That has been my understanding of the use for pigeon grade, although, I believe in today's terms, it also denotes a gun of high quality. Personally, "back in the day", if I was a maker and wanted a name for a highly decorated gun, naming it after a common pest of a bird would not have entered my head, whereas names like Midas, Diana, Exhibition would have. However, if I was making a very strong robust gun designed for that particular sport, then pigeon definitely fits the bill. Now to be fair, most folks who did (and still do) shoot pigeons tend to be wealthy and like nicely engraved guns - hence where the two names IMO crossed over and kept going.
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