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First bag off the Barley.


aga man
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For the first time in what seems an age today we found some woodpigeons and managed to shoot some.

I have been watching this barley field for some time now and pigeon activity has gone from a few showing interest last thursday to literally hundreds over the past couple of days.

The field is a difficult one to watch at this time of year as it's surrounded by wheat fields, so binoculars from a couple of fields away is the only option and dosen't always show the whole picture.

I knew from watching with binoculars that pigeons were there but unsure of what numbers.

 

I decided to take advantage of a stiff north breeze today and shoot the field with my good friend and shooting buddy PW member tan.

I got my work finished by lunchtime and we arrived at the field at 2pm greeted by the the sight of at least 300 pigeons on the barley field and very reluctant to leave wanting to go straight back down to feed.

We travelled light due to the 400 yd walk up the tramlines.

 

We chose to set up pitch at a sitty tree almost central in the field. Tan put up a hide and i set up a homemade pigeon magnet with a couple of dead birds at the edge of small laid patch of crop.

Almost instantly the birds decoyed and we made some good shots. We took turns to shoot and basically enjoyed an afternoons banter. We marked and picked birds wit the dog as we shot them to minimise crop damage.

 

I know the field well and the same old flight lines that were there 20 years ago were still today bringing pigeons from the town in there droves. The amount of young birds was unreal and it seemed more like september. I now fully agree with motty and others who predict good harvest bags.

 

My advice to others is watch your barley fields closely we have had no pigeon oppertunitys for ages and suddenly from no where the woodies are here and loving the barley.

 

We knocked off at 6.30pm as the action slowed. We shot 71 and picked 66. we both fired just over two boxes of shells and picked up 107 empties which i thought was good going :good:

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Edited by aga man
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Well done , nice that you managed to pick almost all the birds too, I fear not all will give it any thought as is usually the case this time of year.

Cheers fenboy, to be fair we could have shot a lot more birds if we didn't keep going out to pick up as they were still coming in but i never could see the point of shooting pigeons and not picking them. It's something i would never do if i could help it waste of good meat and cartridges :good:

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Great result.

It looks like you've got some flattened barley there. I've been scouring all the fields I can, looking for flattened patches, but all the crop for me seems to be standing firmly upright. So no opportunities for me yet. I will be watching closely though.

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Great result.

It looks like you've got some flattened barley there. I've been scouring all the fields I can, looking for flattened patches, but all the crop for me seems to be standing firmly upright. So no opportunities for me yet. I will be watching closely though.

Thanks caeser, the Barley here is grown by a dairy farmer and it is the longer stemmed variety [for straw] which tends to down fairly easy with heavy rain.

I have seen some pigeons tonight dropping into standing crop on another field!

Edited by aga man
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