WalkedUp

A comment in Sporting Pictures once really tickled me, the birds were just heaped in a jumbled mess and some one messaged along the lines of “ah, I see you have laid the birds out in the traditional Norfolk style”. We lay our birds out in rows of 10, per species, with young birds split from old birds. No scientific reason for it, but seems that as you have the opportunity you may as well record the data accurately.

2 magpies in the garden today, my eldest spotting and me shooting. Yesterday: 44 jackdaws 7 carrion crows 2275

One of the guys I know, syndicate captain actually does give you a call to say where the pigeons are, he’s a great guy very selfless when it come to shooting.

A dairy farm in North Wales, not exactly pigeonopolis. They grow wheat and barley for fodder. And cut as they need over the summer, this has been a bad summer so they are catching up now.

About 10% shot today were young birds, however when we got to the field there were dozens and dozens of them sat in a tiny tree. Hope it would have meant easy pickings but they didn’t really come back 😢

Shot 112 today, but it was not what you would class as a “big” or “red letter” pigeon day. Long periods between birds and very few periods of sustained shooting. There were min 150 pigeons and 200 crows on the deck at arrival, setting up the pattern they were trying to get back in. All great signs but it just stopped, suspect they moved on to another cut field. If the birds had come back in as I expected it would have been 200+ day with red hot barrels.

Some storm damage flattening crop. Other fields being cut and ploughed so move pigeon on. Natural food sources being exhausted etc. A hard frost. All these will get the birds moving.

Similar to OP. I use my Weimaraners for: - grouse on Moor - walked up lowland game (pheasant, partridge, woodcock, hare) - rabbits - wood pigeons (decoyed) - squirrels - foxes - wild fowling - vermin (crows etc)

Accept and smile. In the background apply for other jobs. Keep this until you have something better that is completely secured. However you will lose your 2 year employment protection status if you switch so beware.

One of my best ever days was with a shoestring of kit as I’d been to the zoo in the morning with my children and popped in on a perm heading back. Just a net and a few plastic decoys that are now 20 years old. So I think it is more like Pontoon or Roulette, just got to get lucky by rolling that dice.

I can attest that he works a brace of Pomeranians, very hard hunting and excellent on a blood trail when tracking deer. The struggle in some of the stronger tides on the foreshore if the wind is pushing too, but that’s not their natural habitat. Get them in stubble turnip and it’s magic to behold. The dog at the back is mine, from his bitch.

Food intolerances/allergies can cause various skin and other ailments. I have always fed (well for many years) my dogs on Skinner’s Potato and Lamb.

To give this conversation some context... I would say that approximately 95% of dogs in the UK are overweight and less than 1 % underweight. 85% of working dogs are overweight. People take care looking at parents’ hip scores then throw a load of weight on a dog which will wreck its joints and health. Everyone has been conditioned to expect Labradors to be very fat. That’s fine if you just wild fowl down on bitter foreshore and they need the blubber. But no good for picking up pigeons on a sunny August day. Top athletes do not eat pizza and chips, uninformed choice is not always in a person’s or dog’s interest. You are it’s owner, you should be looking to give it a good diet. Kibble is a complete food, bones, egg shells and pony carrots as snacks. I’ve done raw when it first came back. The dogs loved it but having spoken so many vets felt that the risk was too much - I couldn’t afford irradiated frozen meat then.

The air arms moderator on my AA S410 makes it almost inaudible. By far the loudest aspect of the shooting cycle is the pellet striking the target, whether that be fur, feather or steel. In my experience and not backed by any acoustic testing: A. Loudest aspect of PCP without moderator: 1. Muzzle pop 2. Pellet strike 3. Pellet flight 4. Internal hammer valve B. Loudest aspect of PCP with basic moderator: 1. Pellet strike 2. Pellet flight 3. Interval hammer valve strike 4. Muzzle pop I am not convinced on the value for a spring or ram powered airgun. The action will always be the loudest part of the cycle. Loudest aspect of springer without moderator: 1. Action slide and rebound 2. Muzzle pop 3. Pellet strike 4. Pellet flight Loudest aspect of springer with moderator: 1. Action slide and rebound 2. Pellet strike 3. Pellet flight 4. Muzzle pop

God point above. Even without that though the clearance of a Land Rover is no way comparable to a tractor. We have one permission where the farmer will not let us drive on stubbles due to “soil compaction”. You just have to accept it. I once offered him £200 to give me 30 mins access over the stubble for me to have 20 tonnes of loose topsoil tipped onto my garden. He refused, which is fine - it’s his land. In the end I barrowed the soil with my sons ‘helping’, as it worked out I enjoyed saving the money and the physical work out. The farmer making you carry your kit may be doing you an inadvertent favour, keeping you fit and careful choosing your kit. On the two marshes near me the wild Fowlers regularly walk +1.5hrs each way with decoys, net etc to get into position.

That’s great, my boys love duck (granny cooks it a lot) but they have never tried hare or goose. I am sure they would love it as all they seem to eat is meat. We don’t buy cheap meat out of principle and support local butchers etc so it’s expensive. Probably need one or two of them to go vegan before I can afford to get a new Land Rover 🤣

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Lovely shot

North coast of Scotland is near the northern limit of their range, perhaps the average size of beast is smaller? Alternatively it is another example of our archaic and bizarre firearms regulations...

Good work

That’s brilliant; was expecting a different ending when I read the first few words. 👍

Thanks for the messages, but don’t worry about me. I’m young and will cope. Plenty of people on here dealing with much worse. Just want to make sure people take precautions in the field. Interesting that JDog has had similar and it took 5 years, if similar hopefully I’m over half way.

I have never had that sort of day on drilled fields, none of my perms shoot well at drillings - partly because I’m out of the loop too much when it’s to be sown to plan ahead (even the one that’s literally at the back of my garden), then the crops are wrong, and even the beans are direct drilled so very little waste for the birds. My big days have always on stubbles or laid wheat when warm and sunny. All the land is Cheshire and North Wales, not exactly wood pigeon central. One of my perms is at over 1000ft above sea level and produces birds! The yield must be poor for the farmer but he only uses the barley as fodder for his dairy herd. I wouldn’t say I’m lucky, I put in 5-10 bad days for each good one ... as ever you make your own luck. I don’t have enough land to be picky about where to shoot but have 13 (small) permissions that I share so try and get to the right place. It’s a 3 hour round trip to drive past all my perms, one is on my doorstep. One farmer called to say he was having crow issues in his silage clamps at 5pm. I went down at 6am the next day and shot till 9am making a decent dent into the blacks. He rewarded me with a new permission. On that perm was lots of wheat but no birds. I knocked on the door, well spoke to a man in the yard, of a neighbouring farmer as I had spotted lots of pigeons battering what I thought was his wheat. It wasn’t his land but he pointed me in the right direction. Found the other farm house 15 mins away and spoke to the farmer’s wife then found the farmer on the lane. He was really nice but it’s a shooting estate so the keeper will not allow shooting on the field I had seen was being hit bring adjacent to a release pen. Fair enough. The fields near to his farm house must had been cut that morning (combines sat idle) but he said if I was a few days earlier I could have had shooting on them because the pigeons had been causing havoc. However he didn’t want those stubbles shot to put birds onto his standing wheat unprotected, fair enough. Next year I will go and call in again a few weeks earlier. Nothing is by accident.

Fingers crossed it helps gets a young gun into the sport 🤞

Nice video, hope you enjoyed your time in the field too.