cloudwalker

My Springer lives in her kennel during the day when we are at work. She also sleeps in it at night when we go to bed. Apart from that, we have her in the house. I have a small heater in the kennel which I switch on during the colder months. It is only an anti- frost heater, the sort used in green houses.

I would wait until the summer and get a couple of young un's. The season is finished now. Start with 2 young jills and handle them alot. You will have them working for the autumn. Try your local game dealer or gun shops if you don't know anyone with with any. People often put adverts up at my game dealers for them.

Excellent

I have found it to be dependant on the day. Sometimes, when they are coming in to a magnet/flapper you can pull them in from miles away On other occasions I have been off the flightline slightly and had to move 50 yards before they would take a look and I could get a shot As always with pigeon shooting, there is no certainty, its down to them.

We have had so much snow here today, i dont think there will be any rape showing through Weekend should be better

Yes Peltman they were quite new bats. I was amazed and pleased that they lasted as long as they did. Can't tell you what make they are, just get them from my game dealer when I take the rabbits in.Sorry

We were out this weekend and had 2 very different days. On Saturday the rabbits bolted well and we only had to dig for 2 of them. We didn't hit any nests either. Finished the day with 31. On Sunday we went to a different farm.The rabbits wouldn't bolt and we hit nests. One with 1/4 grown rabbits in it. Ended the day with 18 and had to dig for half of them Strange the difference between the 2 locations. They are only about 8 miles apart as well!

I've replaced all mine this year and got the lot off ebay. You can get drilled hardwood pegs as well. I've not found them cheaper anywhere else.

I would agree with everyone else, 3/4 and full is a bit tight for pigeon. !/4 and 1/2 or 1/4 and 3/4 would be better.

I would stick with the original collar. We always check the collars are tight enough by gently trying to pull them back over the ferrets head. We only use small gills and haven't found a problem with doing this. You could try making another hole in the collar if you are finding that it is too tight. A hot needle should do the job as they are only made of nylon.

We are quite lucky in that both fields we are shooting on are right next to a golf course and the golf course is right next to a massive housing development. Most of the other farm land nearby is grazing land. As a result there is not a lot of rape nearby. We also get a lot of pigeon coming out from the town and housing estate as well as from woodland a couple of miles away. We shot the same fields at the end of summer when it was wheat stubble, but only shot it a few times as most of the flocks at that time were squabs. We decided to leave it, as a I don't enjoy shooting squabs,also the game dealer wouldn't give us anything for them. We knew that the fields were drilled with rape so decided to leave it till the winter. Glad we did now By the way, on the subject of squabs, i couldn't believe when i picked up one of the birds. It could only have been off the nest a week or two, in January!!

Highlander is right, I never used my magnet yesterday. My set up worked on the day but I have used the same in the past and had the same problems as you. You just need to try different things and accept that sometimes nothing will work

That is exactly what we think happened. On the day we lost her we could track her moving underneath the road towards us as we called her but she seemed to stop at one point then run back to the middle of the road again. We think where she kept stopping is where she killed and she had blocked her way out.

Thanks guys. I was very pleased especially since I hadn't had time to do a reccy, I just turned up on speck. I had noticed that in other parts of Northants the pigeon had started to move on to the rape in the past 7-10 days. It seems they must have eaten all the ivy berries at last. Keep on looking everyone.

Was out ferreting last sunday, doing some burrows along the road side when the ferret didn't come out after about 15 mins. Tracked her down and she was under the road. Came back at the end of the day and she was in the same spot, right in the middle of the road. Everday last week my mate went and looked for her. No sign, not a bleep on the locator. We decided to have one last look on Saturday. I walked up the road side with the locator and all of a sudden I it stared stared bleeping. Dug down 18 inch and a liitle pink nose appeared. We'd found her! 6 days she had been down there, what lengh of time have you picked up your ferret after loosing it?

Had 40 today on Rape. That makes the 300 so far

Went out today to a couple of fields of rape i can shoot over. Hadn't checked it out since Boxing day. Arrived at 8.00am and there must have been 1000 pigeon on it. They all cleared of as i lugged all the kit across the field. Started to set up and bunches of Pigeon were flying over. Put out 1 flapper,1 floater and a dozen shells on rockers. Just getting the gun out of the slip when the first bunch came in. This was the start of a manic couple of hours,couldn't load quick enough! It went very quiet at about lunch time but stuck it out til 3.00pm Finished up with 40 woodies and 2 crows for 79 shots, a very enjoyable day!

Our game dealer is offering 30p a bird at the moment but, typically we can't find any :look:

Pigeon all on Ivy berries down here. Sat watching one tree in my neighbours garden at least 20 flew out of it! Driving round all you see is pigeon flying out of trees covered in the stuff. Did see about 50 woodies on some rape so going to have alittle go on Tuesday.

Nothing down in Northants yet. The rape fields are deserted. The only pigeon I have seen are small numbers feeding on ivy berries.

my AL391 came with 5 chokes but they were all the same size. All fit perfectly. I would be very dubious about using the other chokes!!