One of the other members asked by PM how I trapped pigeons. I thought I would share this here too.

I would first make a wire box, with no bottom 4' wide by 6' long by 10" tall. Attach a piece of wire mesh, on the inside that cuts that box in half. For your trap door entrance ways, cut holes in the side wire mesh, 6" wide. Put 1 hole on the 4' side and 1' hole on each of the 6' sides centered from the wire mesh that divides the trap in half and one hole in the center of the divider. On both sides of all the entrance ways, attach a piece of 6" wire mesh, going from the outside in and into the closed off area. Block off the inside end with a piece of wire. Cut a hole in the wire used to block the ends 5" tall by 4" wide. Hang doors over those holes that are 5 inches wide, by just about a 1/4" shorter than 5". Bend the edges of the wire in, so they are somewhat pokey. Cup the door slightly, so that it curls towards the entrance way. Cut out some of the horizontal wires, between the vertical wires. Don't make any holes large enough for a pigeon to push through.

On top, cut a couple of holes, that will just fit your arm. Cover them with a couple of doors you can securely latch close. Snap clips work well for this. File and duct tape over any sharp edges, so you don't gouge your arms getting pigeons out.

Rusty old looking wire mesh works better than bright shiny wire to the traps. 1" by "2" is a good size mesh to use, but other sizes do work.

Place the trap on a flat surface, preferably off the ground, in an area where lots of pigeons will see it and bait it with whole corn. Put a bowl of water in the inside compartment. In hot, dry weather, the water helps lure pigeons in as well as the corn. It also keeps the pigeons from dehydrating. On top of the trap place some bricks, rocks or cinder blocks to keep the pigeons from getting out when they flush.

When you empty the traps of pigeons, leave at 2 birds in to help lure in others.

Please feel free to ask if you have any questions.

Keith

Hi Keith, hope you and Diane are well. Got my canoe ready to rock and roll and a reliable vehicle, so maybe we can actually fish this year.

Been craving Pigeons for a spell now. I'm in a rural area but don't have a lot of them around. They're not far away, could I lure them here?

Jeff, we are doing better, both our surgeries went okay. I fell a week after mine and probably reinjured my meniscus, but can walk reasonably well now. I picked 500 pounds of apricots, off the ground laying on my side. I am looking forward to catching some bowfin with you.

If the pigeons are flying over your property, you can bait them in with whole corn. I would put the corn out without a trap, until they are actively eating it daily.

It would be better to trap where the pigeons are already concentrated. Most places that have pigeons want them gone. I trapped mostly gas station roofs, but also trapped a Casanos Pizza, Donut Shop.and a Nursery. A lot of the places I trapped, who I approached, paid me per pigeon I caught, even though I didn't ask them to. Typically you can catch 5 times as many pigeons as you can count in one viewing, in the first three weeks.

In a good location, so many pigeons will pack into a trap that it will look like you couldn't pound another one in with a hammer.

Keith

The dog training and Voodoo/Santos/Santaria markets pay very well for pigeons, usually $6.00 to $11.00 each. The Asian meat market for pigeons usually pays no more than $5.00 each and mostly isn't worth dealing with.

Keith

Keith, thank you and brother, and 500 pounds of apricots on your side is some bad*** stuff. You all heal and we'll get after those bowfin. Now, back to pigeons.....

I know some people here that come from Germany. Three things they crave constantly.

Horse meat, Frogs, Pigeons! I crave two outta the three lol.

Thanks Jeff.

If you start getting a lot of pigeons, I can hook you up with a buyer, who frequently goes to Mt. Hope, who pays $7.00 to $8.00 each for pigeons, for the Voodoo market. He will purchase around 10,000 per load.

Keith

Holy Moly Keith lol. I am after some to eat. I'll leave the rest of the market for those in the business. I enjoy them a few times a year so I'm looking for a few dozen but can't afford to pay retail for them. They have become pricey but that's the market.

Jeff, you misread what I typed. He will pay you $7.00 to $8.00 each for pigeons. You can make decent money selling the pigeons you catch, much more than you can fur trapping.

Keith

Love catching pigeons, I've only ever sold to dog trainers. I think I need to see if I can find other buyers as I usually catch more than I can sell.

I had a good pigeon trapping story for you.I put out 5 gallons of corn along the rr tracks by my house and the pigeons had it cleaned up in three hours so I put a trap with corn in it and caught nothing for a week and pulled my trap.A month later that corn was still there.Talk about trap smart critters.

I had a pigeon trap and it worked okay but I had better luck catching them with a fishing net. I knew a dairy farmer who would let me crawl around in his hayloft after dark. Got awful dusty but it worked well.

does the buyer come to iowa i can fix him up with a hundred or more

Keith, would you be able to post pics of your trap ? Having a tough time picturing it.

that would be very nice

I would like to get some for dog training

Sorry, I don't have any of my pigeon traps anymore. I loaned them out to a friend and someone stole them out of the back of his pickup truck, while the truck was sitting in his driveway.

My traps were basically a large, short, wire mesh box, without a bottom. Some pigeons hesitate to step.on wire mesh. Enough so, in side by side tests, I took the bottoms off all my traps. The big compartment, with a trap going in from the main trap, helps retain the pigeons. Once pigeons want to get out, they try to manipulate the doors to get out. It's easier for them to go through the door to the compartment, so they typically do. If they get back out that door into the compartment, they usually go back in, because it's easier than manipulating an outside door. The pigeons aren't very bright, but they are not stupid either.

Making recesses going into the trap and compartment, makes it easier for the pigeons to find the door. The first traps I made, long ago, just had doors that were flush with the sides. Pigeons had harder times finding the doors. With recessed doors, I usually caught pigeons the first day.

Once you start catching a few pigeons, catches get rapidly better. Pigeons are attracted to the other pigeons they see in the traps.

The closer you can set to the visible flock, the sooner you will start catching pigeons. In some pigeon dense areas, I kept traps out all year, except in bad snow and ice. Light snow, that covers food sources, makes the traps very productive, if you keep the snow shoveled out and the trap baited.

There is a huge demand for cheap pigeons. I had a huge number of good contacts and still have quite a few.

Occasionally raccoons and Cooper's hawks would kill or injure the pigeons in my traps.

I mostly trapped gas stations. After a woman drove into my ladder, I started parking my car or truck, so that I could prop my ladder against it. The metal edge of most gas station roofs is smooth and sharp. I've had strong winds blow my ladder over. Once I fell and sliced my stomach open on the edge, when the ladder fell. Most roofs had nothing for tie offs. Putting a cinder block on the roof to tie off to, makes it safer.

Paratyphoid and Paramoxyvirus spread rapidly through flocks and kill pigeons. Both make pigeons act dizzy and "stargaze". Immediately cull any sick pigeons. It's best to turn over the pigeons as quick as possible. Feral pigeons are usually pretty healthy, but if you trap a lot, some you catch will have diseases and parasites. Mites, lice and pigeon flies are common, especially on just weaned pigeons, during the Summer. Seven Dust will kill the external parasites. Pigeon flies are nasty. They look like a flying flat tick. They rapidly scuttle sideways in the pigeon feathers, like a crab.

Keith

similar to these but with no floor?



this guy is the friend or partner of the guy in the first video



he has a few different trap door designs

most of the pigeons I see around here are on silos , would you just ground trap them near the silo ?

I was wondering at first just how small of a foothold you would need.

Yes, that's very similar to the traps I built. In the side by side tests I did, bottomless traps worked several times better, than traps with bottoms. If you cut some of the unnecessary, inside wires on the doors, they work better too. It's more obvious to the pigeons that they need to push on them, because they look like a weak point in the mesh. On the bottomless traps, you need weights on top, or the birds will flush when you approach, lifting the trap up and sometimes escaping. I've had 164 pigeons in one 4' by 6' trap once, after they flushed. A few got out, despite the bricks on top. They sometimes will pack in so tight the traps look like they could not hold another pigeon, even if you pounded it in with a hammer. Pigeons are very food greedy, which makes them easy to catch and train. But

If there's a lot of food available in the area, pigeons are harder to catch. Setting the traps close to the nesting sites helps with that. Shoveling and baiting a bare area, after a snowfall, works great too.

Keith