Our Race season has ended. Thank you for participating! Please know we did everything in our power to give every single one of your pigeons a chance to perform well. As a breeder we fully understand all the time, planning, work and hope you put into creating these birds you entrust us with. We take that responsibility very serious.
If you won $600 or more send us a W-9. You can go to irs.gov and download a copy. Fill it out and mail it to us as soon as possible.
If you won less than this amount we will be sending you a check soon.
Let us know if you want your birds back. If we don't hear from you in about one more week they will become our property.
We are receiving birds for our next series now. As most of you know we take birds until June 15th. We are a later race and never intend to start the series before sometime in November. Weather and bird health can affect this date.
We are convinced we have been having trouble with the mountains to our south. To solve this problem we will change our line of flight this season. We plan to fly more from the west (a little south of west) to prevent this from ever being a problem again. We have been flying from the southwest so this will not be a major change.
We will submit an article about our race series, some pics, and race results in the Racing Pigeon Digest. I will let you all know which magazine it will appear in. If you don't subscribe to The Racing Pigeon Digest you should. Call Gene Yoes at (337) 474-1289 and sign up over the phone.
Everyone from the River Valley Roundup Race says thank you!
Bobby
(479) 719-3995
bobbydpollock@yahoo.com
The birds were watered yesterday evening on the way to the release site. They were watered for 30 minutes prior to being released this morning.
We were able to release into sunny skies with light headwinds at 7:30.
After looking at the weather forecast again early this morning and taking into account the predicted head winds with gusts. We released the birds from 336 miles in an effort to make 9 hours flying time. Everyone knows how subjective this is but I made the best prediction I could. If the birds fly 37 mph this is right at 9 hours. If they go down for water it will be later. At this speed the 1st birds would arrive at 4:30 and have a little over a one hour window before dusk.
Good luck to everyone.
We will release the birds at 7:30 or 7:45 from Salado Texas, south of Waco Texas tomorrow (Sunday).
Good luck to all,
Hello Everyone. We are watching the weather really close. Yesterday we had rain and low clouds all day. Today we are supposed to have some rain and wind gusts up to about 35 mph. It looks like we can fly our Bonus Race this Sunday. We will be tossing the birds south of Waco Texas at 7:30 or 7:45. This will be 350 miles with stiff headwinds all the way. This will be a very difficult race and in my opinion as hard or somewhat harder than a 400 mile race with calm winds. If the weather forecast holds I think the birds will be in the air at least 9 and 1/2 hours.
It looks like we have 86 birds going to the race. 41 of those birds are competing for prizes.
Since it appears we have $4100 in the prize pool I'm thinking we would award the 1st 5 birds as follows: 1st - $1200, 2nd - $1000, 3rd - $800, 4th - $600, and 5th $500. Prizes will be paid by trapping order.
We are giving the 1st bird to trap, not in the Prize pool, 50 Unikon ETS Bands.
I will look at the weather reports one last time before noon and alert everyone.
Hello everyone. Our Bonus Race is a go. Right now we have about 39 birds in the prize pool and about 85 birds going to the race. I'm still waiting on a few more responses.
We are thinking this Sunday will be the day. We are watching the weather carefully.
The birds look great. They all loft fly with a lot of energy.
Everyone likes the Bonus Race idea! I made about 6 phone calls and we have close to 30 birds in already. No one has said no yet! The number of birds in the $100 prize pool is growing also.
I'm trying to get in touch with each person individually but call, text, or email me if you want to participate. Tell me which birds are going for $10 each and if any of them are in the $100 prize pool.
Here is another idea for our Bonus Race. Anyone who wants to participate can pay $10 per bird for expenses. Those birds will race for the sake of racing and testing their birds. Those wishing to participate and also compete for prizes can pay an additional $100 per bird for their nominated birds.
Good news! We are getting a positive response to our Bonus Race. One person already paid their race fee.
I started the conversation with some suggestions. The conversation has now advanced. A consensus is to have the race be farther than 325 miles. Consider this: Our days are still short. Pigeons normally fly about 43 mph on a calm day. If we have any conditions that will slow down the birds, we are in danger of not having any day birds. Remember, some of these birds are only 9 months old. I suggest we aim for 375 miles but adjust the distance depending on the conditions. I would rather discuss time on the wing more than the actual distance. Example: if our 325 mile race had had 8 mph head winds yesterday, the arrival of the 1st birds would have most likely been around 4:45. That's cutting it pretty close. If the weather is really nice we would probably release at 7:45. If we want 9 hours on the wing that puts the birds with light headwinds here at 4:45 at best. If they go down for water, even later.
We are getting a good number of birds in today. These birds will be rested and restored and ready to fly the next race if their breeders so desire. All the birds look fantastic.
If you want to participate in the bonus race you aren't obligated to send all your birds. You can just send 1 bird if you want.
My comments are meant to continue the conversation. I'm asking for your feed back.
Congratulations to all the winners!
We have close to 75% of the birds home tonight. The birds returned until very late so we should get more birds in the morning.
We had this one day to race so we had to go with it even though we knew it was going to be fast with tail winds. It was calm at the release but by 100 miles into the race the winds were really strong from that point on. Because of the south winds we took them to Huntsville Texas so they would have wind behind them. If we had taken them to Waco they would have had strong winds from the right side and I believe they would have missed the loft by a lot. All our birds returned from the north, even the 1st ones, due to the tail winds.
How many would be interested in a Bonus Race? My idea is to fly a 300 mile race in about 10 days. The cost would be $110 per bird. $100 for the race fee and $10 for expenses. If we had 50 birds that would give us $5000. 1st - $1500, 2nd - $1200, 3rd - $1000, 4th - $800, 5th - $500. Paid by trapping order.
I'm asking for input. Your birds are in excellent condition and it would be great to see them tested again.
The payout for the 325 mile final race is as follows:
1st - $2500 6th - $800 11th - $500 16th - $300
2nd - $2000 7th - $800 12th - $500
3rd - $1500 8th - $800 13th - $500
4th - $1200 9th - $800 14th - $500
5th - $1000 10th - $800 15th - $500
We plan to fly the 325 mile race on Wednesday. Due to the constantly changing weather we had no choice but to to wait until the last minute to make a decision on when that would be as the weather forecast seems to change constantly. We would like to fly on Saturday but the forecast is stiff headwinds and if it becomes even stronger than todays prediction we would have to postpone again.
We do want people to come and participate. If you are able to be here please let us know.
