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Colder weather, (a frost) pigeons and rape.


JDog
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Mr Motty may marmalise me.

 

Motty and I have long held the view that cold weather on it's own does not turn pigeons on to rape. Even last week I posted that I felt it unlikely that pigeons would get onto the winter shooter's favourite crop until the beech mast had gone. Today, after a night of heavy frost I saw a lot of the grey hordes on many different rape fields and they appeared to be feeding hard. They numbered in the thousands in total.

 

Can this be a coincidence? The first frost and the first pigeons feeding on Brassica napus. I may have to revise my views.

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Cold weather does change the pigeons food source I spoke with a nother couple of very keen pigeon shooters this morning they said they checked the rape yesterday nothing much doing but went for a nother look this morning after a hard frost and there was hundreds on it and there is still plenty of beech mast about

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Answer yes I shot some a couple of years ago and asked the PW massive about it they were only small slugs not the big garden critters !

 

Atb Dave

 

 

 

in that case i dont think the pigeons that are dropping into the rape on my patch arnt eating the rape....think they are after the slugs.................cause nobody else around here is reporting birds on the rape.......

Edited by ditchman
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Mr Motty may marmalise me.

 

Motty and I have long held the view that cold weather on it's own does not turn pigeons on to rape. Even last week I posted that I felt it unlikely that pigeons would get onto the winter shooter's favourite crop until the beech mast had gone. Today, after a night of heavy frost I saw a lot of the grey hordes on many different rape fields and they appeared to be feeding hard. They numbered in the thousands in total.

 

Can this be a coincidence? The first frost and the first pigeons feeding on Brassica napus. I may have to revise my views.

On ONE (and only one) of my perms, they have been on rape for some time, several hundred of them. (We have few beech trees in the area) Was finally able to have a go at them yesterday( no shoot day this week, birds well away from woods and covers) and soon was reminded how hard it is. Of course they all went off to fields near pheasant woods, you can't flag them all. I got 10 for 6 hours in the hide, mostly passing birds. One had a crop full of beech mast/rape mix, he had been in the wood with a few beech trees.

Incidentally, in my frustration, I shot at 3 really wide passing passing birds (60+ yards?) and hit them all, well, knocked feathers out of them. Two flew on "untouched", the other dropped stone dead. The pattern at that range is literally hit or miss Pigeonslayer!!

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Saw first large numbers on rape on Sunday late morning. Went to set up in the early afternoon, went off as a couple of large flocks and then did not see many once set up, and most of the ones I saw from then on just kept flying past. Shot three in about three hours....but while it was quiet I made a hide in the middle of a fallen oak. It must have come down in summer as in full leaf and will make an excellent hide for future visits.

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I saw pigeons gliding across a road onto a rape field this morning at 8.00am whilst on my travels. At about 11.00am as I returned along the same route there were quite a few sitting in the trees along the rape field. As others have noted, it was a hard frost here this morning and its certainly the first time I've seen pigeons feeding on the rape in any numbers.

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