At last

[kaiser1977]

Hello all,

I spoke to one of the farms I have permission on a couple of days ago, to see if anything was happening as I have not shot on it since last year, I was told they had just cut the barley on a field that has a concrete flight line right through it, and that there were loads of pigeons on it. So yesterday I gave it a go.

 

When I arrived on the field true to the farmers word the field had at least 200 birds on it with more flighting in, the only problem was they had changed the lock to the gate . So I loaded up the gear on my back like a donkey and off I set across the field to the place most were landing and the only safe place to shoot from as a busy road ran along two borders of the field although protected by a thick hedge and trees with a pylon crossing a third of the way down across the field .

When I got two my desired location the wind was unfortunately blowing into my face not ideal , so I set up the decoys in a long curve inside the curve facing the hide as soon as i set up in they came but really fast and over my head,which made some really difficult shooting, and i missed a fare few so I changed the pattern so the decoys were still facing the wind but in a line to my left, this time when they came in they circled round they decoys swooping in to the pattern directly in front of me, perfect !!. I started off with just 12 flocked shell decoys with one of those terminator bouncers pointing to the pattern then when the first bird was down I put that one a flapper in the middle of the pattern followed by two landing craddles pointing in to the pattern. All the other birds that were shot were added to the pattern.

The birds came constantly in ones, twos all they way up to flocks of tweenty that was tricky, in the point of which ones to shoot at first, I can honestly say it was the best shooting I have ever had . I ended up with 166 I set up at 3 and had to stop at 7.30 because of how long it was going to take me to tidy up and get back to the truck with the gear and birds , I thought I would give my shooting buddy stuart (gottsy boy) a ring to tell him about the afternoon I had just had and lucky for me he said he would pop down to give me a hand and bring the dog , he turned up about 15mins later the birds were still coming in while I was clearing up so in my estimation if I had continued shooting I could have easily shot at another 50 odd gutted , but with me and stu and little maisey (the dog) it took su til 9.15 to get done . And I must congratulate stu on traing maisey as she is only 11 months old and did a blinding job picking up the birds from the wood behind the hide .

My record til yesterday was 61, so I am over the moon with 166. I didn't have a camera but stu took a picture on his phone and will upload in the next day or two .

We are going to the say field tomorrow so fingers crossed I'll beat that !!!!

[Cranfield]

The motto of your story is, "don't leave it a year before you visit that farm again".

[kaiser1977]

I have to agree with you there, the reason I have not shot it for so long is because I aquired permission on 3800 acres on my door step last year and just got lazy, but that has now changed !!!!!