JDog

'A couple of days of sun' may be enough to ripen the earliest barley but in my area (the Cotswolds) it will take a more prolonged dry spell to dry up the ground sufficiently for harvesters to get on. I shot over laid barley yesterday and there was 2" of water in the tram lines.

And how did you do?

When I travel light the one piece of equipment I need is always one of the pieces I have left in the car. Natural hides at this time of year save carting netting, and if the shooting is over laid corn or in tram lines then only the rotary and maybe a floater are needed. Roll on harvest so that we can all drive to the chosen spot.

I have one of the slim line rotaries and having used it possibly 400 times trouble free over ten years I have just had it serviced for the first time. Not being the practical type I am unable to do such a thing. My shooting colleague has one of the cheaper heavier models, he never looks after it and has never had it serviced and it still works a treat after an equal number of days use.

The CLA website has crashed but before it did they did announce that the Belvoir Castle event has been cancelled.

Tuesday of this week I finished work early and was set up by 3:40 on laid barley. Shot 33 in an hour and a half and then the heavens opened and I got soaked and packed up. Wednesday, having incurred some wroth domestically for drying my kit out overnight around the AGA, set up on a different farm, again on laid barly and shot 23 in two hours before the thunder and lightening commenced. I did manage to get all of the kit and the dogs in the car before torrential rain started. Undeterred I will be out again next weekend possibly shooting standing wheat which now seems to be the food of choice.

I have the same conundrum. The pigeons really want the standing wheat and are landing on the edges of the tramlines. The standing crop is immaculate with hardly a plant out of place. If I enter the crop I will do considerable damage, perhaps more than the pigeons will do. This is really a case of defining the boundaries with the farmer.

I find with my memory foam mattress that two sets of knee holes, one in the middle of the bed and the other set near the bottom works well for me.

Put the first two you shoot, whether they are crows, rooks or jackdaws on the rotary. This usually increases the confidence of the birds to come in. I have found that the normally very wary carrion crows are just too curious not to get a closer look and come in range to be shot.

Thank you for your reply. I watched for an hour this evening and there did seem to be birds going in to feed. If you have shot pigeons on oats there seems to be no reason why others cannot. I will let you know how I get on in due course.

I have no laid barley or wheat to shoot over but this evening I found three fields of oats which had gone down. Do members have any experience on shooting over laid oats?

My last two outings on peas and clover produced 102 birds with no young ones amongst them.

With the amount of sport you seem to have I am surprized that your shooting buddies are not knocking on your door raring to go rather than staying in bed.

That's the best I have heard of for a long while. Good for you. Despite the torrential downpours there are no laid patches of cereals on any of my land which cuts out a lot of potential shooting.

Good luck. I have watched some of my pea fields possibly fifteen days in the last month and there has been very little activity on them. Last year at this time on the same estate I had already shot good numbers. I believe that the pea growth is backward this year due to the cold weather. May be the pigeons will start on the soon?

Do you think that there is any chance that your evening session might have put the birds off the pea field for a while? Pigeons have been very funny about peas this year. I put 200 off a pea field before setting up at a time of day when they had been coming in to feed and only a small percentage came back.

Funnily enough I shot pigeons last Saturday in jeans and a pink shirt and wellingtons (not Gucci loafers) and it did not seem to worry them and they came strongly into the decoys and 52 paid the penalty.

Do members consider that it is absolutely necessary to wear camouflaged clothing when out pigeon shooting? When shooting from a hide surely the net and a decent cap will hide the shooter from the pigeons. I accept that will not be the case when roost shooting or shooting on a flight line.

On the Oxon/Glos borders pigeons are conforming to their usual habits of smaller groups (30 to 40) feeding in different fields in the summer months, never combining together to give one large flock. I suspect that numbers are roughly the same as in recent years. The first cut of rape will show the true numbers.

Both. Saw 200 on peas yesterday and had a good bag on clover yesterday afternoon.

Last year by 15th June the pigeons were feeding well on peas. This year due to the wet and cold weather the pea growth has been delayed and only now (30th) have I seen any reasonable numbers feeding on the new shoots. Never in recent years have I seen so many feeding on clover, either in clover leys or in old pasture.