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Showing results for tags 'More pigeons'.
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Last Saturday I had my best bag of the year (66) on drillings. The pigeons have moved off of the drillings on that particular farm. On Thursday I had a good look around, covering several miles in the quest to find good bird numbers. I found a huge flock of pigeons gathered on what looked like a recently drilled field and the neighbouring rape. The trouble was I didn't have permission to shoot either field. I made a few enquiries and a few phone calls and was delighted to gain permission to shoot on the drilled field, which turned out to be beans. This is the third farm this year that I have gained permission to shoot - i'm on a bit of a roll in that department. I couldn't find out who owned the rape. That's a shame, but i'll work on it. I turned up to shoot this morning at a little after 8am. I took time to watch the first few birds whilst I waited for my Dad to arrive. The birds dropped on the rape. My intention was to set up between the beans and rape and hope that they were still interested in the beans. My hide was built in the ditch and was easily visible. I set up a pattern of decoys with 10 fuds and 5 dead birds. I added a magnet and 2 flappers. The pigeons seemed dead set on the rape and I realised fairly early on that it may be a frustrating day. For every pigeon that came to the decoys, another 50 bypassed to the rape. It was impossible to get near the main flight line and regularly a flock almost a thousand strong was put up from the rape, to go and land in surrounding woods. It wasn't all doom and gloom though, at times the pigeons decoyed really well, and came back to the beans with full crops of rape. The highlight of the day (over some nice high birds) was the double each that we had out of a bunch. I just couldn't believe how many birds were feeding on the rape. It was just a swarm. In the afternoon, about half past three, I decided to pack up, as we'd had a long lull. I started to take the hide down and one decoyed. Then another, and another. We shot another 15 in the next few minutes before finally calling it a day. Another nice bag, we shot 80. .