Bet you didnt know !

Have you ever come across something that sounds like a joke or just doesn't look right, well that was me when i found out about this "top tip" from Steve price. I know that this is going to sound mad but trust me it works. I found this on "easy airgun hunting disk 2" which is filled with great advise indeed and i thought i would give it a bash, just to see what the outcome would be. All you need is some decoys (shell or full bodied) and a few ULTRA-VIOLET MARKER PENS ,the kind you use to invisibly mark your valuables, and paint the backs of your deeks with the pen (from the white neck bands to about 2 inch before the tail) See told you it sounds mad.

So with 7 painted deeks and 7 non painted i set off to one of our shoots that has an abundance of woodys to test this idea. The non UV deeks went in one tree and 100 yards away went the UV ones. After siting under the non UV tree for over an hour, i had only shot one pigeon, so it was off to the UV tree to try my luck there. I wasn't expecting to get anymore under that one because lets face it how could a pen make any difference . Well loads would be the simple answer because pigeons see in the UV spectrum. Yes it is true and it does work...ask the 9 woodies that are in my shooting bag.

References to back up my test:

insert from "Sporting Shooter Magazine"

Scientists say that pigeons’ eyes have more cones than ours do. Those are the cells inside your eye which spot red, green and blue light. There’s even a special type of cone that we don’t have at all, which sees UV light. So they’re equipped to see more colours than we can, not less. They see colour in four dimensions, where we see only three.

SPRINGERLINK:

The pigeon's sensitivity to ultraviolet and ‘visible’ light .

Summary The pigeon's spectral sensitivity, determined behaviorally between 320 and 640 nm, was maximal at 580 nm. Sensitivity extended into the near-ultraviolet but was, in contrast with previous findings, relatively low at these wavelengths. The discrepancy in results in the UV may be based on functional differences arising from the pigeon's retinal specialization.