn't have to be corn, or it could be um you could do like a variety of uh minerals. Chicken scratch works, you know, like uh that's usually what I use. You can buy it at a feed store, buy like a 20-pound bag, just be careful you don't store it in your garage and then leave it there for like nine months because you can get these little weevils in it and it ruins the grain and nasty. Definitely don't let it get wet or anything like that. But yeah, you know, I mean, uh, you gotta bait the birds. Like you sometimes I think people just do dumb stuff when they try to pet trap pigeons. They think like pigeons are dumb, like dumb, dumb, dumb. And like they just throw out a trap and then think they're gonna walk in it. Like, you gotta bait it, you gotta create a rhythm for these birds. So, you know, for me, I leave traps on top of roofs uh that I'm I've got a relationship with the owner or whatever, uh the place that I'm trapping, and I'll leave them there so the birds are familiar with it, and then I'll bait it for a week or two, and you know, um throw a bunch of food out there. And if they're not getting your food, then that means that they're scared and they don't want your food because they know it's a trap. So you gotta bait it ahead of time. Uh, you know, um, I've just put out some bait, and it was I think it might have been a little spoiled, some of the uh grain, the chicken scratch I used. I noticed it had some little weevils on it, and so I'm like, I don't know if they're gonna do it or not, but we'll see. So put it up on the in the trap, keep the doors open, throw it on there. You could start with just throwing it on the ground to get a bird to come to an area if they're not already there. But I would say, no, I'd say before you even uh excuse me, before you even try to bait, like go where pigeons are at. I mean, it's just common sense. You can't just like draw pigeons into where you are. I mean, sure you might be able to do that, but you gotta go where they go. It's like bird hunting. Just apply your hunter mechanics and and you'll be doing much better. Okay, so pre-bait. Uh do that like a week or two ahead of time. Uh you can you can use like simple homemade traps where the doors kind of like bob open. Um, you definitely don't want to like practice and bait. I call it the all-you-can-eat buffet. You don't want to like trap them in there and then not get the birds out and just like get them heated up and killed in the sun. So I would just keep the doors open. So it's like doing all-you-can-eat buffet for like a week or two. Just throw out a bunch of food, don't go up to the roof like a hundred times. So, all right, I'm running all over the place. So, uh, number two, place traps near barns, businesses, anywhere where pigeons hang out. Owners are usually happy to have them gone. And that's exactly what I was saying is you usually gotta go where they go. So, um, yeah, it's cool to to to see that, you know. I mean, going, you know, I've got I've just got like I've just got like one location to where I use because I don't care about trapping tons of birds, but whenever they have a pigeon problem, they shoot me a text, I go over there, and I I takes me a few weeks, sometimes a few months, and knock out their flock. And uh, and then I got pigeons for a while. Sometimes the pigeons come back uh within a short period of time, sometimes it's six months to a year. So it's it's it's interesting. I mean, flocks, just think about they fly, so they might go to a new place for a while until they're like, you know, they're like, it's cool over here now, let's come back, and then they're like, Oh shoot, it's an all-you can eat buffet, invite your friends, and then they're like, wait, where did all our friends go? They're all gone. So what's crazy though? Well, that's a new version of uh I flaw away. Kind of it's Josiah Queen, he's a really good dude. Um, but what's really crazy is if you catch a bunch of when I catch birds, like if I they accidentally get out when I put them in my little home uh pigeon coop, they uh oh my gosh, they uh they'll fly straight back, and then I can put it, get them in the trap again. It's like okay, you you really aren't as smart as I thought you were. But typically they're not going back to that trap, they'll like be around the area because they'll roost or feed over there. Um so, but I'll see my birds back. So like I've taken them up to Flagstaff before, lost a bird, and seen it back in my trap. It's it's like from Phoenix to flag. It like it happens. Okay.

Shade Water And Trap Check Rhythm

SPEAKER_05 16:15

Um always provide water and shade in the trap. If you're not checking your traps a lot, you definitely do that. I'm just not a I'm not a cruel person. Like, I don't like I don't like animals to suffer. So I mean, yes, I'll rip the head off a pigeon for training for my dog or whatever, but it's gonna be quick and fast. It's not gonna be like torturing them, you know. And yeah, you might say, well, when you pull feathers or their flight feathers, I don't I don't think they feel it a whole lot, but yeah, I'm not here to be an animal rights activist for pigeons, that's for sure. However, just minimize the torture, you know. So like if you if you put pigeons up on a roof and all you do is you let them dehydrate and die, and it's like it doesn't do any good for dog training, and uh, and then you just get a bunch of stinky, like nasty birds that are dead on top of a roof that you gotta clean out. That's not my mo that's not my mojo. So I if I'm if I'm not gonna be able to check them, then I'll make sure they have shade and water. Um so that's one. So I trap I check traps. I mean, gosh, I'll check if I bait and say I'll set doors, um, set the doors up, I'll I'll set the doors in the evening while they're roosting, and then I'll come back in the morning and check by like eight o'clock because I just don't want a bunch of dead dehydrated birds. So I don't like wait till noon that that you're gonna cook them and kill them. Um I mean it depends if it was like January or February, maybe, but yeah, anyway. So let's talk about uh you could you you can you can use a decoy, and like meaning a pigeon decoy, I guess you could. I've never done that before, but sometimes I'll trap one and I get him in early, and I'll like I do I'm gonna leave you in there for a while, and then he draws in like a ton of other ones, which is really interesting. So um that's pretty cool. And then I would say keep baiting the trap even after uh some of the flock keep coming back. Um yeah uh after catching, so like uh after you catch some, just keep baiting because the f sometimes the flock doesn't fully understand what's happened, so you just keep baiting until basically the flock's gone, and then when the flock's gone, then you've got the flock. So I've literally captured like a hundred pigeons in a season, like it might be like a few months, you know, like just because I wasn't doing it every day or whatever. I was doing it once a week or and uh just once every other week, but yeah, I've I I knocked out a hundred pigeons one time. They had a bad pigeon problem. Um and then I'd say build some of your you can build some simple traps like one by two welded wire from tractor supply um with bob doors. Bob doors are the idea that the door just kind of hangs uh vertically, and then the bird can walk in and it kind of pushes up, and then when the bird walks all the way through it closes immediately. Um they're cheap, effective, and you can make them different sizes depending on how many birds you want to catch. So, like my traps can catch like I'd say like 15 birds at a time, maybe 20. And that's a lot. So 10 is a is a good catch. You know, five. Yeah, you know, I that's I typically probably catch five to seven birds at a time. Sometimes just one or two. I'll catch a dove and then I'll I'll release the dove right away. Um I'd say number seven, always get permission. Make sure you're not doing something where you shouldn't, you know, because that just doesn't that doesn't work out. So um I've taught I've worked with schools, I've worked with a bunch of places, but now I'm I just work with one location. Um yeah, and you know, let's see, you can try your backyard if you want, if you got pigeons out there, but they're just not gonna, you know, they're not gonna be in a spot where it's they're gonna be very vulnerable. They like being up high, they like being in locations where people are not walking or all the time. I mean, unless they're going to the park and they're eating this feed from the people that are throwing bird seed on the ground or their breadcrumbs or at a restaurant or whatever, you know, but you're not gonna put a trap on the ground usually. So um start slow uh with the trap doors, you know. Um zip you can zip tie or just put a little carabiner on the bob doors to hold it open, like I said, for the first week or so, and it's like an all-you-can-eat buffet. And uh, you know, that's pretty cool. So I I like that. This this Alan Jackson song just keeps coming back to me. Man, that's good. Sing alone.

SPEAKER_02 21:51

Fly away, oh glory, flying away.

SPEAKER_05 22:06

That's good. Alright. That's about as far as I go singing. Um, let's see. What else we got? Yeah, use those. You can just hold those doors open for like the first week or so. And uh yeah. It's it's it's good. You gotta get them comfortable coming inside your trap. If if you if your food's not gone, they didn't come. So you you can't just be looking for like little pigeon turds. You need to be looking for n no moss, comida, no more food. So it needs to be adios, vioncondios, needs to be gone. And um yeah, give the birds time. Don't rush the process. Uh this is number nine. Don't rush the process. Plan to pre-bate, set your traps for a couple of weeks, weeks before you actually need birds for training. So it just it's a process. So make sure you remember that. As Alan Jackson says. Number 10, always include water, especially here in Arizona. Make sure your trapped birds have fresh water available or they'll stress out and or fat uh stress out. Um, well, I'd say, you know, we've already covered that in the trapping section, but I would say when you get them home, you know, building a pigeon coop.

Transporting Birds And Building A Coop

SPEAKER_05 24:12

I'm you know, I built a pigeon coop below my fence line because I live in an HOA neighborhood. Uh so it's not cool. It's tough having an HOA, but there's blessing and curses, sometimes more curses and blessings. But anyway, so I you know, you you you build uh a pigeon coop where they'll stay in there and make sure they have shade and cold, cool water. If you, if you if you um what I do is I take one of those little orange bird bags, you know, that you use that you can buy. Like, I don't know, all there's all sorts of places you can buy them. Um it's like for quail that you're planting quail for dog training. You see them out at the dog trials and little orange bird bags. Um I can't even think of all the different names. Uh the gun dog supply or whatever it is. But you you can pick those birds up. I take those up to the top of the roof and I leave my traps up there because I want my birds being very comfortable with the traps, and the owners usually don't care. It's not like they're going to the roof every day. And uh the only person's going to the roof is the roof guy and the air conditioner guy. So they're not gonna mess with them. Um, and people aren't gonna steal your traps unless you they're just like crazy. But I mean, I put it out in like like drug-infested neighborhoods where there's homeless people everywhere, and even the homeless people and the druggies, they don't care about pigeon traps. So I wouldn't worry about them. I'd leave them up top, I'd get you a little bird bag, stuff all the birds in there, but then get them home quick so you're not driving around doing a bunch of errands, running into Home Depot, and then you got a bunch of dead birds in your bag. Because I've done that before where I've suffocated them on accident or they just stress out and panic attack or heat stroke, you know. So just get them home quick, put them in a in a um, put them in your little birdcage or whatever you built, your pigeon coop, and make sure they have fresh water. And I'm telling you, make sure they have fresh water and make sure that they've got some food, and they'll be okay. Yeah, I mean, bobcat might visit you or your dog might go nuts, but you know, you'll be okay. So that's that. Man, I'm a 26 minutes in, so that's crazy.

SPEAKER_04 26:43

Um, don't ask for so much.

SPEAKER_05 26:47

Bird on the wire, Johnny Cash.

SPEAKER_04 26:51

And a young woman leaning in her darkened door. She cried out to me. Why not ask for more? Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir. I have tried in my way to be free.

SPEAKER_05 27:38

That's a legend right there. Cash. I mean, that's somebody who's gone timeless. You know, it was really interesting, too. It's like as he got older, too, it's like everybody wanted to do a song with Johnny Cash. It's like everybody wants to do a song with Dolly Parton, you know. It's like he's just legendary, absolutely legendary. He's the I you know, I think he became a believer towards the end of his life. He uh Walking Phoenix played him in one of those movies. I don't remember if you've seen that or not. Uh but j gosh, that was good. I I liked it. I thought it was pretty good. Um I haven't read a story on Johnny Cash. I'd like to read about him a little bit more, but man, that was cool. I love Johnny Cash stuff. Okay, so what are we talking about?

Ten Common Pigeon Trapping Mistakes

SPEAKER_05 28:28

Let's move on to 10 mistakes in trapping pigeons. 10 mistakes in trapping pigeons. Um I'd say number one, checking the trap too often and scaring the birds off. Because you you just that's dumb. I did that. That's rookie stuff. You gotta just relax, dude. Take a deep breath. Yeah, I mean, don't go up there every day, you know. Like, sure, you if you if you're pressed on time and you want to do it, go for it. It's not like you're gonna, you know, screw up the world. It's just you're gonna maybe delay your trap. So, um, if you do um check the trap too often, you you will scare the birds off, but don't worry, it's not like they're like, oh, I'm forever gone, forget you. I know that you're trapping me, man. I'm telling all my friends. I mean, yeah, they might do that real quick, but they got bird brains. I mean, they they are bird brains. They got this, this. They're about like this. When I when I found that song, I was just like, dude, this is so annoying. It's good. Oh man. If you're if you're old enough to remember that song, like I don't, but it just like I've found it and I've heard it maybe on a few soundtracks and movies or something, but it's pretty interesting. Bird is the word. Um, but the birds aren't gonna like they're not gonna quit on you the first time you screw up. I mean, if you do it every day for a week, yeah, they they might like move on or just learn your rhythm and work around it. But uh, you know, so just don't check the trap too much. Uh meaning, meaning uh if you've got the doors open. Now, if you've got live bird live birds in there, you do need to get those birds out of their ASAP. I usually don't even leave my traps unmonitored less than 24 hours. Like I'll do 12 hours. Usually, like I said, I'll set in the evening or I'll set in the afternoon, maybe in the afternoon if it's cooler, and try to catch them in the roost, you know, like when they're going up, if I think they're roosting in that area. But again, you have to just be mindful of weather and uh trying to minimize just uh mass casualties on your birds. So uh number two, I'd say skip the pre-baiting step and expect instant results. Like people just set traps out and then forget to pre-bate. You know, you gotta do the all-you-can-eat buffet for a while. That's just how it works. So um, yeah. Yep. Yep, yep. That was funny. Yeah, during COVID with our church, what we did, um, you know, people some a lot of people were scared to come to church, and uh we opened up the doors a lot sooner than a lot of churches did. We closed down for a little bit just because we actually did have a bunch of huge parking lot issues we needed to deal with, and so we actually redid our parking lot, but we did it pretty quick, and uh didn't need to another redo. But uh we uh did an all basically free food at church. We had a big gift come in and say, like, hey, I want to support this ministry. We have a beautiful courtyard, and so we provided free food. People just showed up at church like crazy. It was like baiting the pigeons. So uh you know, like the shepherd the flock, and sometimes it's not a flock of sheep, sometimes it's a flock of pigeons. No, I'm joking. But anyway, it was good. Food works, food, food's the strategy. Hey, Jesus did it too to draw the crowds, he fed the multitudes. Everybody knows the mission of Jesus seek and save the lost, but did you know the method of Jesus? It's food, man. Let's get some food together. So birds are the same. They love that food, man. They're food motivated. So uh give them an all-you-can-eat buffet. Don't skip pre-baiting. That needs to happen. Give them the all-you-can-eat buffet first and then uh take that all-you-can-eat buffet away. Or you you put all the food down and then you drop the doors. Okay, using weak traps, those that's a mistake. Uh sometimes you can make um just using traps that you don't know how to use or you didn't build them very well. Uh another one would be um a fourth one would be forgetting to leave water in the trap, especially in Arizona heat or shade. And some of them come with like little shade covers and all that. So uh just be care. I'd say another mistake is just going all out and spending way too much money on this, you know. Like you don't have to do that. So you do and if you do spend, you know, um a hundred and something bucks on a good uh cage, you know, it'll last you forever. It's not like they'll rust and break down real quick in Arizona. Uh so I'd say number five uh mistake is moving the trap location too quickly. So you don't want to like move locations fast. Like, oh, that didn't work. I'm gonna move it over here, move it over there. Birds don't like that stuff. Like, leave it alone. Um, let them get comfortable. They like it. My trap is like a permanent fixture on on the roof up there. Um number six, not using bait they actually like, such as uh um, I don't know. I I don't know if corn would work for me. My I use a uh mixed scratch seed, like a mixed uh minerals or seeds, and the birds seem to like that. Um bread. If they're eating bread out of the dumpsters, you know, the uh or food nearby, then they're gonna want that kind of same kind of bait. So think about it like fishing. Like you if you're a fly fisherman, you don't just grab a bunch of flies and hit the river. You actually like you actually look around and you pay attention to what's going on. So um you do this.

SPEAKER_06 35:27

Blackbird singing in the dead of night.

SPEAKER_05 35:30

This is gold.

SPEAKER_06 35:31

Take these broken wings and learn to fly all your life. You are only waiting for this moment to arise.

SPEAKER_05 35:49

That's good. So, I mean, yeah, when you're picking the food out, you need to pick food that matches as much as you can. If you can, you can't always do that, and that's okay. You just make sure you're not if they don't like it, then and there's still birds in the area, you gotta adjust your food. Um, then I'd say as well, the uh oh, I was giving you the fly fisher illustration. Yeah, the fly fishermen will walk on the beach and then see what kind of um insects are on the ground and then or on that the bird uh that the fish are hitting maybe even top water. And you know, if there's a caddis hatch, they'll use a caddis. If there's um all sorts of other things that they're working with and dealing with, then they'll they'll do that. Um so yeah, just try to match match the uh environment as much as you can. That's just hunter strategy. Uh I'd say number nine um or number eight would be uh number seven, I'm gosh, I'm getting it all screwed up. Number seven, placing the trap in direct sun with no shade. Um, especially if you're not checking the trap um real often, like meaning within a hours of intervals. Like you're not you if it's like more than twelve hours or even more than six in the heat or whatever, it's like uh it can they can go quick. Um so being mindful of where you're placing it, placing it in a spot that that you're comfortable and confident that you can recover the birds well. Um number nine would be getting impatient and giving up too soon on a good spot, I think can be a mistake that uh trappers can make. Number ten would be is trapping uh trapping obviously and user-friendly access points because sometimes you trap. I've done it before. I've trapped on like on just I can't say the establishments because I don't want to get them frustrated by any means. Um, but anyway, they uh I don't have like license and do all that stuff. I just trap birds, so like uh I just tell them like as a friend I'll get to know the owner or whatever, and hey, do you want me to do it? Yeah, sure, that'd be great. And that's it. Um I tell them what I'm doing. I'll tell you that some people get real nervous about the idea that their pigeons are gonna die. So I don't talk about, oh yeah, these pigeons are gonna die. I just say, yeah, um, I use them for dog training, and they're like, that's amazing. And that's it. So and the truth is, is not all of them have to die. They they can fly or die. So um some get away. So I just don't advertise that most of these pigeons are gonna die, but the uh the owners don't care, the employees do. Because the owners are like, dude, these gotta go. And if you don't kill them, I'm telling you, they'll just be right back. So the owners want them gone because they're a nuisance and a pest, and they're everywhere around their guest. Um the employees don't give a rip because they don't own the place, and they'll feed the birds. So you don't want that. You tell you got to tell. I have to tell the owners like, tell your police to quit feeding the birds. Uh they'll feed them scraps or whatever, and they'll leave the dumpsters open, and they just think they're cute, and then they name them all, and all that stuff. So, I mean, that just happens. And every once in a while, there's like a beautiful pigeon, and we'll keep it and we'll like name it, and then we'll we just it becomes part of the residence. Some some people do have like uh maybe one or two pigeons that will live in the pigeon coop at the house, and they're kind of like the host, like, hey, welcome, welcome. You guys are gonna leave in a little while, but we won't talk about that right now. So that can actually calm the birds down too. That's like a bonus. So, anyway, all right, guys.

Training Goals Takeaways And Closing

SPEAKER_05 40:08

Well, that was it. Um, hopefully that helped you. Uh, we can talk about more pigeon stuff another time because I didn't talk about how to use them in the field. This is all about um trapping pigeons and learning how to get going with them, but I think they're a great bird, so anyway, all right. And it sounds like it is. The artist who wrote the it's called the surfing bird, I guess is the album. But the uh artist is the trashman.

SPEAKER_01 40:49

So everybody knows that the bird is aware, the bad dog.

SPEAKER_05 40:57

Well, we talked a lot about birds today, so man, that was 40-something minutes on birds, pigeons. Hopefully that helped because it is a big deal. You use, you know, I I made it a goal that when we had uh beginning dogs, I was like, I want my dogs on a hundred pigeons before I ever even take them out in the field and uh in my dog training days. So it it does help. You get your dogs on birds, birds, birds, birds, then they it does help a lot. So anyway, take care and we'll see you next time.

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SPEAKER_00 41:32

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