To be or not to be

[The Essex Hunter]

On Saturday afternoon coming back from a site job, I passed by a rape field which has be hit quite hard since it was drilled, there were 400+ birds dropping in and out of the trees in to the low patches.

I called in to see Olly, and arranged to pick him up at 9am on Sunday. On one of these fields, two huge patches have been re-drilled do to a problem in the original drilling process. There were a number of birds on the bare patches on the Saturday so I spoke to a mate who was coming over late Sunday morning and arranged for him to be on the other side of the field.

On Sunday morning, a few birds were drifting around, and quite a few coming out of the trees in to the rape.

I know these re drilled patches will soon receive a lot of attention and decoys stick out like a sore thumb on bare ground so I thought we would set up a box hide and see how it went. Well (went) was part of the plan as all the birds did just that!

Two hours later and with nothing in the sky we packed up, Chris arrived and we drove to a farm with sprouting and fresh drilled barley. There were a few birds in the trees and a good few in a very safe zone, which is the edge of the local graveyard that backs on to one part of the farm.

We stayed for 30mins scouting for feeding birds and then on to a third farm with the same result as the second, so back to the first and the core part of my post.

 

There is one strong flight line on these fields so I sent Chris to go and set up under it, while Olly and I hauled the kit from the other side to set up in a ditch around five hundreds yards from him.

I have shot from this position a few times with numbers in the 30/40 bird range.

The point I am making is, that it does make so much difference if you are on a flight line or not, we could see the birds following the line over and around his position and Chris ended up with 24 in around 2 ½ hours and we shot 7 out of the 9 that drifted in to our pattern.

Yes, it was a long day with not much to show. However, it is far to easy to pack up and go home, what I got out of it was showing a lad of 17 what has to be done some times if you want to shoot pigeons and learning a bit more each time I go.

 

TEH

[The Duncan]

Live and learn! An empty sky is quite a good teacher as it forces us to re-examine what we're doing and employ more observation.

This sport of ours isn't always easy to master, but then nothing worthwhile ever is