Barley cut today

[Fat bloke]

Evening all.

I'm a newbie to this game, been to my permission and the farmer is bringing in the barley this evening.

Silly question to most, reasonable one to me. What is the optimum time before our feathered nemesis start hitting it. Only glassed a few popping down between the tractors this evening, in your opinions will going tomorrow after work be leaving it too late or is in a couple of days better, I'm not the only one with this permission although there will be enough to go around when other crops are harvested.

[ditchman]

if the combine has not been set up right and there is grain going out of the back, birds will start to drop in for it....generally the shooting gets better when there has been some rain on the stubble and bits and bobs start to germinate

[berettadevon]

Well if it were me i would be up on the field straight from workand stay there until it go all quiet!!

 

I was up on my permission the other night as farmer had started to cut his Barley, i noticed he had left the straw behind so i simple lay on field and covered myself with the straw. the shooting was intense and the gun barrels were getting quite hot after the first hour!!!

 

Get up there i say and let them have it!!!! tight lines and safe shooting

[Fat bloke]

Thanks for the replies gents.

So what was I doing wrong as I certainly didn't cover myself in glory this evening.

Got to said field, combine still working in the bottom edge. Parked up and used the time I had to wait till all was clear to watch the sky for flight lines.

Birds dropping in from various directions, noticed the strongest line was straight across the field, left to right and vice versa.

When given the green light by farmer I constructed the best hide I could musta with my limited experience.

Shell decoys out, u shaped all seemed quite ok.

Pigeons at this point decided not to bother feeding on the field with the **** in and went on their merry way.

Managed to bag 3 birds from 5 shots just hardly any birds returned to field.

Would be easier for me to understand if they were flaying away or dropping into another area of the field. They just stopped.

Help me please get better at this as I can't give up as I've spent all my wife's housekeeping on gear

Regards

Fatty

[Harnser]

Pre harvest recce of the fields is very important . You should have been looking for the fields that the birds are interested in . Are they dropping into the standing corn ,are they sitting on over head wire or sitting in the trees eying the field up ? If yes , then hit them the day after harvest .

 

Harnser

[Tim Kelly]

I'm going tomorrow. It's been cut today and yesterday. Fingers crossed. It's going to be a hot one so I hope it's worth the two hour drive.

[Cranfield]

Always have a few alternatives up your sleeve (if possible).

Often birds will feed hard on a field for a couple of hours and then move off.

Thats when you go looking for them, which will be more productive than sitting in the hide for the rest of the day hoping they come back.

 

Today I shot five different areas in a 5 mile radius and totalled 56 corvids and 23 pigeons.

At the first spot I shot 11 corvids and 2 pigeons, I think if I had stayed put, thats about all I would have got.