JDog

I haven't put one of these up for a while so I thought I would show two very interesting specimens which I inherited in the garden when I bought this house. The previous owner was a Botanist. One is a winter flowering shrub the other is a rare tree. Any guesses?

I see that the cat is out of the bag now. Good luck with your recovery. Not being your normal self must have been a frustration.

One would have thought that 7.00am would have been early enough to get on an outbound line but that was not the case. In position by 7.30 birds were already on the return line. The single bird that I show was shot returning with a crop full of maize at 7.40. It seemed that we had missed a trick. Not quite. The line continued for almost two hours. The pigeons were never closer than 40m, the average height would be 70m. We did shoot a few for a lot of cartridges. Opportunities like this don't come around very often

I had radiation treatment for prostate cancer three years ago following a very high PSA reading. The radiation damaged my bladder, urethra and bowels. I would still recommend PSA tests annually for those reaching the age of forty years. Had I not had the treatment I would be dead or dying.

As previously stated I found pigeons on five different fields locally. Today I possibly made the wrong choice if the five though I did well enough and enjoyed myself. In position by 7:45 pigeons were flitting around soon after. They did not decoy well but skirted the pattern. Some paid the price. It went quiet for a while then a high return line started. These were too good for me. Thirty in the bag. Other rewards included a rainbow and a view over the village where I used to live.

I looked at five rape fields today and all had pigeons either feeding or sitting up having fed. There are very few Oak trees in this area, and certainly no Oak woods so acorns are not a distraction. Ivy berries will always hold pigeons interest until they go off in the early spring. I will be out on Thursday and will report back.

In position at 8 I was just loading when the first pigeon arrived. Opportunity missed. Two minutes later another one, then another and so on. It took some time for my eyes to get accustomed to the half light and I let some chances go begging. Thankfully I ran out of cartridges before 9. I say thankfully because it was all I could manage to make two journeys back to the car what with all of my kit plus forty odd pigeons.

On my usual rounds I have never been able to get to this particular field before 10am. Pigeons always beat me to it so I never know where they are coming from. At least they are always there. This morning was another early start. In position by 8.15 Pigeons came straight away from all directions but not in large numbers. After an hour it was all over with 28 Pigeons in the bag. The significance of the trees in the photo is that I can see them from my bed 1.8 miles away.

My wife occasionally lets me off domestic duties. Moving furniture and emptying boxes seems to take up a lot of my time of late. On one such occasion I saw a few pigeons going into a rape field. My old shooting companion from these parts had seen the same ones. We agreed yesterday to do the first light thing. Today on the very dankest and foggy mornings we met at 8.00. He brought another friend along. We knew where we wanted to be and were set up in two hides by 8.20. Pigeons came from the murk immediately. It was strange, at no time could we see more than 200m. Sometimes a lot less. By 9.30 it was all over apart from a straggler or two. We picked 46 pigeons and a Carrion crow.

My morning walk at first light involves a drive of 1.3 miles. Every morning I have seen pigeons exiting a smallish spinney where I walk. This spinney is on one of my old permissions. A call to the most curmudgeonly farmer in the area produced a positive response so I invited a friend to roost shoot it with me this afternoon. The wind wasn't ideal and it took a while to work out the inbound lines and we both changed position several times. Once sorted we began to fire a few shots. We packed up before the flight ended for obvious reasons and counted out exactly 50 pigeons equally shared.

The end of an era. The house has sixty boxes full and counting. Furniture is not where it should be and is serving no useful purpose. My outside office has thirty boxes plus bags of various sizes marked with code words such as ‘rotary’, ‘decoys’, ‘cradles’ etc. The gun cabinet is empty. The garden is full of tables and chairs and lots of pots containing some of my wife’s favourite plants. Sadly my much admired Wisteria, Vitis and C. montana will not be packed up. The dogs are unsettled. Yes we are moving house. We came to the Lincolnshire Wolds for the very best of reasons. Both of our Mothers were widowed and not well and we didn’t fancy the delights of the M1 and M18 every Friday and Sunday. So we left our nice house, loads of friends and in my case clients who were willing to pay my rates for half a brain and a pair of secateurs to be close to them. Within two years they had both died which was inconsiderate of them. The limbo was fine by me. The house is great, I love this countryside and I managed to find some places to shoot pigeons, I joined a game shooting syndicate, the dogs loved it so everything was rosy in JDog’s garden. This was not the case with my wife who never settled here. She has gradually worn me down over the last few years with the truism that we should be nearer our children and possible grandchildren (the thought of being a first time grandfather in my seventies is appalling). The catalyst for agreeing to move happened this summer. We were at a party in the Cotswolds and at the end of a happy, dancy, boozy evening I was approached separately by two old friends. Both were intoxicated, both gave me a smelly breath hug and both said they loved me. I believed them. Others that evening hadn’t gone quite that far but left me with the distinct and unfamiliar feeling of being appreciated. On the way back to where we were staying I told my wife that if she wanted to move back to the Cotswolds she should get the house on the market. She was taken aback, so much so that she had an immediate need for some of those Tenor Ladies panty liners, or Pi$$ing pants as I call them. The house went on the market the following week. The first people round offered the asking price even before the house tour had finished. This was either because we had undervalued the place or, and I would like to think it is this option, that they could see what great value the house was compared to the one in Kent which they were selling. Off back to the Cotswolds the following week to find somewhere to live. We looked at eight properties on the hottest day of the year and I was ready to give up when an Agent rang to say a house sale had fallen through and would we like to look that evening. This is the house we bought. The purchase completes on the 22nd November. Which brings me to last Friday evening when GingerCat and his wife, Jacko, MightyMariner and Clodhopper and I met in a country pub to say our goodbyes. Agaman was unable to join us which was a shame. These chaps have indulged an old man and come out pigeon shooting with me a lot over the past seven years and we have had some great times together. I value their friendship greatly and I will miss them unless they dare venture to the Cotswolds for a holiday. My tales of putting a rotary out in any old field on any crop at any time of year and shooting a hundred pigeons seemed to stir their interest. JDog.

I picked 2 and the Badgers had another two. I have been watching the line into the wood for the last hour from the comfort of my bedroom. So far over 200 pigeons have gone into the wood. Last night it would have been 300.

I just saw this over former RAF Binbrook. Perhaps Putin's Intel aint what it's supposed to be.

We arrived back from a day trip by 3pm. I had an hour in bed then I set off to the wood opposite my house with two naughty dogs to roost shoot. The wind was blowing 40mph. I was in place by 4.20 and had the first shot soon after. The pigeons were numerous and tricky and I had to rein in some optimistic shooting. There were still plenty to shoot at. Had I taken a companion he would have had just as many shots as I did such were the numbers. The dogs picked 20 pigeons. There will be more to find in the morning.

I greatly enjoy your posts. Twenty three in that wind was excellent.

A very enjoyable session. Some of those pigeons were speedsters.

Nice gun. I hope you sell it well.

Does filling up with £40 worth of fuel count?

Bravo PC. I see you have extended chokes. Have you always had those?

Six weeks ago I was driving quietly along a B road when I had to head towards the verge as a van was taking up more than its share of the road. I hit this pothole at 30mph or so causing the steering on my car to go out of alignment. This was fixed and I wrote to Lincolnshire County Council with pictures asking them to reimburse the cost.They have refused to pay quoting a statutory defence provided by Section 58 of the Highways Act 1980. Does anyone have experience in appealing against such decisions?

Putin is a thug who cares not a jot for the opinions in Europe or anywhere else for that matter. One thing (amongst others) to come out of this is that Ukraine will not be left to fend for itself in the event of an invasion whether they join NATO or not.

When you are sharing a hide and taking it in turns to shoot just make sure your companion can count to 2. I have shared a hide and sometimes my companions have taken several shots in succession. Their reasoning inevitably was that they thought I would miss when it was my turn.

Agreed. This forum is guilty of promulgating the myth of WJ.

An excellent post, more like ‘a book at bed time’ and a thoroughly enjoyable read.