MerseaDavid

On the one of the pics u can see both my guns but when the last pics was taken the autos had been put away

We have nearly finnished cutting all our rape now (only 109 acres left) but it has p****d it down so we wont be cutting for a couple of days. But on the field we cut yesterday there must have been 300+ birds going on to it

Could well be rape, a couple of farms near me have started to drill theirs already.

It depends on wether he is harvesting or not. Try not to get him if something has broken down or something like that lol Either first thing in the morning or lunch time will probably be better. And yes I have noticed an increase in ferals recently too

I have often thought about using 2 magnets but have never had the chance to try it yet. I was going to last week but we struggled to get one in the ground because it was so dry but I know many people who have used 2 with great success. the decoys should not make any difference to drawing the birds in

the only trouble I had was an aching shoulder for a couple of days but I cured that by using my auto this time and had no problems

the main reason is because it is game land and my boss does not really allow anyone to shoot the land because of trouble with shooter annoying the locals so he only allows the game shooters to shoot the land unless we are desperate to protect the crops and then he lets me organise a couple of days shooting for other guns and I might join them if I am not working.

for both days the total amount of shots fired was around 950 for over 700 kills ( it might have been more with the light load but it is not far off) the pigeons decoyed better with the dead birds out in the pattern until it got to the stage where there was too many out and the birds struggled to decoy.

Cheers mate, yeah we had a great time but both of our shoulders payed for it after, thats why on the second day both me and dad used autos most of the day

A couple more tray loads

We ended the day with 431 pigeons and 3 doves Dad shot 230 pigeons and I shot 201 + 3 doves After we had put the main birds in the truck we went for a drive round the field to collect the rest and pick up another 213 birds Dad collecting a bag of 90 birds 2 tray loads of birds

The troubles with using an auto

It was way too hot really Day 2 Shooting over the same field but on harvested rape This time we went straight to the field to find it had been harvested and only a small handfull of birds were on the field so we went for a drive round the farm to look over the other swathed fields to find not many birds about so we went back to the first field and watched the flight lines and noticed a good line building up near the farm track. So we parked the truck up against the hedge under the flightline and put the net over the truck again and set up 2 hide (1 at the front of the truck which was mine and 1 at the back of the truck which was dads). The wind today was very unpredictable and it kept moving so it was not easy to set up a proper pattern but I put out 2 groups or plastic decoys about 30 yards out with a 20 yard gap between the 2 groups and in the middle we set up an electric flapper just to put some movement into the pattern. It was about 20 minutes before the first bird came in but it was a great decoying bird but I missed it but after this the birds slowly started to come back to the field but I dont think they wanted to feed on it because alot seemed to fly over next doors on to their standing wheat but the decoys brought them close enough to get some great shooting. Quite often the wind changed so it was in our faces again which pushed the flightline behind us over the track and a small pea field where we dropped alot of birds but we could not collect them because the farmer had started to cut the field. But one of the guys carting grain did pick a few up for his tea. The birds kept coming until around 7pm where it was like someone had turned a tap off, there was not a bird to be seen anywhere. We packed up all the birds we could which totaled 171 birds My 2 guns I was using on the day

Day one shooting over swathed rape When we got to the farm the farmer told us he had swathed one of his rape field 3 days ago and that he had seen a few birds going on to it. So we left him to get on with swathing his other fields and we headed for the field he had told us about. When we got on to the field there was about 5 flightlines working with 3 of them going over 2 small oak trees on one side of the field and we decided that would be the best place to set up, so we drove over to the trees and put a net over the truck and set out 15 full body plastic decoys with a pigeon magnet about 50 yards out into the field because unluckily we had the wind in our faces so we had to set the pattern out further than we really wanted too. But before we even got the guns out the pigeons were landing in the pattern and it kept on like this for the first 2 hours where we had already made a bag of 100 pigeons and they still kept coming. About 1 pm a guy came down the field who lived nearby and stopped and asked how we were getting on and when we told him he was amazed and he then handed us a bag of cartridges saying they were too bigger load for him and he asked if he could take a few pigeons back with him. He took a bag of 20 home with him and said he would be back for more if we did not want them. Packed up at 5pm because the pigeons just seemed to stop flying. We had a total bag of 311 pigeons and 2 crows. We lost alot of the birds in the wheat field behind us but the guy and farmer came down after we had packed up with a couple of dogs and said they picked up alot of birds.

We did not seem to loose any to the bad winter we had, quite a few had alot of fat on the all winter and we are finding quite a few now that have got alot of fat on them which we dont normally have at this time of year

No we dont shoot the farm I work on. Dad is an MOT tester

Picture to come soon mate, I just have not had the time to get on here much now that harvest has started. But they will be on asap

Me and dad shot over swathed rape last saturday and in 5 hours we shot 311 pigeons and 2 crows and yesterday when we got to the farm the field we shot had been harvested and we set up at 11am and packed up at 6pm with a total bag of 431 pigeons. Not bad for 2 days shooting on the same field Total bag = 742 pigeons

Fantastic pics mate :(

Great shooting mate :(

Great shooting mate