It should have been me!

[JDog]

I posted three weeks ago that I had seen a large flock of pigeons just outside my village on land where I did not have permission to shoot. The pigeon shooting is reserved for the beaters and pickers up on the pheasant shoot, though some days are sold to paying guns. The birds were feeding on a failed wheat crop undersown with clover.

 

I spoke to the keeper today and he told me that last week a single gun had shot 525 pigeons one day, and 200 the following day. When I passed the field this afternoon there were still huge numbers of birds on it.

 

These are big numbers in an area not known for large flocks and bags unlike the Forest of Arden and parts of East Anglia. It also goes to show how adaptable pigeons are in finding something to eat in the winter when their normal diet of acorns, beech mast and hawthorns are in short supply.

[motty]

The keeper could well have been pulling your leg.

[JBS]

Impressive, that's one pigeon dead every minute for nine hours without a break

[JDog]

The keeper could well have been pulling your leg.

 

No he wasn't I am quite sure. He had someone else out shooting today, I could hear them shooting when I walked the dogs at 7:45 and they were firing a shot every two minutes.

 

It was just a freak that so much wheat was left for them to feed on in amongst the clover.

[pigeon controller]

Wait till the hard weather comes later inthe year and the birds will move down to you and you will have your day. We get Wigan Pigeons in the winter and all they want is "Pies and Gravy"