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Stubbles , Here One Day , Gone The Next.


marsh man
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During the week I was mumping about the weather , now the weather is ideal I am mumping about the speed of stubbles are turned over , tell yer , we take some pleasing , is it me, or are stubbles worked on quicker than ever than the years gone by .

 

Most of the straw is contracted now as there isn't as many dairy farms as there once was and these people are really on the ball with the straw often baled as the combine is still chucking it out and the load all and trailers carting it off the following day .

 

At one time I have known bales to on the field running into the shooting season , now if they don't want the straw it is smashed up behind the combine and I have seen the tractor pulling up one side of the field that have just been cut while the combine is still cutting on the same field .

 

Also another down side of the recent wet weather is while the combine is laid up the farm boys can take a trailer after the bales and as soon as they are off they can then prepare the field for next years crop.

 

But as stated the other day we are a hardy lot and we don't let little things like that stop us in our tracks , if plan( a ) don't work than we go on to plan ( b ) , today I found a few pigeons on a wheat field with just one width of the combine cut and the straw behind it is baled and left on the edge of the field , so tomorrow I will put the extension arms on the magnet and stick that in the standing wheat and the decoys on the stubble with one of the bales as part of my hide , all sorted , unless they decide to carry on cutting it and then we will have to bring out plan ( c ) . whatever that is I haven't worked it out yet :lol:

 

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

One of the earliest harvest finishes for many,many years here, cultivated for germination of weeds already

We had the earliest ever start on the Winter barley , now it seems like a distance memory shooting the laid bits then on the stubble .

 

Each year within a day or two the Bank holiday is around the completion date , this year , with the stop / start due to the wet weather they still finished the last field of wheat on Friday giving the farm boys a well deserved weekend off .

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It is barley stubbles which will get the priority for cultivation as the land in a normal rotation will be put into rape which is drilled at the end of August/early September.

 

There are wheat stubbles aplenty round here, just not many pigeons.

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The question of turning over the stubbles so quickly never makes any sense to me. On one of my farms it was cut baled and turned over in just over a week. The next crop to go in won't be till later in the year. Now, the farmer hates the pigeons and loves it when we keep them off his crops, but now there is no crop he can't see a need for me to shoot. Surely this time of year when big bags can be made is the time to hit them hard and reduce the numbers for the winter months. Leave us the stubbles, let the pigeon numbers build up on this keeping the birds off remaining crops and let us bag a few! Good sport for us, crops protected and the pigeon population lower for the winter months.

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The question of turning over the stubbles so quickly never makes any sense to me. On one of my farms it was cut baled and turned over in just over a week. The next crop to go in won't be till later in the year. Now, the farmer hates the pigeons and loves it when we keep them off his crops, but now there is no crop he can't see a need for me to shoot. Surely this time of year when big bags can be made is the time to hit them hard and reduce the numbers for the winter months. Leave us the stubbles, let the pigeon numbers build up on this keeping the birds off remaining crops and let us bag a few! Good sport for us, crops protected and the pigeon population lower for the winter months.

Tell yer the truth , I will be glad when most of the stubbles are cultivated , with the landscape here being as flat as a pan cake I can see wheat stubble as far as the eye can see and if you got 20 feeding on each field then you are talking about hundreds upon hundreds in a fairly small part of our county , we have got pigeons but not enough to go on every field .

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  • 3 weeks later...

What you say marsh man is normally spot on but today I was on a bit of barley stubble that hadn't been sprayed off. Plenty of chickweed. It took me eight hours to shoot 73. Just up the road from you and ditchy.

You done very well Whitebridges , wont of thought there are more than a handful of barley fields left that hadn't been cultivated , one of the best bags been posted recently , very envious , I was out this morning on what would have been an excellent day for pigeon shooting , was going to go on some wheat stubble but the tractor driver with a plough on the back beat me to it . :no:

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You done very well Whitebridges , wont of thought there are more than a handful of barley fields left that hadn't been cultivated , one of the best bags been posted recently , very envious , I was out this morning on what would have been an excellent day for pigeon shooting , was going to go on some wheat stubble but the tractor driver with a plough on the back beat me to it . :no:

 

Cheers marsh man. Conditions were near perfect and there were a lot of birds moving about the most i've seen in a while.

They are so quick turning the land in these days. Where is live we had the plough in the field the day after it was cut. :rolleyes:

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it can be like that on the beet...................my mate lifted the sat afternoon /night....ploughing sunday morning....,and the drill was behind the plough......phew !!

That is exactly what happened down the marsh last year , the cultivators went on as soon as the beet harvester came off and chopped up any remaining beet , the drill followed suit and within 48hrs the beet had been lifted , the land chopped up and the next years crop was in the ground .

 

One of the downsides for the farmer was the Pinks found it to there liking in about the same amount of time as it did to take it off and put the new crop back in , the geese started to create a major problem and as I done the pigeon shooting down there the farm manager gave me a couple of boxes of cartridges to fire a shot over there heads when I went down there , I could keep them off without wasting cartridges by just walking down there with the dog and the cartridges were kept for pigeons at a later date in the year. :yes:

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