Lets see your barn pigeon traps .Does anybody make any money at trapping pigeons?

Anybody out there

I don't do it. But, it sounds like you could make money removing them, and you could maybe sell the pigeons to people training bird hunting dogs.

Basically you need a couple One way doors made with loosely hung rods. They sell the doors that can be added to any wire cage . Or theu can be made.

I used to trap large numbers of feral pigeons. When I moved, I loaned out all of my traps and never got one back. I made a real nice pigeon trap, for a friend of mine last year and somebody stole it from his trailer in his driveway.

I like 4' by 6' by 8" tall or 4' by 8' by 8" tall traps with no bottoms. I use bricks or cinder blocks on top to hold the traps down, because the pigeons will flush when you approach the traps. I like recessed doors with most of the wire cut out of the door. Rusty old wire seems to work better than new wire. The traps retain the pigeons better if you have a second door leading into another compartment in the trap. I mostly trapped flat, gas station roofs.

I baited with whole corn. I kept water in the traps during hot,dry weather. The water may bait the pigeons in as well as corn in hot, dry weather. Keeping 3 healthy, calm pigeons in the trap helps too.

Keith

why no bottom in your traps Keith?

Very interesting Keith...you have any pictures?

I had a friend, Rick, who is dead now, who made all his traps without bottoms. I put 1 of his traps and 2 of my virtually identical, except for having a bottom traps, on a roof and his trap caught more than mine about 5 to 1. I took the bottoms off and they all caught pretty close to equally well.

The doors are more likely to catch on the bottom wire, but I think the main difference, bottomless traps work better is that pigeons bulk slightly at the feel of wire on their feet.

Rusty and dull wire out performs shiny new wire about 2 to 1 in my limited tests.

Keith

Sorry I don't have any pictures. I never got any my old traps back and my buddy had the one I made for him, stolen last year. I used mostly 1" by 2" welded wire. The traps work better if the door to the trap is recessed about 5 inches into the trap. The opening is probably more obvious to the pigeons that way.

Pigeons and turtles were always my favorite and most profitable animals to trap. I could make more in a couple of weeks trapping pigeons and turtles, than I could make in a whole season on coons, skunks, opossums, fox and coyotes.

I used to get $2.50 a pigeon and $5.00 a painted turtle.

I sell mix breed pigeons for $8.00 now, in much smaller numbers. At $5.00 each, I can sell thousands of pigeons in the Fall for dog training.

Keith

Typically I could catch about 3 times the number of pigeons, I would originally see on the nearby telephone wires, in about two weeks. With bait birds, I would usually have pigeons on the next day check. Without bait birds, it typically took 5 days to catch the first pigeon. Either way, about 8 days on were the heaviest catches. After 2 weeks, most flocks of under 300 visible birds were trapped out to where it was not worth running the traps there anymore. I liked to have a minimum of 10 pigeons a check, or I would stop trapping and trap somewhere else.

In a good location, I typically got 40 to 60 pigeons per day, per trap after the first 8 days, until the numbers started dropping.

When light snow covered the ground, the traps worked phenomenally well.

I caught 547 pigeons on a Cassano's pizza place in 2 the first two days of trapping, with 3 traps, checking a couple of times a day. It would have been hard to put another pigeon in the traps, without pounding it in with a hammer. I had to add cinder blocks to hold the traps down, because some pigeons wolud slip out when the trap lifted, from the pigeons flushing, when they saw my head pop up over the side of the roof. The telephone lines the pigeons sat on were only a few feet above the roof.

If any of you get decent numbers of healthy pigeons for sale, I would be interested in buying them

Keith

Good stuff KeithC. How would you remove the birds from the bottomless traps?

I had a door in the middle of the second compartment, that I kept tied shut with wire. I would open the door and pull all the pigeons out of the second compartment, one by one and then chase the remaining pigeons in. When the pigeons would get scared, they would push against anything that they could to try to get out, so they usually, quickly entered the second compartment, through the single door.


Keith

Very interesting thank you for sharing all your experience with us.

Got it. Thanks.

These have a open bottom as well.
You can use body grip wires for the Bobbins.

good read thanks

Thanks guys realy good info