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Cut Cover Crops


Herringn
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Hi All,

 

Had a call from the Farmer this week to say that he is cutting the cover crops from the small syndicate he has on his farm this week.

 

Has anyone had much sucsess shooting freshly cut cover crops, any suggestions on how long I should wait before I head on down, I am guessing a day or two?

 

 

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Thanks for the advice, there is some rape near by which is getting hit quite hard from what I hear, but not a lot else about.

 

I havent got permission on the rape though, which is a shame.

 

Ive not shot over cut cover crops before so not sure if its worth setting up for, only the drillings on this farm with mixed sucsess, although i have seem some large flocks in the area.

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Thanks for the advice, there is some rape near by which is getting hit quite hard from what I hear, but not a lot else about.

 

I havent got permission on the rape though, which is a shame.

 

Ive not shot over cut cover crops before so not sure if its worth setting up for, (Don't setup in hope)

only the drillings on this farm with mixed sucsess, although i have seem some large flocks in the area.

Like JDog said it depends on what it is but as with any other crop and pigeons you will never know when and if they will hit it, you have just got to go and look as often as possible and hope for the best.

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Never had much luck with cover crops on the two permissions that have them. Usually poor yielding maize strips and usually devoid of any maize grains by the time they are cut back. A few years ago one farmer left a large patch of maize in the middle of the field as a cover crop. Once the season was over he mowed it down and left me two small patches I could put hides in (very kind of him). The ground was covered in maize grains ... I watched for weeks and had a slow build up of crows but the pigeons never found it in any numbers. Shot about 50 crows and 10 pigeons on the best day. I have seen other maize cover crops elsewhere get hammered by pigeons at this time of year .... so I think they need to learn its a good food source, and then they recognise it in the future. Any situation like this is always worth a reccy, even if just to show an interest to the farmer.

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There is a large estate near me and some of it borders one of our permissions, they have whole fields of maize as game cover that attract large numbers or pigeons and corvids every year after the season even before being chopped up.....as they are such large blocks, cobs of maize are still available to the pigeons etc but sadly there's no chance of shooting on it. The keepers never bother either but you could certainly make a bag on it!

Small strips on farm shoots tend to have no cobs of maize left by now so not as likely to attract decent numbers.....keep an eye on it is the only answer and if it's drawing any sort of number of corvids/pigeons then indeed set up and give it a go!

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I had a call from a Landowner ten days ago saying that his men would be chopping up his maize covers that day.

 

After two days I returned and there were no birds on any of them, the same after a week, yesterday there were quite a few birds on the largest patch and today at midday there were 400 on the same patch. It goes to show that you have to watch every day.

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I have the pigeon shooting on the farm next to the estate I work on, and last year when the cover crop strips were cut I had two tremendous days over decoys. The birds seemed to hit it very hard indeed for those two days but then it just went dead. They were on it almost immediately after cutting too.

 

I was dropping some venison off at the farmer's earlier this evening and he told me they have just cut the crops today...I hope the birds can wait until Saturday before they start thumping it, if they start thumping it.

 

Been some big flocks around the estate the past couple of weeks, but not 'pin downable' so hopefully this will give them something to focus on.

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I haven't had any success worth shouting about, yet, but I saw a colossal amount of pigeons on the farm I was shooting on Saturday. They simply have too much choice at the moment. I drove around the farm before I left on Saturday and put at least 5000 off of one cover strip. I'm just biding my time......

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I haven't had any success worth shouting about, yet, but I saw a colossal amount of pigeons on the farm I was shooting on Saturday. They simply have too much choice at the moment. I drove around the farm before I left on Saturday and put at least 5000 off of one cover strip. I'm just biding my time......

 

 

How many?

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