JDog

I enjoy your posts. You obviously know what you are doing - about flight lines and patterns etc and it is good to read reports of relatively modest bags.

Or even flat flies. They are a type of parasite but less of a problem to a pigeon the either lice or a tick I would imagine.

If it is ploughed and not just disced there will be no feed value in the field as the seeds will be turned under and the birds will know this and will not be looking to land. Try a few decoys out by all means but you might just be better getting hidden along the flight line.

I will take novices out as long as their expectations are not too great. It does put added pressure on though when one is trying to give someone a good day. On another thread I have offered 'Welsh Lamb' a day on bean stubbles next month. Next month that is if the farmers ever get to harvest said beans.

An hour from South Wales may still leave you in South Wales. If you will travel to Stow on the Wold I may be able to give you a day on the bean stubble at the end of September/October.

What a gent Activeviii must be sharing his pigeon shooting as he does.

Birds in heavily shot parts of the mainland do get wary of the magnet. If you have been reading some of the posts you will have noticed that even experienced shooters have struggled this season with birds not decoying. This will be partly, but not exclusively, due to over use of magnets. Take advantage of birds which have never seen a magnet by getting them to decoy correctly and killing them. That way they tend not to return.

Try tying up the shooting so that you have exclusive use for shooting over them by either paying the farmer in cash or handing over copious quantities of booze. There is nothing worse than turning up to shoot a field which you have been watching for a while only to find someone else already on it.

I've had another theory about this. Stallions bite their mares on the neck and some species of cock birds hold onto the neck feathers of the females when they are mounting them. Could this be the reason for the bare patches? Of course the affected birds would all have to be female or my theory is blown away unless we are seeing the first instances of gay wood pigeon behaviour.

Hedgehogs often eat just the heads, so do mink and stoats.

Happy for you to have had your first day out with a generous mentor. Are you MI5 or MI6?......'the dark art of decoding'.

Yes that was the article and it was the 'Fieldsports' mag not the 'Shooting Gazette'. I would rather see none on a field when I first get to it, followed by a steady trickle allowing a decent bag than 10,000 at the start when only a small % return.

Good effort in that weather. I am no 'fair weather' shooter but having been wet a lot recently I gave yesterday a miss.

I do not dispute your figures but I cannot imagine what 20,000 pigeons looks like. It must have been impressive and I would have like to have seen it myself. Three years ago in the Shooting Gazette there was an article by a respected columnist who said that he had seen a flock of pigeons in Wiltshire which he believed contained 100,000 birds.

On a shoot in Scotland many years ago my neighbouring gun shot a decent cock pheasant and after it had landed a terrible screaming commenced. It turned out to be a seagull which must have been flying over very high and was shot with the same cartridge as the pheasant and it screamed as it cartwheeled down to earth. When I was a boy hunting hedges and ditches a group of four teal got up from a water splash twenty yards from me and I shot all of them with my single barrelled twenty bore. All were dead and all were cock birds. My favourite story I witnessed first hand. A lady acquaintance was encouraged for years by her father to take up shooting. She resisted for a long time before coming out on a driven shoot. She missed everything until a woodcock flew passed and she 'downed 'it. At the end of the day the bag was laid out and a woodcock, one of about twenty shot that day, simply woke up and flew out of the game larder. Cruelly one of the guns immediately told her that it was the one which she had shot! It would have been her only kill of the day.

A stoat would have removed the whole bird.

Not all day! Birthdays and Bank Holidays are for other things too. No I am lucky in that I am able to shoot over all of the ground around the village where I live and I could see clearly the origin of this particlar line. I walked to the first road the pigeons crossed with the dogs and sat up with binoculars for an hour or so.

I decided not to shoot yesterday afternoon but to try to understand the behaviour of pigeons on a strong flight line. The line originates in a large mixed conifer and broadleaved woodland which I can actually see from by bedroom window. The birds head out of the wood into the wind and pass over three fields of permanent pasture and then several fields which were rape this year and which have been cultivated and sprayed, so no feed value in the initial part of their journey. They then cross over a road defining the boundary of one estate and the neighbouring land. At this stage they have flown 1.5km as the crow flies. They then fly over two wheat stubbles ,only recently harvested with plenty of grain on the floor, over another road, then the full length of another wheat stubble (recently direct drilled with OSR) to a barley stubble where they want to feed. Their journey by this time has been 3km. The line was straight and strong and precise with upwards of 100 birds along it whilst I watched for an hour. No doubt when I go to shoot the barley field tomorrow the birds will be feeding elsewhere.

Your achievements are exceptional and you should be applauded for sharing them with us mere mortals. You must have some very good ground for pigeons, decent farmers for calling you when they see a problem but most of all invaluable experience. So 'back to basics 'it was and how well it worked in what many experienced shooters are calling a poor season on the stubbles. Time spent watching and noting movement is rarely wasted. How many pigeon shooters, including me, just dive straight in and set up before the key element is established ie the flight lines. Good for you is what I say. There is no jealousy from my quarter but an aspiration to do better in a hobby/sport/passtime in which I have had a great interest for many years.

I've seen it several times but I have no idea what caused it. On every occasion the bird had been shot that day and set up as a decoy.

What height is the seat when the legs are fully extended?

They will still be after the wheat seeds until they germinate.

I am not a numbers man and so far have resisted posting the tally of birds I have shot after each outing since I joined PW a couple of months ago but my game book has accurate records back to 1978 when I first started to keep it. However I do see that if someone posts their numbers shot useful information can be passed on to other PW members if the crop over which the bag was made was mentioned.

I've set up three times this week at about 2pm and although I have had some decent shooting I believe that by that time of day the birds have full crops and may not be too keen to return once disturbed. I've pushed hundreds off the fields I intended to shoot and only a small percentage came back. If there is a dry day this weekend I will attempt to set up by 11am to see if that makes a difference.

Thank you. I suppose the point I was trying to make with the observation was that incoming birds will expect to see a pattern in the tramlines and that a hide should be situated to take advantage of that.