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Having been busy for the last month attending to pheasants in the release pens I was looking forward to a day on the stubble (had 2 exceptional days on laid barley a few weeks ago but not had the time since) The Wilderness field was wheat harvested and baled on Saturday about 40 acres with a long wood on one side and a roundel of mature trees on the other. I reccied it on Sunday and put about 200 birds off. There were obvious flight lines from the wood to the roundel and back again. The obvious place for a hide was with the wind at my back in the long wood on the north west side. The problem was that wood also contains one of my release pens with 400 pheasants in it and they are foraging further and further through the wood so that side of the field was a no go area. I arrived about 10 yesterday and there were pigeons feeding all over the field with the same flight lines across the field so I decided to set up right in the middle of the field under the flight lines. I rolled 3 round bales together and put a net covered in straw for a roof. It was blowing a gale from the northwest (my left) so I set out 10 flocked shell, 2 full bodied flocked and a couple of bouncers in a comma shape in front of me. The wind was whistling through the gaps in the bales and when I stood up to shoot the birds flared away in alarm (bloody round bales are not high enough). So after 10 minutes, one failed shot and several frustrating swings I decided to move because I was just not comfortable. I upped sticks and headed for the shelter of the roundel where I set my decoys out and stood behind the stone wall under a sycamore tree. The shade ,the wall and the tree trunk absolved me from building a hide. I put the decoys well out from the roundel because I wanted the birds to see them as they flew high over the trees behind me and I expected them to drop in between me and the decoys. The first dozen or so birds ignored my setup and flew over the top about 35 yards up and once I realised that they were not going to drop in I wasted 7 shots at high overhead going away birds to no avail. Then bingo one turned and dropped in and it folded to my first barrel. This pattern continued and I found that the birds which were dropping in were too far out. Instead of dropping between me and the decoys they were dropping beside the decoys so I decided to move the decoys closer. I paced out the distance of my original set up and it was a good 50 paces so I had done well to kill 3 birds for about 15 shots. I moved the decoys in closer to about 30yds and as I feared the high birds did not see them until it was too late so I spent the rest of the day killing the odd bird that dropped in and wasting lead on high overhead going away shots. I just could not hit them. How would George Digweed hit them? The moral of the story of course is to set up in the right place to start with but I persevered for 6 hours and ended with 24 killed (not including the one that got up and flew away) with a ratio of 3:1 Picture to follow