Boglin Marsh
The Boomerang System of Pigeon Racing
www.boglinmarsh.com

How far it went I never knew, but at least it went away over the fields until lost out of sight, only to return every few minutes to repeat the performance. I guessed that it felt very fit and didn't have any fat inside and feeling that if my Nantes pigeons had been as fit, then I should have timed in by now.

During the winter of 1952/53 I went to a great deal of trouble designing and making a water-proof hopper. It was a strange contraption, but when finally finished it was water-proof and held well over half cwt. of beans. I put his crazy thing on a seven foot pole outside my loft and by the end of January 1953 had trained all of my birds to feed from it. The next step was to find a suitable place to move it to, eventually finding a man who was willing to allow me to erect it on his hen-pen. The pen was about three and a half miles away on the line of flight and much to the amazement of he hen pen-owner I had all the pigeons working nicely within four days of settling to the hopper. This was achieved by the simple expedient of taking them to the pen and liberating them in sight of the hopper. They were taken twice on Saturday and cleared for home each time without so much as looking at it or attempting to land, repeating this on Sunday with the same result. On the Monday they all flew around it and for some time they attempted to land, but by Tuesday they were feeling the pinch sufficiently for them all to land and take a good feed! From that time on they worked the hopper from the loft to hen-pen and did not need to be taken again. It was the beginning of March and they were allowed to pair up, continuing to visit the hopper as and when the mood took them and soon several pairs were down on eggs.

The birds were looking wonderfully well in the spring sunshine and it was fascinating to watch them as they made their trips to and from he feeding site. Then just as everything was going well and I was congratulating myself on how successful the system was going to be, something went wrong. I was in the habit of examining every bird each night to check that they all had full crops; after all the system was in its experimental stage; so naturally I was rather concerned lest some should be failing to get enough to eat. Every night it was the same story: all birds with full crops, then one night I found that three cocks were empty! I knew something was wrong but the hopper could not possibly have run out. The three cocks were all sitting, so in my innocence I kidded myself that their mates must have been returning too late for the cocks to visit the hopper and feed before dark. How little did I know of the ways of pigeons leading the wild sort of existence; I have found out since that they just don't make that kind of mistake!

Those three empty crops marked the end of my first attempt at the natural Boomerang System, which is as I have found out since, "all or nothing", complete success or utter failure. This suddenly became very much utter failure, as the very next night every pigeon had an empty crop. The following morning I liberated them at 7-30 a.m. and every bird in the loft cleared off in search of food and all the eggs were abandoned. At 2-00 p.m. not a single bird had returned and all of the eggs were ruined! I then paid a visit to the hopper but not a single bird was to be seen there either.

Eventually I found out that they were fielding about half a mile away from the loft with very little to be obtained from the fields because they had just been roughly ploughed and had not been planted. Some dogs were playing about in the same fields but this didn't bother the birds at all, if the dogs came too close, the pigeons just flew up and landed further away at a safe distance. Occasionally the whole flock would fly over the hopper site, but no amount of coaxing would persuade them to land in the confined space of the hen-pens. That night they all returned home very tired and extremely hungry and the next day it was the same all over again.

My eggs were all ruined and the pigeons were rapidly losing condition, so regretfully I had to abandon the idea and start feeding normally at home whilst there was still time to get a new round of eggs. Obviously something had scared them at the hopper, I never knew what it was and in any case it did not really matter;the fact remained that the idea of a hopper in a confined space was all wrong from the pigeons point of view. I could have got them back on the hopper by the means of extreme hunger and only liberated one or two birds at a time but this was of no use to my purpose. It was obvious that once they were liberated in a flock or given free hole the same trouble would have occurred all over again, when even a piece of paper floating in the wind would have frightened the jumpy ones and set the whole flock off as they all would follow suit.

Although the first experiment had been a failure I felt that the idea had not been a total waste of time and that the pigeons had taught me that which they required. What was needed was a feeding ground in a wide open space. There they knew that they were safe from any natural predators and could make a quick getaway should any natural enemy venture too close. It was absolutely clear that the hopper would have to be relegated to the scrap heap and the food just simply scattered on the ground in a perfectly natural manner!

I decided to rear a round of youngsters and then make a fresh start in some convenient open space. Alas another misfortune overcame me at this time as I had the bad luck to injure my leg and had to go into hospital for a cartilage operation. A friend kindly looked after the birds for me and by the time I was fit again we were reaching the end of the old bird inland programme. My birds had been raced each week but had not done much winning, they had been too well cared for and were far too fat to get to the top. Each day my leg was getting stronger and suddenly I had the urge to attempt the Boomerang System once again.