800 Mile Flyer by Dave Bunker Brierley

sapper756 · January 3, 2023

British International Championship Club

Phil Hodson of Irlam Salford, an 800-mile fancier

A truly amazing experience

‘A truly amazing experience’, this is how Phil Hodson described timing his 1st North West Section winner from Barcelona over 849 miles on 8th July 2022, taking 33rd Open. There are several fanciers, albeit few and far between, who relish the challenge of extreme distance racing, this is usually over 800 miles. The BICC International races allow fanciers to compete at these extreme distances with races over 700 and 800 miles. The fancier Jim Emerton, himself an 800-mile virtuoso, thought that reporting on extreme distance fanciers would offer an insight into the mind set of these fanciers and encourage others to think about taking up the challenge. For many years now, Jim has sponsored three fantastic BICC trophies, to reward those fanciers who have excelled at the distance. They are awarded to the winner of the highest velocity over 750 miles, the best two bird average from Barcelona and the ACE International pigeon award, presented to a bird recorded in two International races in the same year.

This report is part of a short series on one of those fanciers, Phil Hodson of Irlam, in City of Salford, Greater Manchester. Phil is in line to pick up two of those trophies, the Jim Emerton Barcelona Dream Trophy for the highest velocity over 750 miles and the Jim Emerton Trophy for the longest flying bird in race time.

Phil started keeping pigeons in 2019 and bought 6 young birds from Tumley Lofts. As a beginner, they kindly have him any extra 2 to start him off. These birds have raced well and are mainly raced by Thomas, Phil’s son, who enjoys racing the shorter races. However, Phil quickly came to the realisation that sprint racing wasn’t for him, and it was the longer races that caught his imagination. It appeared to everyone who knew Phil, that this was no surprise. Phil has been a long-distance walker and has walked from Land’s End to John O’Groats in one continuous walk. It took him 52 days with an average of 26 miles a day. In fact, Phil has walked up to 48 miles in one day and has walked many of the long-distance walking routes throughout England. Phil enjoys the challenge of long-distance walking, and he has taken this approach into his pigeon racing. He isn’t someone who looks for instant gratification with the pigeons, and when he took 1st Section Barcelona back in July, Phil said to me, ‘Good morning, Mike, I am just calming down now, from clocking a bird in from the BICC Barcelona race! What an experience that has been, she clocked in at 6.56am on the 14th July, a few minutes after I had let my son’s young birds out. He had a bird with a bruised wing which landed almost straight away, and I watched as a bird landed on my let board. Thinking one of my young birds had got in with his, I returned to the loft to find the hen looking at an empty feed bowl then looking back at me. I said out loud, you can have as much as you want. I had tears in my eyes, what a bird, she had flown 849 miles in a north wind through warm weather; what a tough race. I was quite surprised to find she had lost very little weight and was in good shape. What a bird to complete a personal challenge!’

Phil is 59 years old and is a retired engineer having worked on commercial vehicles, mainly for Mercedes. He races out of a converted 40-foot trailer and prefers the open hole, flying the natural method as advocated by Jim Emerton. In fact, Phil has gained much of his knowledge from reading Jim’s books. However, hawk attacks have forced him to vary this and control the times that the birds are exercised. He feeds them on a hopper of layers pellets with a premium race mix.

Phil obtained his long-distance birds from an Elimar online auction following the advice of his friend and fellow pigeon fancier, Steve Carroll. They went out on a trip to Lier pigeon market in Belgium and this is where they had the conversation about Phil’s passion for the distance. Phil recalls Steve saying to him that sprinting wasn’t going to appeal to him and that he needed to race pigeons in the same way as he walks, over the distance and often for many days. Steve was right and he has supported Phil ever since he took up the sport. Mike Mathews, a retired fancier, has also provided some sound advice, for which Phil is extremely grateful. The birds Phil bought were from the original Etienne Meirlean family.

Phil has adopted an approach of experimentation with the birds to see what they can do. On one occasion, he took 6 late breds to Cheltenahm, 105 miles, for their first toss and they all made it back home. Phil also trained his old birds from Cheltenham on five consecutive days and on the fifth day, the cocks left the basket and flew a few feet onto the top of a KFC restaurant. They sat there until he released the hens, and they then flew home with them. He says that this experience taught him that the birds had the physical ability to fly home, but they may have reached the motivational threshold and didn’t have the appetite to fly back immediately. From this, he learned that motivation is as important as physical fitness in relation to the birds’ desire to be keen to fly back to the loft.

Nonetheless, he is still keen on training and racing as preparation for the distance and his 18 entries for the 2022 Barcelona race, raced Weymouth, 198 miles on Friday on 24th June, Yeovil on Sunday 26th June before being sent to St Philbert with the BICC on Thursday, for a release on Saturday 2nd July. He took 4th Section, 250th Open over 430 miles with his Barcelona hen being his second bird home. They were then sent to Barcelona on Monday 4th July.

So, what does the future hold for Phil? He says more of the same. He has a team of about 100 young birds, and he intends to train and race these to find the ones capable of once again achieving the 849-mile distance from Barcelona. He has also teamed up with Jim Emerton and Nick Harvey to pair his Barcelona hen with Nick Harvey’s mealy cock which is bred from two Barcelona section winners into the west. One of those is the blue hen, Musgrove Inevitable, 1st BICC Section Barcelona for Nick, and 3 times Barcelona. The deal was sporting friendship to improve their extreme distance stock.

And that concludes Phil’s account of his Barcelona section winner. If this has encouraged anyone to try racing from the distance in the Internationals, then the BICC will be staging 5 International races in the 2023 season. These will be from Pau, Agen, St Vincent, Barcelona, and Perpignan.

Anyone interested in racing with the BICC to compete in these races, against the best in Britain and Europe, can join the BICC for £40 membership with £9.50 birdage for each International race. The BICC are always keen to welcome new members and Jim would love to see a new name lift one of his trophies. So, why not give it some thought over the winter?

Mike Jackson

BICC Press Officer

Email:mike.jackson026@hotmail.com

Tel:07964448291