Search the Community

At last I have managed to find time to sit down and report on my exploits over the weekend. I had three very interesting and different days. On Saturday I went to inspect some rape fields. The first field looked quite promising. I battled through traffic to look at another rape field, but decided against it, although there was a few birds around. I got back to the field I had looked at earlier, and in the 40 minutes or so since I left, around 300 pigeons had come in to feed. I hastily got set up. My desert nets were put around some poles out in the open. I put the magnet to my left and put some flocked shells on top of the stalks. The shooting was instant and I had about 15 down in as many minutes. Then it went a bit quiet. It is never certain what will happen when the shooting commences. I carried on, but the pigeons, in general, did not commit nearly well enough. I had the silenced .410 with me. It pleased me to shoot a few birds with it, not least the one I got with a 2" 9 gram shell. I tried to get the pigeons to co-operate better, but I think they got the better of me. I finished with 43 pigeons. On Sunday I had company. My mate Sam had driven up from Essex to share a hide with me. We went to a rape stubble just down the road from me. I wasn't convinced this was the place to go, so we quickly decided to go back to the field I looked at second yesterday. When we arrived I had a sinking feeling. We had just driven another 20 miles to get to this field and it looked devoid of birds. I trusted in what I had seen yesterday and gave it go. I do hate inviting people for a shoot and have things turn out badly. We built a hide in a lovely dry ditch that separated the rape field. The same set up to yesterday was used to start, but we soon had enough birds to put the other magnet out. It was soon obvious that the pigeons were mainly not interested in our field, but one somewhere behind us. I added a flapper, a floater and plenty of dead birds on cradles to try and make the set up look as busy as possible. This seemed to work a little, but pigeons who are set on a destination are difficult to turn off their course. The action was steady, nothing amazing. The .410 took some nice pigeons again. We packed up with 76 pigeons in the bag. I had intended to take Fenboy for a day out, but the only place I had in mind was the field I had dismissed yesterday. Sam had stayed and after a trip to the gamedealer, we met Fenboy just before 11.30am. I had a plan to put Fenboy on one small field and Sam and I would share a hide on the other, close by. Both fields had decent flight lines going in, but they were both difficult to shoot, with houses and roads as obstacles on some sides. Sam and I started off with two magnets and the decoy pattern out to the left of us, as we couldn't shoot right handed. We got amongst the birds straight away, but I was concerned that Fenboy wasn't having many shots. Birds were going to him, but he was finding it difficult to shoot them because of the road. I kept asking if he wanted to join us. Eventually, he did. Sam and I had shot 67 by the time we were joined. FBhad notched 16. I just hoped the pigeons would keep coming. FB went and stood in the ditch to shoot anything that strayed a bit left of us. He didn't get much shooting so he swapped with Sam. I was happy now that we were all getting some shooting. Sam shot some nice birds flighting over. FB and myself were shooting a little erratically and nowhere near as good as we can be. I was glad that the score was heading into the 90s, but thought the ton was out of reach. The pigeons had other ideas and kept coming. We soon 100 up and it still wasn't over. This totally exceeded my expectations and was a nice surprise. We carried on for another hour or so, until the pigeon traffic dried up at 7pm. We ended with 137 pigeons from this field, plus the other 16 that FB had shot. At last, my first ton this harvest.