More standing wheat

[caeser]

I was out last week with a friend of mine on my permissions, and we found a load of pigeon feeding on two healthy large fields of standing wheat. No flattened areas at all.

I will not go into the crop,(as the farmer is not to keen on it) if it is healthy, so I only managed to get 4 decoys in some tramlines, 2 of the decoys were on tall sticks so that they stood out above the crop, about 30yards from a line of trees.

There was a bit of a flight line across the wheat field, although it was about 200 yards wide.

We set up two hides about 100 yards apart, and shot pigeon steadily all day. We ended up with 177 confirmed kills between us, but there was quite a few more that limped away only to land in a distant small copse, so I'm sure we got well over 200.

So all in all a brilliant day, especially as we weren't really expecting a decent bag, with the crop being the way it was.

It wasn't like decoying as we know it, the 4 decoys were just to try and get them in some sort of range, so consequently ,I'd say 75% of the birds were at range and flying with a bit of speed. It was a satisfying day with lots of challenging difficult shots. There was only probably 6 or 7 birds that actually came in to the decoys.

The farmers happy, thats the main thing.

[djrwood]

Nice bag. How did you go about picking them all up? The land i have permission on is standing wheat and there is plenty of pigeon all over it. I just dont like shooting it because i struggle to find the birds. Even if i go out almost straight after taking the shot.

 

Cheers

 

Dan

[caeser]

You can only do the best you can, without destroying the crop. After all, I'm only there because the farmer wants me to protect his crop. We were fortunate in that , with a lot of birds being incoming high birds, they were dropping in the wood behind us, that we were set up on the edge of.

Edited July 16, 2010 by caeser

[UKPoacher]

Use a dog to pick up. My spaniel goes through this new short stemmed wheat without leaving a trace or bent stem

 

I do try to drop them on the flattened area if possible though.

[woody swacker]

You can only do the best you can, without destroying the crop. After all, I'm only there because the farmer wants me to protect his crop. We were fortunate in that , with a lot of birds being incoming high birds, they were dropping in the wood behind us, that we were set up on the edge of.

must be real headache having to shoot those woodies just to protect the farmers crop,i,de hate to have to shoot them too!!

[caeser]

must be real headache having to shoot those woodies just to protect the farmers crop,i,de hate to have to shoot them too!!

Now I never said that I hated shooting them. LOL.

What I mean is, if the farmer didn't want his crop protecting, I wouldn't get the opportunity to do what I enjoy doing. So I have to respect that ,and respect his crop, if I want to continue shooting there.

[caeser]

Use a dog to pick up. My spaniel goes through this new short stemmed wheat without leaving a trace or bent stem

 

I do try to drop them on the flattened area if possible though.

I don't have a dog , but my friend does. He has a black labrador. He doesn't like putting his dog into the crops, because , a couple of years ago, we were shooting over some flattened barley, and at the end of the day, the dogs nose was cut quite a bit from the crop. Not deep cuts but it did look sore.

Maybe wheat isn't as bad, I don't know.