Yorkshire pigeons. Hmm!

[army646]

Had a day out yesterday up near Ripon, N.Yorks. I must admit that it is the first day out that I have indulged in this year, as I have had a bit too much to do.

 

Due to the lack of pre reccying trips because of the time and commitments issue, I elected to shoot over land that I shot last year that is surrounded by a few woods and was holding good flocks of birds at roost on an evening.

 

My thinking was that seeing as the warm weather has started them of mating they would probaby be 'tree hoping' and chasing each other about. I therefore chose to shoot some ground between two woods that last year were holding birds at roost. The intention being to intercept them as they flew between the two.

 

Right, finally got there at about 7.15Am to be greeted by a good old fog and a realisation that the rape is well and truly up due to the unseasonably mild weather and having recently been top dressed.

 

So whilst I am having a bit of a 'shufty' about looking for where they had kept the crop down a bit, one of my shooting buddies landed which was a bonus, as we might be able to use our chosen shooting positions to keep the birds moving about if needs be.

 

Any way, we stood nattering for a good hour, catching up and waiting for the fog to start to show signs lifting and looking for birds moving. There were a few, but not that many, which I was hoping was down to the fog, but my shooting buddy informed me that he had really struggled over the winter months finding any real numbers of birds and had literaly burnt gallons of fuel doing so trailing around Yorkshire. Now I must point out that this bloke is not a 'newbie' he has been at it for years.

 

We finally decided to set up some time after 8.30Am having still not seen that many birds and in the hope that the sun would eventually burn the fog off and the birds would begin to move. We both shot areas where the rape was shorter in front of each of the woods near where the flight line would normally exist.

 

Fog lifted just before dinner, but with no appreciable increase in bird activity and I mean no where on the surrounding horizon that could be seen with the 'nocs'. Hmmm! Basically this was the situation all day, I bet if I had seen 30-40 birds move all day I would have been lucky!

 

finally threw the gear in the back of the car at some time after six. Finally tally for the pair of us one shot, one lost.

 

Anybody in North Yorkshire done any better? Anybody in North Yorkshire seen any number of pigeons? If so could you send them Ripon way and not to the city centre to sit on the lamp posts, as this is where I saw the majority of birds on Saturday.

 

So come on then, prove I am c**p, if you have shot anywhere in N.Yorks this weekend, how many have you shot and over what?

[foghorn]

Very little happening all winter around York, lots of birds but way too much to eat, first, too many acorns now too much rape !.

[Anth6568]

Ive been in a similar position

 

I went out five times between Jan-Feb in NY and there were large flocks of around 200 moving around the rape fields. You fire a shot and their gone...gone for good!! So shooting wasnt good, a couple a time if your lucky.

 

Something i didnt try was roost shooting, this was probably the answer to success!

 

As the rape has now grown now, my attention is on the corvids. Ive been out twice and bagged 60 so far, plenty around at the minute. I do get the odd wood pigeon coming in for a nosey so i bagged one on Fri as it came in to the decoy pattern.

 

Im seeing more pigeons in twos and threes now so it should be long before we start getting better results.