Clodhopper

Another great read from you OB. My lad loves Marmite sandwiches, I cannot stand them. Although I am partial to HP brown sauce on a slice of buttered bread.

It is a shame that it did not work out exactly as you hoped. At least you did manage get a shot. A dozen pigeons flighted is still good sport.

The winter Barley in my part of Lincolnshire still has a tinge of green in the tram lines so will need a bit more sun before it’s ready for the combine. I expect the rape will be sprayed off any time now. Not seen any swathed rape yet either.

You need to much more gentle with those up wind birds. You cannot just swing it hard and expect to score.

Top report PC, you have not lost it.

We shot a field on Friday that I had watched on numerous occasions over past few weeks. On each occasion the line in was obvious and always in the same place. Come Friday afternoon it has moved. My head was telling me that I should set up in the place where the “known” flight line was but I just had a gut feeling that it had moved, this proved to be correct and we managed some sport. I might add that I have often done this and got it completely wrong. Part and parcel of pigeon shooting. Best of luck for next time.

It must be one hell of a task organising the drilling and harvesting schedule to ensure a constant flow into the factory. Whilst at university I spent my summers working in a frozen pea factory. I seem to remember that there was a lorry tipping peas every 7 minutes from the beginning of June through to the end of August.

That wind would have made it nigh on impossible to set up out in the field, which is a shame as I understand there were a good number using it. From where we were shooting we could see big rain showers travelling across then Wolds. Good to see you managed some sport.

We had the same conversation last night, I have seen a few landing on top of the ripening rape which will, I suspect, draw them away from the peas.

I tend to use a V shape but not for for the reason of scaring birds but that it gives me a better space to open and close my gun. In this instance there was a deep furrow at the edge of the field which I wanted to avoid and I wanted to be as tight to the hedge as possible to keep out of the gusting wind.

We were lucky really, the showers were not too bad in the evening but we could see some very dark patches passing around us and out to sea.

Far Welted would also have been apt as after taking a shot I had inadvertently knocked my seat over. Sitting down without looking resulted in me upside down in the hedge bottom, brambles round my neck and nettles in my ears! Luckily my gun was unloaded and broken. My ankles above my head and tangled in the hawthorn completed the farce. Giles came over and took my gun whilst I ever so elegantly riled around and freed myself. He did not laugh, much!! Quite right, these peas are a long way off harvesting. The grower is vining some of early sown peas. The Barley round here still has some green in the tram lines so is a little way off yet.

Having been stuffed inside a factory all week it is a different world!

Friday afternoon saw me heading to a very large field of peas that JDog and I had shot a few weeks ago. I had watched the field on Thursday evening and having seen the birds using the flight line we had shot before I made my mind up to shoot the same position as the last outing. My cousin Giles was invited to join me, he loves his pigeon shooting but has been very busy on his farm of late and has had little chance to get out. The plan was to meet at 4.30 pm. I had no dead birds for the magnet but as I called in to my brothers, on the way to shoot, we noticed a bird with a broken wing in his garden. This was duly dispatched and put in the decoy bag. The weather forecasters had got it spot on with a heavy sky and occasional showers being pushed along by a westerly breeze gusting up to 30 mph. The field itself is around 110 acres and had been drilled in two halves about 3 weeks apart. Having glassed the field on arrival, it became immediately apparent that plan A was not going to work as the line had changed and the pigeons were now entering the field across an old railway 600 yards from where I saw the line on Thursday. They were skimming in low and dropping down in the shelter of the boundary hedge. This spot was where the two different stages of growth met. Having watched this field for the last month or so I was questioning what I was seeing, was it a false line? Would the birds revert to the old line when we started shooting? In the end we decided that we had to go with what we saw and so made the 400 yard walk across the field to where we had seen the line. The set up was both of us shooting over the same pattern, with Giles just to my left. The wind was from behind and the birds should enter the field from behind and curl back round into the decoys. And this they did in spectacular fashion. Whistling over our heads, banking round on the wind and coming into the pattern, battling the wind 3 feet off the ground. The shooting was sporadic, when the showers came the birds stopped but as soon as the last drops where falling the birds came out again. Giles has 4 memorable doubles where the first bird was dropped over the decoys and the second was taken flaring high and fast on the gusting wind. We took it in turns to shoot and where both pleased with the way we shot, managing ever so slightly better than 2:1, which is not the norm, certainly for me. After 2 and 1/2 hours of great sport we packed up with 47 picked and 3 that dropped over the railway that we didn’t managed to pick. On the walk back I think the clay soil clinging to my boots was as heavy as the bag of birds on my back. Thanks for reading.

A very good report of your long awaited adventure. Thanks for posting, looking forward to the next instalment.