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feeding frenzy.....


ditchman
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Has anyone experienced a pigeon feeding frenzy......................this is the type of day when you track down a flock of pigeons, and nomatter how much you shoot they keep on coming back for more and will not leave the crop...........i have had the pleasure 3 times in my pigeon shooting career...........

 

 

 

  1. first time on a field of rape....and there were other fields of rape next door...no matter what you did they kept on flying about and coming to the flapper....
  2. On a field that was being drilled in the autumn and was previously sugarbeet...the farmer was ploughing the tops in and the other chap was drilling..
  3. once again on a field of rape ...very cold day...wet...and the rape was covered in slugs...dont think the birds were interested in the slugs tho...we would fire off 3or4 shots ...they would dissapear for 5 mins and then back again...

 

i have heard of similar happenings on game cover that had been slashed the day before....but never have seen it around here....

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I once shot 97 in a hour and half , it was on pea stubble I would shoot some and the ones following them in still came into the decoys.

There were so many pigeon that I shot 3 with two shots 3 times in that period .

The strange thing was I had set up on the field a couple of hours earlier and was on the verge of packing up due to it being dead .

 

I have never had a day like it since .

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when i shot my feeding frenzies....i rekon i could have been shooting in a hi vis jacket and still would shot continuously....the birds did not pay a blind bit of notice of me..

 

Five years ago I was shooting near Tewkesbury on laid barley. There were two of us. My hide position was under a hedge and my companion chose to put up a very rudimentary hide against a telegraph pole in the middle of the field.

 

The shooting in my position ended completely after two hours when it began to rain. As I was packing up the shooting started in the middle of the field. Once my kit was in the car I watched with some incredulity as my companion fired a shot every minute or so whilst standing up in his hide wearing a full high viz. jacket. The birds zeroed in to his decoys as if they were on wires. I am not sure that I have ever seen anything like it.

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Five years ago I was shooting near Tewkesbury on laid barley. There were two of us. My hide position was under a hedge and my companion chose to put up a very rudimentary hide against a telegraph pole in the middle of the field.

 

The shooting in my position ended completely after two hours when it began to rain. As I was packing up the shooting started in the middle of the field. Once my kit was in the car I watched with some incredulity as my companion fired a shot every minute or so whilst standing up in his hide wearing a full high viz. jacket. The birds zeroed in to his decoys as if they were on wires. I am not sure that I have ever seen anything like it.

 

 

 

A while ago ...maybe 2 years ago....a similar subject/post appeared about hides and suchlike....and i believe one of the contributors...MOTTY speculated that if one was in a hi-vis jacket behind a hi-vis fence.............if you were in the right place at the right time ...sport would still be had......................

 

which brings me on to the next question.........are pigeons colour blind.........and do we spend millions of £££'s on cammo gear when it is not needed...HHhmmmm. :hmm:

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I have had it a couple of times . Once during a very cold spell I shot in excess of 200 birds on a field of kale . They just kept coming and coming . I was standing up in the kale which was about 5 feet high and the shooting was non stop for about 4 hours . Other time two of us was on a field of wheat stubble and between us we shot in excess of 500 birds . That day I had to get my farmer friend to bring us some more shells .

 

Harnser

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I have had it a couple of times . Once during a very cold spell I shot in excess of 200 birds on a field of kale . They just kept coming and coming . I was standing up in the kale which was about 5 feet high and the shooting was non stop for about 4 hours . Other time two of us was on a field of wheat stubble and between us we shot in excess of 500 birds . That day I had to get my farmer friend to bring us some more shells .

 

Harnser

 

 

 

 

That must have been "Marrowstem kale"..........i cant remember the last time i saw a field of kale........i think they grow a variety called "thousand head" now.....do the dairy farmers still grow it..........i know when i was young when i was on the beating line ...i was always the one to beat out the Marrowstem kale when it was wet and snowy.............2 sniffs of that and you would be greedy !!

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A friend and i shot 143 on some laid barley one afternoon a couple of years ago, we packed up as we were running low on cartridges and i felt we had more than enough birds to carry back. An hour later the farmer went to spray the field with round up and he called to say it was covered with pigeons.

 

We took over 400 birds off that field in 3 visits, they only stopped flighting to it when it was harvested and disced up!

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The evening I shot my first double ton started at 4 and finished at 7 on rape stubble. I shot 130-150 of them in the last hour with a hatsan escort that decided it didn't want to cycle and I had to load every shell manually. The farmer was sat in the gate way watching me for that last hour and we both said we had never seen birds commit to decoys in such a way before. There were dead birds everywhere and they took no notice of me stood above the hide, they were suicidal. At 7 it literally just stopped as if a tap was turned off. If I'd of had a fully functional gun I'd of hit the 300 with ease.

 

Ben

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had plenty days when there coming in thick and fast as most have on here, but one short session sticks in my mind on a field of spring wheat that was about 4 inches high with a lot of weed and wild rape shoots amongst it I fired exactly 100 carts in 2 hours and picked 88

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Once in snow storm, ran out of cartridges in half an hour, only the brussel tops were sticking up through 3ft of snow, barrels were red hot, Still remember it..

It was a blizzard, What an afternoon,lost the dog for ages. Wow..

They would not give up, felt sorry for them later, they had to eat,and died for it..

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Back in the 60's and 70's we had some very big bags in excess of 200, over snow covered kale and brussels.

We just used to stand up in the crop and the birds kept coming in, totally ignoring us.

It was sad to some degree, as they were all very poor conditioned birds and were just fixated on the only green they could find for miles.

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Three times.

 

1988/1989 Boxing day an acre or so of wheat which had been left unharvested. There was a tiny bit of snow on the ground and they just kept coming from sunrise until about 14.00 when I packed up. It was my biggest day up to that date and was quite an experience.

 

2011 October. Bean stubble with a lot of spillage in one corner. Came steadily with a mad period of about half an hour when the shooting was virtually constant. Ran out of cartridges late AM and luckily got back to the hide with a resupply just before the rush started. Text book day but 24hrs later there were none on it at all.

 

2013 July. About 50 acres of peas. Sadly I did not have the chance to shoot the field but my friend and I attempted to walk the birds off several times. They refused to go, merely fluttering around within yards of us as if they were tame. Never seen anything like it before or since. Lord knows how many we would have shot but I would guess 500+.

Edited by Milo
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Back in the 60's and 70's we had some very big bags in excess of 200, over snow covered kale and brussels.

We just used to stand up in the crop and the birds kept coming in, totally ignoring us.

It was sad to some degree, as they were all very poor conditioned birds and were just fixated on the only green they could find for miles.

 

 

in those days during winter the night before we use to pin a couple of tarpaulins out onto anything green...then it would be snowy or frosty during the night....we would set up and pull the covers off and birds would come into the area.............

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R u allowed to do that then

 

 

way back when..............things were different.................im not sure of the leagality of it now.......dont forget back in the late 60's and 70's there were blokes with mortars and nets that were contracted to control the flocks....they used to get 500-600 birds everytime they fired off the nets............even as late as the late 70's i remember there was a field coming into Kings Lynn from the Knights hill rounderbout and at the bottom of the hill on the right there were always loads of birds on that field....so many it looked like a field of lavender............

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A couple of occasions particularly jump to mind - both on the same farm in adjacent fields, but in different years. The first was on wheat stubble. I was shooting alone and set up under a tree in the middle of the field. They came in twos and threes and I lost count of the number of left and rights and triples. In the end I just lowered the net and they still poured in. The dog was knackered so I just didn't bother to pick the birds up but let them lay where they fell. Didn't make a jot of difference and when I finally decided to call it a day, after three hours, I piled the birds up and they still came in.

 

The other occasion was many years ago when I and a mate spotted some laid barley. We could see them leaving the woods, would stand and take two or three or even four out of the bunches of birds. We slaughtered them and after four hours of hard shooting we picked up 328. My face and shoulder were bruised for a couple of weeks and I shoot a semi-auto. The farmer was well pleased but not so other drivers on the motorway. The birds were piled up in the 4x4 and we received many hoots and fist shakes!

 

Much of the farm has been sold to the woodland trust and it is unlikely we will ever realise such big bags again, but for a number of years the farm was prolific and I had several bags 0f 180+.

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Yep seen it a few times over the years but it was generally during the spring/summer, Pigeons are a totally different bird during those months and I have shot some very big bags on peas, beans and stubble
although I have also had plenty of big bag days through the early 70, and 80s on rape when birds were suicidal.

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Yep seen it a few times over the years but it was generally during the spring/summer, Pigeons are a totally different bird during those months and I have shot some very big bags on peas, beans and stubble

although I have also had plenty of big bag days through the early 70, and 80s on rape when birds were suicidal.

 

 

 

yup they come down at you "like a BUNCH of migrants outside a fish an chip shop"

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in those days during winter the night before we use to pin a couple of tarpaulins out onto anything green...then it would be snowy or frosty during the night....we would set up and pull the covers off and birds would come into the area.............

Done a similar thing on rape with a couple of tank nets laid on top of the snow so the birds could see the decoys.

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