Flightlines

[Highlander]

Time for a new and hopefully good debate...lets have your views on the importance of flightlines, are they still relevant in todays shooting, do you shoot without finding one, do you even use them?

[cloudwalker]

I have found it to be dependant on the day. Sometimes, when they are coming in to a magnet/flapper you can pull them in from miles away

On other occasions I have been off the flightline slightly and had to move 50 yards before they would take a look and I could get a shot

As always with pigeon shooting, there is no certainty, its down to them.

[the hitman]

Flightlines are still of huge importance when pigeon shooting. When i go for a recce , i am looking for pigeon traffic , you follow the line to establish where they are feeding , and set up you hide to suit. Perhaps they are not feeding in one of your fields , but passing over your patch to get there, so you get under the line and flight them. A rotary will pull them off a flightline , but you have to be in the right location to start with.

I have been shooting on a couple of places for over 20yrs and the flight lines still exist when the crop rotation is in my favour.

[Catamong]

I always see absolutely mouthwatering flightlines when I'm doing something other than shooting, I was playing golf at Letchworth back in October, all afternoon pigeons were constantly streaming over the golf course, heading for god knows where, a couple of weeks ago I was at Barrow Heath near Newmarket shooting clays and there was a constant stream of woodies heading down the A14 to another good feeding spot, in both cases there was, of course, nobody shooting them.

 

It ain't like that where I live, I remember seeing one of my farmer friends drilling some peas on a Saturday afternoon in late March a couple of years ago. He just managed to get them rolled in by the time it got dark.

 

I drove past that field at 8am the next morning on my way clay shooting, I noticed no fewer than 3 net hides and decoy patterns out on the field, can you believe it.., what plonkers....!!!!

 

Cat.

[30-6]

Flight lines I seem to find are usually in the same place year in year out for some reason, so you tend to get to know where they are.

 

I don't rely on flight lines, and usually have a good idea of where I'll set up before I leave, you usually have a gut feeling where to go. I have good days and bad days just like everybody and am not a "numbers" person, so a bad day is not a disaster but a learning curve.

 

One thing I am going to try more of this year is to set up in the middle of fields, I have had good days like this, although it can be hard work because you need extra poles, nets etc.

[njc110381]

I've not done any decoying yet as my farmer has no suitable crop for them at the moment. I have watched the pigeons a lot though, and have found a couple of reasonable flight lines. If I do decoy over his clover or barley (don't even know if this is a good crop really!) I'll certainly be setting up somewhere near one of these lines. In my inexperienced opinion, if the birds are passing anyway the sport has to be better than trying to pull them away from their original plan!

[pavman]

I would like to be on one next time we go out Highlander

[RLMT]

Hide in the centre

Last summer I had keeped my eye on a field. the straw had been bailed and all carted of to the barn exept for one heep. I gave the farmer a hand humping the straw into the barn. The last heep was left out for some one to take away from the field. It sat there for 10 days. I asked the farm if I could set up in the field and use the straw as a hide in the centre right under the flight line.

I got set up and thing started strait away, after one hour I had ninteen woodies on the floor . It was working for once.

Then bang rattle bang across the stuble came a pick up with a trailer coming to collect the straw I was sat in. ******* It! I thought that was that. As I helped to put the straw on the trailer pigeion where still dropping in to my set up. I got my hide gear out of the van and set it up in the same place ( in the centre of the field) I had to use a cammo fishing umbrella at my back net , it still worked great and was a good wind brake too. I would like to know if other use a centre located hide?