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A 1st attempt at the pigeons & crows on fresh drillings yesterday (Saturday 16th April). Done a bit of spotting the few days prior to see a good number of birds building up on the fields, the area was pretty barron since November. Managed to get away at 11am, hit the field and watched for 30mmins to see if there were any definite flight lines. I eventually settled on a spot near the right side of the field with a large grazing field rising behind me. The birds seemed to be moving overhead towards a wooded area and other crop fields in the distance and into the wind. Setup the pattern of shell decoys and a simple flocked pigeon spinner/whirly at the head of the pattern. I also added half a dozen crow decoys to the front and right of the pigeons to match what I had noticed previously in the binoculars. Nice sunny broken cloud day with a fair breeze and warm. Nice to be out and and about. Setup and ready to go around 12:15 - ready to go in anger with my fairly new Kofs Sceptre SXE sporter O/U and 100 Eley olympic blues & Gamebore clear pigeon, bot of a mixed bag. Have to say I preferred the olympic blue 28g Eleys in the end! Clean kills with 7.5 shot at 28g even on the crows to 40 yards. The Gamebore also left the bores filled with residue and unburnt powder. A complete novice (not that I'm any expert, this will be my first full season) friend joined me, his Eley pigeon selects and 30 year old Lu Mar Scirocco 28" Game O/U were doing the job when he connected and were clean firing also. I got 2 crow and a pigeon on the floor before he arrived. after that it was a tad quiet for spells, then it would turn hectic for 5 minute stints. The Decoys were working fairly well, every bird down replaced a false decoy to try make the pattern more natural. We had crow and pigeon land in the patterns so definitely something was right, some work needed from our end for hte corws, they can spot the slightest movements a mile away! After a few hectic rallies we had approx 15 down, not ashamed to admit that there were some misses on difficult birds as well as the odd sitting duck that we should not have missed! After a few hours we had a total of 27 on the deck, 10 crows and 17 woodies. 3 not pictured below they were at the hide when clearing up. Hopefully get a few more days soon on them and keep the farmer happy!