Manymissedpigeon

Sorry everyone, I didn’t read the last few entries reference hospitalisation etc hope you/we all improve soon I’m coming up eighty so hips are f, f, not good, had a new knee five years ago and the nhs around Yorkshire must have saved more brass than elsewhere as they seem to jump on any reported shortness of breath with chest x rays, lung x rays, ultrasound here and there and then gave me a clean bill of health so I find them ( NHS) terrific.

All this talk about magnets! I suppose I’ll have to get mine out, pop down to a mates garage and get the bottom triangle welded back on!, suppose I shouldn’t have tried to hammer it into sun baked ground under laid barley patch with the back of my hatchet. Sun baked ground!!! seems years ago😩

Too many K rat, and that’s just one of many fattening sheds with inside feeder troughs. The sheds with outside feeder troughs are simply starling camo’d so well that you can’t tell the ground from the feeders or the beasts. Also, on another subject, a couple of my farmers growing rape around here this year even say the rape leaves the pigeons eat would normally fall back to the ground with frost and put ‘goodness’ back in the soil! I said “ don’t the pigeon droppings balance that loss out?” The usual reply is “ no ‘cause the pigeons go **** in the woods!” The only blessing at the moment is the rape that has gone in is well advanced with even direct drilled seed coming through evenly so those farmers who risked growing it should have a good return, although from my point of view the pigeons have again nearly deserted this area similar to last years oncoming winter.

Tetleys mild was tenpence ( all one word, not ten pence) but only for weaklings, Tetleys bitter was elevenpence but supposedly sent you blind so we all drank ‘a pint ‘o mixed’ at tenpence haypnee. Five star petrol ( for over ten to one compression engines) was two and tenpence but can’t remember the price of ‘regular’ fuel and only the trucks ( and the post office vans) used diesel Sorry, that was in 1960 as we all drove and drank in pubs at fifteen those days

Not just in the ‘old days’ k rat. I have farmers who hate to see a yellow flower on advanced OSR in November and do a deal with local sheep farmers whereby they put an electric fence round some parts of the field and still in these days, the sheep graze the leaves off the plant then turn it into manure. Through the middle of winter the frost normally drops a fair amount of leaf off the OSR that in itself feeds the soil. Up here we have a lot of grazing by Roe and ( maybe) by Fallow although I’ve not actually shot Fallow with a stomach full of rape. I have also seen fields with large areas only showing the skeleton of the leaf in January/ February which grow back ok IF the plant is allowed to sprout a new heart in March/April and recover before flowering. This time of year we spend most time in and around intensive beef farms shooting crows and scaring off protected starlings!

The cost of a motor alone is a big item these days! In the past a old discovery with a four cylinder engine and second hand off road tyres and a mate with a welder was all that was required whereas ive just found a lower door trim I knocked of my current four wheel drive while travelling down a, not that rough, grass margin a week ago which would have cost over a hundred quid! Very few dealers round here will take pigeon unless ‘steel shot’ and I can’t use steel in a fifty year old trap gun ( full and three quarters) and ok I know, I could pick up a cheapo pigeon gun! Strangely enough there does not seem to be the same reduction in numbers of clay shooters, with any shooting ground which closes usually due to local noise problems and not lack of shooters so I’m at a loss to understand why no one seems to be new to pigeon shooting apart from the dozen or so lads I’ve taken along every year who then go on to game shooting at anything from £350 to a grand a day ( obviously not ‘on the moors’ at those prices)

Laid up at the moment after an eye op. So not getting out on pigeon at the moment but had quite a decent last few weeks mainly on beans. This includes harvested beans and , as a new development for one of my farmers, drilling winter beans. Although the newly cut bean shooting only lasted around two days on each of three fields ( only one out of three of my usual bean planting farmers managed to get any in this spring) as the farmer was desperate to get his next crop in before it was too late for the soil to be warm enough to germinate the seed, he did a full plough and till of the fields which for some reason left a fair few beans and pod laden stalks on the surface. This resulted in repeated decent shooting days over the same fields ( there are some massive partridge shoots in the area and each barrage in the distance sends a few pigeon over between twenty seconds of and maybe a minuit later) Sadly yet another farmer informed me he would’nt be growing any o/s/r this year so that’s four out of seven farms who used to grow it giving it a miss ( usual reasons being flea beetle, wet weather and even pigeon!, although I hope the last reason was a joke!) said farmer announced he was trying winter beans for the first time, this was after not putting in any spring beans this year. The first field went in a couple of weeks ago by direct drilling over cross disc’ed stubbles and immediately attracted the pigeon, again the problem being the amount of nearby barley and wheat drilling going on giving the birds some where else to land and nibble without being disturbed. I’ve noted before that, although there are cannonades ringing out in the distance from numerous ‘proffesional’ four days a week game shoots when in game season, I never hear the sounds of the past, pop pop in the distance of a fellow pigeon/crow shooter ( or even three shots from those who don’t mind scrabbling around in nettle patches to collect their empties!) Now I reckon that last bit might raise a few comments if anyone bothers to read this far😂

Sorry everyone! I won’t be trying to put a video on here again😩 And yes, I know, t’were wheat not barley

Out on Friday last to try out prototype pigeon magnet. It’s actually designed to take a dead bird flapper on the end so I waited and waited over laid barely to shoot my first bird, nothing, not a pigeon in the sky. If I’d have had my specs with me I could have passed the time reading of all the good days that were being had elsewhere! Eventually packed up and drove two miles and guess what? Combine hard at work with birds nearly landing on its hopper! But had to be home so went home, did my duties then went to bed dreaming of ( tomorrow actually) when I’m out on the new cut stubbles and hoping……….. hoping IMG_2187.mov

Excellent days shooting b.b. I’ve been out today with not a sign of pigeon on the osr but a few on some smelly spuds on a recently lifted ‘tatter field’ I shot exactly 127 LESS than you did. Two! But it was so sunny I kept nodding off so might have missed seeing the odd one. Well done again👍🏻

One of my shooting pals lives in a ‘Park Home’ ie a caravan. He has no problem with a cabinet bolted horizontally to the floor ( it’s actually half length so he has to remove the barrels etc to fit his two guns in. As regards the loft fitting cabinet, Christ, anyone could rock up in a look alike roofers van with a pair of ladders, handful of tiles off and you’re in and I doubt many folk will have an alarm sensor up in the loft!

For Steve 505 info I’ve been shooting pigeon for forty years and have many acres on many different farms to shoot over. It used to cost me a bottle of whiskey a year to each farm. That dropped to a bottle of port a year and now I’ve retired its nowt! I have a couple of regular pals who I shoot with and not one of them has ever bothered to search for land of the’re own because they “ don’t feel up for asking” or “ don’t know how you just walk up to a tractor driver in a field and ask” etc etc Yes you need a bit gumption to go knock on a farmers door after being directed there by another farmer or, more usually a contractor you’ve stopped in a field ( and please at the end of the spraying/drilling line when he’s turning, not half way down the field) and you have to recognise the farmers need for YOU. If he’s drilling Oil seed Rape etc then he’s likely to have pigeon problems sooner or later. If he’s grazing sheep or intensive cattle fattening then he’s oops sorry, he or she is only going to have crow trouble. Another way is to find a quiet spot and just listen for crow bangers or gas guns in the distance. If they are on a rape field then from time to time the farmer is going to check the gas canisters etc.THATS when he’s likely to be interested in your presence ( even if he already has maybe someone shooting pigeons they may have moved to better pastures) What you must do is keep in touch once you have permission and don’t loose interest if the pigeons are absent. Keep popping in to see the farmer as he will most likely be happy you shooting at harvest time. Maybe some folk drop lucky and find a farmer who’s got some laid barley ( happened to me only once and that was word of mouth from the adjacent farm I shoot rape over) but generally you have to put a winter of sitting in a bloody cold hide staring at a barren of pigeon sky over o/s/r at least once a week to get to the situation where you can rock up at said farm without any phone contact with the farmer ( but keep texting them from time to time with amount of birds you’ve shot/ kept off his crop) At the moment I am managing maybe a dozen pigeon a trip over o/s/r but waiting for beans to go in at three local farms ( again one of which I obtained permission on via a farm worker from another farm telling his new boss about ‘ this bloke who turns up every week whatever the weather and shoots pigeons/crows’ in our neck of the woods there is a pigeon protection club you can join for a very modest fee per annum. Maybe you have one similar in Kent? But pigeon shooting very rarely comes to you. You have to actively look for it as any established crop protection agent who contributes to this forum will tell you

Afternoon ‘kitchrat’ My neck of the woods is not that far from Harewood house where red kites were released a few years ago, indeed, whenever you go to an outdoor function there, then you can count them by the dozen as the car parks empty and they start scavenging plus we are inundated with buzzards as well. On an occasion last year I had to leave a field with quite a few dead birds still out due to an emergency and when I returned a couple of days later there were a good dozen buzzards circling around with the remains of the pigeon showing as piles of feathers here and there. My point is, maybe you lost a few birds in the woods whilst roost shooting on an earlier occasion and the kites were either still feeding on the carcasses or had maybe tied in someone shooting with free food later?

Evening all, just a pennerth from up north. I find a magnet with foam wings on full body decoys and remote speed control nearly useless on osr ( apart from an extra bird scarer to save farmer’s gas guns) Now a magnet works wonderfully for me on laid barley/wheat in early summer and pretty good on peas once they’ve started vineing but again, no use on drillings. Dead birds on timed flappers ( preferably high speed ones) or medium speed on the flapper when the timer goes ‘pop’ even though I carry spares! For drillings I find a couple of peckers and a couple dozen shells work best with the odd occasion where a flapper ‘can sometimes’ pull birds that are intent on visiting another field. You’re really lucky ‘kitchrat’ with beans going in as my three farms that drill beans aren’t due to start till at the best, the end of this month, weather permitting as the ground here in Yorkshire is still drying out and simply clogs up the modern drill. Birds are visiting some rape fields but still have crops half full of ivy berries with very small amounts of rape leaves in them plus hardly any signs of the massive winter flocks of birds we used to see. One other thing of note is the absence of crows on intensive cattle feeders around beef farms that I shoot on! Although the farmers ( some anyway) think it’s down to me and a pal shooting them from time to time, it’s not frightened them off in previous years! Anyway, if we see every pigeon that comes near enough, if we shoot at every pigeon we see AND, if we hit every pigeon we shoot at, then some of us would nearly always have a good day! But pouring coffee, answering the phone and chatting on the radio to a mate in the next field saves the lives of hundreds of pigeons a year. And that’s only ME.

Just a idea, but, when asked by any countryside police officer when pigeon shooting in the field ,if you have ‘read the general licence’ then I think the obvious answer is “ yes I have officer” . ( even if you haven’t which seems to be the attitude of most of my pigeon decoying mates) as I doubt said officer has read the GL 42 anyway. Also if it’s the firearms department who have either been called or, as in my case more than once, just heard the call about someone in a field so thought they’d just ‘pop over for a look’, then they haven’t the faintest idea ( well up North they haven’t anyway) about the GL 42. But if you state, when asked, that you haven’t read the licence throughout then that’s the simple answer that the attending officer needs to investigate further. I also would like to hear of any pigeon shooter who is going about his ‘job’ with permission from the farmer/ landowner, having been taken to court, let alone found guilty of any offence. Incidentally, all, I mean all police officers who have been called to my location over the last thirty years ( including armed response) have all chatted in an amicable manner and at the worst have asked me to “ do us a favour and move another hundred yards down the field,” then there’s no chance of the wind taking your, say vertical shots over a footpath ( which is usually at least two hundred yards away anyway) so I find North and East Yorkshire police biased TOWARDS the shooter with little time for the moaning ‘offcumbdens’ who’ve made the complaint.