[Clay shooting grounds in Yorkshire.]

Swinton estates shooting ground is owned by Churchill’s who are based at High Wycombe and run big events such as The Worlds Sporting Clay shoot.

They shoot competition alternate  Thursdays and are very cheap ( during competition days that is) for a registered ground with excellent all round targets shot mainly up a wooded valley with a typical ‘bubbling brook’ running down it. Food is available at least on competition days and a small shop.

Quite difficult to find as down a very narrow lane from Fearby Crossroads which is just outside Masham but well worth the visit ( please ask for Mass ham when asking directions, not Mash ‘am as some bright spark will send you the wrong way!

[Kofs]

I bought a ‘used but nearly new’ Kofs 28 bore last year and found the trigger pulls awfully heavy as did a colleague who actually could not pull the trigger till the clay ( we were trying it out on a clay ground) was out of sight!.

I pulled it apart and I’ve never seen such a simple release sear, seemingly made from a circular piece of semi hard steel with a hole drilled in the middle and two holes half drilled through the rim, one of which had the intercepter sear and the otherhalf hole ( I’ve forgotten what was in that ‘cause it was over a year ago and I is really old) So, got out the minuiture round files, half an hour on the sears then dry fired it and seemed ok. Took it pigeon shooting to check on double discharge over a good seventy five first barrel shots and still all o.k. Now I’ve no intention of ever selling this gun so no one will have a ‘dodgy gun’

The main reason for this report is, I have just bought a brand new ‘Carma’ .410 over and under for £230 from York guns who are selling off loads of stock. This gun performs without any faults whatsoever although it is fixed choke ( and patterns very open for a .410) and non ejector and I am now waiting for some clever bloke to build/make/sell a moderator to fit over two barrels ( I had a mossberg pump in .410 for a while but it was hard work with 3 inch subsonics so I punted it on)

[Pigeon crops]

Well what a surprise! Who’d have thought it, went back to flight pigeons today where last week there was a steady stream and,apart from the first flush of around twenty when we arrived, nothing! And to crown it all we had hardly ants ferals around the buildings on three quite large farms. Two farm managers happy though with less nuisance birds in the cattle sheds. Sorry folks up north, looks like they’ve NOT arrived yet

[Pigeon crops]

Up here in North Yorkshire the pigeons have suddenly appeared in quite large flocks where previously they’ve been trickling over, usually through the afternoon. Two of us were out this mid week and, although having a good number of shots, only brought down approximately a dozen and a half each. For some reason they were rocketing down wind over the wood then turning in with very few coming into the wood from the lee side. The wood is beaded on two sides by a large osr field ( this years crop) but no signs of pigeon damage yet. Again most of the collected birds were juveniles with, at the most, three acorns in the crop and nowt much else, whereas the adult birds had anything up to ten acorns plus an amount of osr leaves. Now we have plenty of various berries and other fruits growing wild but not a sign of,say, ivy berries. Out again tomorrow afternoon after calling at main farm buildings to knock off a few ferals, first with a .25 fac air rifle on the roofs outside then a half hour with the 12 bore till they disappear for the afternoon. These bird’s crops contain only very clean barley from the cattle feeder machinery. The numbers of pigeons around suggest that our dedication to pest control might well be needed again this year, at least in North and East Yorkshire.

[Shooting over winter rape 2020/21]

Out last week and searched all over In North and West Yorkshire but very few pigeons about with none on osr and no visible damage to the plants in various states of growth. Eventually noted the odd bird flighting over a rape field into a small wood. Set up just after one o’clock then moved a couple of hundred yards down wood side to get under the obvious flight line and was surprised to bring down 33 pigeons ( and an odd crow) everyone of which was flighting into the wood. Again mostly juvenile birds with still forming feather quills around neck and everyone had a good crop full of acorns with the odd bit of scabby old barley. 
Going back in a few days to try find why they collect acorns a distance away THEN fly into a very well established oak wood with acorns like a carpet in the fields surrounding the wood?

[Flea Beetle Prevention]

The trouble seems to be, since the ban on neo nicatoids, the only way to control the ‘flea beetle’ ( which usually flies out of nearly every hedge on August bank holiday Monday or so my farmers tell me) then the osr needs spraying with alternative products, not once, or twice but up to five sprayingings. If not the beetle eats the leaf in the late autumn/early winter, lays its eggs which transform into larvae which then travel down the inside of the ‘shoot’. This supposedly causes the osr plant to send out side shoots which don’t flower, don’t get pollinated by the spiders and other ,nice, insects and causes a massive drop in the yield per acre

Or so I’m told

[Exagerated bags]

Reference the comment about ‘exaggerated claims’. You can judge a pigeon shooting day, be it decoying, roost shooting or flight lining, in three ways, how many birds you pick, how many birds you click ( on counter) and how many empties are in your net bag.

Decoying on stubbles ( unless standing crops adjacent to field) should produce within ten percent picked to clicked, flight line shooting and roost shooting about fifty percent unless you have a good pigeon picking dog.

If you can genuinely pick half as many birds as the number of shots fired then join the majority of pigeon shooters, therefore two or three hundred birds in a day would mean around six hundred cartridges fired. Now I always have two slabs with me but I’ve NEVER fired more than one slab for around 125/130 picked (3 times last year but only once so far this year and that was on crows.

Most of the guys I know couldn’t afford to cart three or more slabs of half decent carts around with them!