Secrets of the Racing Ace - Pigeon Racing Secrets

By Old Hand

This vintage book contains a fascinating and comprehensive treatise on the racing pigeon, and includes information on feeding, general care and management, breeding, and much more. This text contains a wealth of timeless information on racing pigeons, as well as many useful hints and handy tips. It will be of considerable utility to the modern fancier. The chapters of this book include: 'The Racing Ace', 'Making Pigeons Fly Faster', 'Feeding for Breeding', 'Preparation for the Breeding Season', 'Controlling Racing Pigeons', 'The Master Gland', 'Special Investigation into the Cause of Racing Pigeons Respiratory Troubles', etcetera. Many antiquarian books such as this are becoming increasingly hard to come by and expensive, and it is with this in mind that we are republishing this book now in an affordable, modern edition complete with a new introduction on pigeons.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Jan 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9781447483779

Book preview

HAND"

Chapter One

THE RACING ACE

TELLS HOW THE RACING ACE DIFFERS FROM THE AVERAGE CLUB MEMBER IN HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH HIS RACING PIGEONS.

WHAT IS a ‘RACING ACE?’ OR, rather, what is he not? He is certainly not a fancier who brings off one big win in a blue moon, nor is he one who enjoys a great, fantastic, all-winning season and then tapers off into abscurity for a row of barren years, probably capitalising eternally on the one good season in which he stood in the limelight beam. One swallow does not make a summer and one big win does not promote a fancier to the temple of the great.

Yet every novice soon learns to recognise the one fancier who, in his estimation, deserves a high pedestal all to himself. Such a revelation comes to him soon after joining a club and taking part in a few races. All novices go through this experience; it is as inevitable as the setting sun and the early morning dew of summer.

Unlike most other sports, the finish of a pigeon race is a mystery for some hours afterwards to all those taking part in it. No contesting fancier knows the winner for sure until after the race officials have later indulged in their customary mathematical exercise. Because a club member races to the privacy of his own back garden few people but himself (and certainly not any other competing member) sees his racers home nor are they witnesses to the transference of the rubber race ring from the leg of the racing pigeon to its indexed compartment inside that very clever piece of mechanism known as ‘a timer’. From the moment of liberation at the racepoint to the ultimate clocking of the arrival and for some time afterwards, the progress of the race is as obscure to most competing members as the passing of time in a clockless world. Members can guess at the probable average velocities made by pigeons in the race and they can enter into speculation on the probable velocity of the winner but no one knows for sure who has taken the prize until the race officials have performed their magic at club headquarters later in the day, after the timers have been brought in for checking. Thus, no member knows who has won, or who has won what, for hours after the race has been flown.

Imagine, therefore, the feelings of the novice immediately after he has timed his bird!

The elation that boosted his blood pressure when his first arrival dropped to the loft cools and solidifies into a hard core of uncertainty. As the thermals evaporate from the blood so do the cold anxieties creep in. Is it a good bird, or just an also-ran? The fact is that apart from a few figures hastily drawn on paper to represent possible velocities and his own actual speed in yards per minute he doesn’t know what his chance is, or whether he has one at all. I often wonder what kind of feelings a novice finds hardest to bear—the excitement engendered by the suspense of waiting for an arrival, or the surging hopes and doubts that rise and fall in his breast between clocking and that soul-torturing seven o’clock call at club H.Q. after the event?

It is when a novice has endured one or two experiences of the kind described above that he begins to discover what is meant by the term ‘Racing Ace.’ He says to himself, I know I can’t discover whether I’ve won or not until after 7 p.m. tonight but I wonder what time old so-and-so was in? Mark you, there may be a score or more of members competing in this local club event but his mind automatically flies to a certain fancier’s name and then proceeds to hang a question mark on the end of it. But why this particular fancier?—why not another?

The point is that his mind is busy calculating chances. His grey matter draws on its bank of experiences and from the welter of its recently stored wisdom rejects the names of those members whose chances of beating him are thought to be slim. Through the process of mental assessment and rejection he comes at last to the name of the one fancier who is most likely to have timed a ‘good one’ in the race. He eventually arrives at this particular name because he realises that as a pigeon racer this member stands head and shoulders above the rest, as the hardest one he has to beat. Others time chancy birds in high places from time to time but this one towers as his greatest rival, because he consistently figures high in the race results. At this stage of his thought processes his commonsense tells him that if he has timed before old So-and-So he has indeed timed a good one. Thereafter, he can’t wait to find out what time old so-and-so was in! In other words, he has found his Racing Ace!

From that moment onwards the novice knows he has recognised his rival and the greatest menace to his ambitions as a fancier, the one special member he must try to beat on all occasions. To time in front of other members is a grand thing in itself but to clock before old So-and-So is the thing that matters most. Even if he does not win a prize, the important thing is to chalk up a bigger velocity than old So-and-So! In the minds of many novices this nagging desire to beat his elected ‘Racing Ace’ becomes something of an obsession.

Thus, the fancier whom the novice lifts on to a pedestal to be respected and admired also becomes the yardstick for the serious way in which he personally measures up to the game. For example, full many a novice has identified and adopted ‘his type’ of bird after studying the sort raced by his self-elected Ace. It is only natural that the novice’s admiration for the Ace shall be shared by his stock. What sort of pigeon, and what strain, is likely to enable him to compete successfully with his Ace? Obviously, the same sort as that raced by his greatest rival! The novice will want to inspect and handle every pigeon in his Ace’s loft and if not obstructed, or warned off, will soon get to know them as familiarly as his own team of birds.

It is only when a few years of experience have passed that he will begin to realise that his Ace achieved his eminence in the game more through his inspired management of his birds than because of the exceptional qualities of his stock. Too many novices imagine that they have only to buy champion stock in order to become champion racers themselves. Get hold of the best blood, put it on the road, and the birds will do the rest! This is not true.

Naturally, a fancier must acquire good, honest working blood before he can hope to compete on an equal footing with most other good members of his club. If well bred, like all other kinds of livestock it will now and then throw up a great champion. But no fancier can preserve his reputation as a great Racing Ace on the performances of a rare champion. In almost every race in which he is a competitor he has to be what we term ‘knocking’ i.e. be well placed in the upper quarter of the prize list. He stays to shine on these giddy heights by getting the last ounce out of good but sometimes unexceptional pigeons, birds which in the hands of a novice might put up nothing better than a mediocre performance.

And this brings the novice to his next quaking realisation! This is that old So-and-So wins with something more than good bloodstock! How many thousands of novices have spent considerable sums of money on champion stock only to find that what works for others will do anything but work for them? Listen to the bitter and sometimes spiteful comment at the clubhouse: How did you get on with birds off old So-and-So’s family? Oh, those birds. They were no good at all. I lost the youngsters at 5-miles. Just plain rubbish and a swindle at the price! Novices who haven’t heard this sort of vindictive comment at clubhouses must be very hard of hearing. However, next time you hear someone speak like that make a mental note to the effect that the man who said it is no fancier and never will be one. And if you, yourself, buy some stock from a reputed good fancier and find that it does not give you immediate good results don’t blame the breeder—blame yourself.

Now, when the novice finds that old So-and-So’s birds are apparently no better than his own stock what kind of solution to his problem does his mind try to reason out? In almost every case he says, I know, old So-and-So uses a special specific for speeding up his birds! What novice in his early days has not harboured this sort of suspicion about one or more of his fellow club members? In any case, few clubs are short of members who hint at their possession of deep secrets and miraculous elixirs stored in ‘red bottles’. It is unfortunate for the novice that he will probably waste precious time and hard-earned money in trying out specifics that are advertised as the short cut to success before he discovers that tap water is cheaper and no less ineffective in persuading his birds to get a riffle on.

Sooner or later he will wake up and discover that dope and other nefarious aids to success are a dead-loss. Then he will cast round for the next probable angle on the Racing Ace and conclude that the secret is in the way he feeds his birds. This new slant on his rival will send him hotfoot to his Ace’s loft, wide-eyed to note what kind of corn he buys and feeds.

I once knew a fancier who could not win. Then he came into money. He decided to buy some land and build himself a nice house. Before doing so he drove around in his car and located a site near to that occupied by the loft of his particular ‘Racing Ace’ but in such a position that it would give him the benefit of some overfly. He studied his rival’s loft and erected one which was supposed to be of equal merit but more so. He rummaged around the lofts and bought up four families of birds, including one which was based on his Ace’s birds, and installed them in the loft.

Then came the problem of feeding. His rival was somewhat secretive about his feeding methods so this fancier (who was of the kind which allows no ethics or principles to stand in the way of his ambitions) called on the firm that supplied his rival with corn and asked them what kind of grain they delivered to him. They were not willing to discuss the matter so the fancier wrote out a very large cheque for them and said, Just deliver corn to that value but made up the same as old So-and-So’s. They did just that and five years later the fancier was still trying to beat his Ace but with no luck whatsoever.

Feeding is important. I’ve said so many times. Yet any novice who wants to know how to feed racing pigeons properly has only to buy my books to find all the secrets fully revealed to him.

What next? Naturally, having tried so many things he will hit on ‘special training’ as the probable answer to his problem. It is very difficult for any fancier to conceal his training methods, especially if there are many fanciers in his vicinity. You can hide a basket of pigeons in the Jboot of your car and slip off to parts unknown. You can do all sorts of things but in the end you can’t keep everyone from knowing how you toss your birds and where. In any case, the secret is not worth keeping. Once again, anticipating this subject, I have covered every known method of training in my several books and in one of them I have set out, in detail, the supreme method of training racing pigeons so that all can read and inwardly digest the