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Check out those flight lines.


lakeside1000
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Took a walk around my local permission this afternoon, just took the air rifle in case the rabbits were out in the sun, they were, managed to bag a big buck for the pot, still a few left after the mixxy, so it should be a good winter,

As for the pigeons , holy moses, from 2.00 up till about 3.45 the air was full of them going in all directions, most with bulging crops, it was near perfect conditions in the bright sunshine and a light south westerly breeze , I don't remember ever seeing these numbers in this area before, well over 500 in the space of 2 hours, but around 4.00 the sky just emptied, not a bird in sight, what with the nights drawing in and the change to the clocks we seem to have lost the whole afternoons shooting in one go,

Anyway with all these birds about I cant resist a decent go at them, so tomorrow morning i'm out as early as I can , to spend the whole day at them, I hope the weather holds good, and if they go to roost as early tomorrow I should be home before the wife puts my dinner in the dog.

:yahoo::yahoo:

Edited by lakeside1000
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Had another cracking couple of hours on the birds again today...same venue same time....really getting to grips with the No4 now and had some awful misses but also some CRACKING shots :yahoo: and doubles and 2 with 1 shot...i didnt plan it that way it just happened.......

 

 

and whats more im going to hit them again tomorrow....will remember to take the camera tomorrow

 

 

 

after all those years and months in pigeon desert im at last in the £ seats :lol:

 

 

 

so we have the Hemsby area in the money i wonder if the other norfolk boys are getting them :hmm:

Edited by ditchman
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Well what a day, started off at 9 am, not early I know but i'm too old for getting up in the dark, set out all the decoys plus my two turbo flappers, no magnet as I have not had great success with it lately, birds were coming in as I built the hide, gun in one hand and nets in the other, very difficult.

finally got sat down and poured a coffee, now where's my face mask, oh yes in my other coat at home, oh bother,

dug into the bottom of my bag to find my winter balaclava, sun was already high and it was pretty hot, first half a dozen came very fast and had to go into the bag again for my earplugs, hooray finally settled,

I had put out 10 crow decoys up wind just in case and straight away small bunches of rooks were coming in to have a look,

over the next 5 hours the birds came steadily , no large numbers but a nice steady trickle, half way through I noticed I had lost the optical fibre centre out of my foresight, slight panic, would I still be able to hit them, no worries, the next pair came left and right , cracking shots at distance and very satisfying ,

As I don't have a dog I was kept busy picking up and setting out the dead birds on cradles, my decoy pattern was growing well.

At one point fairly late in the afternoon I went out to pick up and noticed two men, standing in the corner of the field watching me through binoculars, now I don't mind admirers of my marksmanship but they didn't seem too keen to meet me, I dropped the barrels and took out the cartridges as I walked down the field to challenge them, I had my opening gambit in mind ( excuse me but do you know your trespassing on private land ) or perhaps something a little more friendly, I pulled off my balaclava as I thought it might look a little threatening, they had continued to look straight at me through the binoculars but realising I was heading straight for them they turned and quickly walked away out of the field and out of sight, so not wanting to leave all my gear or chase them off I left it at that and walked back to the hide, sometime later I saw them again watching me from a nearby lane but they moved off as soon as they realised I had spotted them, strange lot!

So around 3 pm I packed away and counted up, 33 woodies,3 rooks,1 feral and 1 jackdaw.

I could have had probably double the number of woodies, but from quite early on in the morning I had noticed that many of the birds coming in were very young , some only just fledged ,very small with virtually no meat on them , so I had made a decision not to shoot at anything that looked so young, several times throughout the day there were 2 or 3 of them wandering around between the decoys, with no sense of danger.

I know I will get some criticism for leaving them, but my thinking is, we have very few birds to shoot around here for most of the year, if we kill all these 'easy' juveniles then next year we will not have any fresh breading stock, I know its unlikely we would reduce the Norfolk pigeon population by any significance but personally I would like a few more big fat woodies to blast away at next year.

So all together a very good day spent out in the fresh air and sunshine, cant wait to do it again. :yes::yes:

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