UkPigeonRacing

you will never know maybe it was travelling and if you went 2min earlier with second lot it would never have seen them or 10 min later missed them as it had gone over

Its a good question Neil, I always do the same, especially when it comes to ybs.
Ive done the same thing when the 2nd basket as got hit.
Its difficult to know how the mind of these bastad things work.
I suspect that they would make a strike whenever the situation and conditions are right for them. They are not gonna miss a meal.
I think your 1st basket werent in the right place at the right time but your 2nd was.
I would certainly think about changing your training routine for a while so you are not putting it on a plate for them.

the get hit right out of basket and later it's pot luck we got to go where we go no other options stuck between fells and the sea

I’ve found up here in Scotland. Once I seemed to get a good trainer, I will only lib 5 mins either time of the time I had liberated. Have found sometimes being stuck in traffic and liberating later than the successful lib time I get murdered. As Steve says is just becoming pot luck over the last few years.

Are you mainly getting mullered at the home end then John?
How do you get on loft flying?

The bigger the group of pigeons the MORE attention they will attract. More so with YBs. Train in as many smaller groups as you have time for. And although I'm not racing now, when I did my YB team was around 25 birds which was trained and loft flown in TWO teams. In my last four years racing I didn't lose more than a handful of YBs either training or loft flying. And this is despite having 3 pairs of Sparrowhawks and a pair of Peregrines a mile and a half away.
Other local lofts who had a single much larger teams were not so lucky.
95% of my BOP problems were having birds returning from racing having been hit.

So my m8 has been 26mls on line of flight been hit each time, also being hit at home loft flying .
He has a large set-up but has lost 46 pigeon's this year alone to sparrow hawk, & Peregrine's, I've had 6 tosses out to 20 mls & only 2 occasions have I had a free run back all the other times I've been hit & lost pigeons never to be seen again.
In the end the bop situation will decimate the sport, with more people leaving each year, & with very little being done to address this out of control situation.
I wish I new the answer to this problem, because the number's are out of control & the tipping point has already been reached, I could live with it if the numbers could be kept in check a sensible sustainable figure, but this is gone beyond a joke I'm afraid .

You change route won't make a scrap of difference, wherever you are anywhere in the UK your going to get hit that's fact.
Yesterday 20mls 1 came on it's own, then 2, then another 2 came 30 mins later then singles to about 7.30 pm, not seen a feather of the other 3. So yes a big problem that's only going to get worse, this man made breeding program that's being allowed to scale up each year on buildings, churches etc just doesn't sit right with me, messing with nature racing won't be sustainable .

Yes, we get hit with both sparrow hawk and Pergrine while out exercising. My birds have only been allowed out after the youngsters wee away this last week. Birds are either in the sky or in the loft. Use the flag, when flag comes down, birds must go in or no feed for them. It’s when the birds are coming in to land, I sometimes get hit with the sparrow hawk. Youngsters never get out after end of June, just train basket and home. Excerising around loft after end of June, they just get slaughtered with the Pergrine driving them into the pylons for an easy kill.

Good points Mike will try in smaller group's & see if it's better to go this way with them, I did think about going a few stops about a mile apart to see if they can manage to come back untouched.