scotja86 Posted April 6, 2015 Report Share Posted April 6, 2015 (edited) Hello Everyone. This is my first post on the forum but have been reading and getting tips from here. I recently got permission to shoot over 300 acres of mixed Oilseed Rape, Wheat & Barley on a farm just outside Guildford in Surrey. I made my introductions on Tuesday of last week, followed up with an email and a meeting with the land owners on Thursday. I read a lot of tips on here about getting permission. I really think meeting someone face to face and then having a chat followed up with a bottle of the owners favourite tipple works wonders. They were extremely keen to get some more pigeon shooters on the land as i think the rape got hit hard over Winter. Their usual people weren't very reliable so this helped to. Anyway i got permission for myself and a buddy to go and shoot there whenever we want. We went over on Saturday and met the only other chap that the farmers had mentioned as being reliable. We got there at about 3pm and he was packing up to go home. Said he hadn't seen one flight line all day and no pigeons came over to him at all. He set up at 10am and lives a good hour away so quite rightly packed it in. He did say that the previous week he had shot a bag of 50 over some of the rape on a strong flight line. Being keen to have a good look over the land and get our bearings we decided to drive about and have a look. He was right, absolutely nothing flying about. A fair few crows and magpies had decided to have a picnic on one of the 2 grass fields there. We decided to get all the kit out and set up close to where he set up on a rape field which had a gas gun on it but he had disconnected in the morning. We did this to have a go at building the hide and setting out a decoy pattern. Managed to set the hide up in one corner of the field with a huge holly bush behind us and the wind coming from behind also. My mate went off to go a park the truck in an adjacent field and i was just sorting out my stuff in the hide, when all of a sudden he shouts 'PIGEON' - one had come from behind me and noticed the decoys and came over a for a look. Obviously suspecting something, it banked left but i had 2 shots at it and managed to knock it down over some woods. We thought we were on to a winner here and that the other guy was just unlucky with his timings - how wrong we were! It was now about 5pm and only one other pigeon came over us between then and 7pm, again it came from behind us and neither of us noticed it until the last second. My mate had a rangy shot at it but to no avail. We packed up at about 7:15pm. We thought it must just be an off day and said we would come back Monday morning to try and get some flighting out in the morning. I had exchanged numbers with the other shooter and told him what our plan was and he agreed it would be a good idea. So today (Bank Holiday Monday) armed with lots of optimism, a flask of coffee and a few pan au chocolats (posh eh?) we arranged to meet up at 9:30am. I got there first and decided to have a walk about with the binoculars. One of the farmers was there also and told me that he was about to go and spray all the rape fields today. Great, no shooting on that then! It was a gorgeous morning, bright sunshine and a light to medium breeze. I didn't see a damn thing. nothing on the rape, nothing flying over - nada! We eventually did a drive round of the farm in the truck and again noticed lots of crows and magpies on the same grass field we saw them feeding on Saturday afternoon. About 10-12 pigeons broke from a field in front of the grass field and flew over to the woods next to it. I decided that this was probably our best chance of any shooting. In order to intercept any we would have to set the hide up facing into the wind with another holly bush as a background to conceal us - it also had the added bonus of being shaded by a tree behind and to the right of it. Set up 12 shell decoys on the spring pegs and sat and waited for 15 mins. 2 Crows took interest and my mate knocked one of them down with his first shot. Next a magpie decided to take the hedge line we were on and come around behind us. I had a crack at it but it was very hard to shoot between the trees. About 30 mins later the timed gas guns on the 2 rape fields went off. I thought it might help draw any birds out from in front of us but again 2 pigeons decided to come from behind us flying into the wind and decoyed over to have a look at our pattern. I fired 2 shots and downed the leading pigeon, the second pigeon banked right and headed for the woods and my mate took a shot at it but missed. Interested to see what it had been feeding on i opened up its crop. Full of berries and leaves. I added it to the decoy pattern with a wooden bbq skewer and thought we might have a few more. Another hour went by and we didn't see a single thing apart from 3 buzzards circling above us. So we decided to pack it in at 1:30pm. So far we haven't seen anything to give us hope that there will be some flight lines and feeding pigeons over any of the farm land but considering we only started on Saturday im pretty pleased with our hide builds and decoy patterns. Im sure there is a lack of pigeons because of the time of year and them feeding on the new buds and berries. Attached a picture of the 1 pigeon we shot with it's open crop. Can anyone identify what the berry is? It looks like a blackberry but it is far to early for that surely? Going up again on Wednesday evening after work to have a gander. Will let you know if we have anymore success. Scott Edited April 6, 2015 by scotja86 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
la bala Posted April 6, 2015 Report Share Posted April 6, 2015 Ivy berries at a guess Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
linny Posted April 6, 2015 Report Share Posted April 6, 2015 good read well done on you new perm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scotja86 Posted April 6, 2015 Author Report Share Posted April 6, 2015 Ivy berries at a guess Thanks La Bala, good to know! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wilts#Dave Posted April 6, 2015 Report Share Posted April 6, 2015 Nice work gaining a permission. Don't be too disheartened though, nowhere will hold pigeons all year round and those 300 acres may have been shot too often over winter now to produce good bags now. Spend a few hours a week on reconnaissance there rather than just setting up and hoping for the best, at some point pigeons will turn up in bigger numbers hopefully so you can spot a definite flight line and get in the action. The rape can still attract the pigeons but keep an eye out later on for any flattened corn in particular, before the obvious stubble shooting. Good luck over the coming months! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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