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A day of two halves...


Lloyd90
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After starting the bank holiday weekend off with a successful night fox lamping with Owwee, where he kindly invited me out to see his thermal and night vision in action, I then got up early Saturday morning (a bit tired from the night before) and set off to meet shootingegg as we had plans to shoot some newly cut stubbles. 

After getting to his home and loading up, we arrived in the fields about 9am, where there were loads of corvids and quite a few pigeons lifting. We picked our spot and set up a decent hide, with me using the hand saw to cut loads of branches to cover the top of the hide and give us extra camo. We set two loads of decoys up, crows on our right and pigeons on our left and got in the hide ready to go. 

For the day I had brought 2x 12 bores, my O/U and my recently acquired SxS, only a cheap master 12 Bore but it was off my recently deceased mate so was nice to get out and use it. As I brought 2 Guns Shooting egg (who was bringing his 20 Bore o/u) also brought along his 410 for a bit of fun. 

From 9:30am - 12:00pm we had only 1 pigeon come in, which Shooting egg dropped with a fantastic headshot from his 20 Bore. Luckily for us, the jackdaws and crows came in non-stop, decoying lovely. 

I have read on here from many people saying they often use 28g 7 1/2 on pigeons so I took along a box of white gold clay carts in 28g 8s (UK 7 1/2) as I wanted to give them a try. I have to say on jackdaws they were absolutely deadly! I dropped absolutely loads of them on the first shot, stone dead! By mid day I was kicking myself for only bringing the one box! 

Well around mid day I got fed up of the pigeons not coming in, I got out and re-jigged our pattern, opening it up much more and changing it around. Within 30 mins we had two more pigeons in the bag, and which we stuck out on a rotary around 50-60 yards away with the wind coming towards our pattern! 

Well something must have worked, as come 1pm the corvids dried up mostly, but the pigeons had started coming in steady streams. The wind was strong so they were having difficulty dropping down, with us having lots of high speed birds coming in across us. Both Shooting egg and I dropped some fast crossers and we were over the moon with it! Couldn’t believe how good the day was going. 

My personal high light of the day was when I used my mates SxS on a long bird (paced out 45+ yards) with full choke on a crossing pigeon, shootingegg said “you’ll never hit that”, just as I hit the thing, and it folded up stone dead and came crashing down. He even said he could hear the slap noise of it being hit so hard! It was a big bonus then as I had my eye in and managed to drop two more birds at a similar range!! 

Not sure if shootingeggs highlight was when he managed to drop 2 corvids with one shot from his 20 Bore ? or when he dropped a pigeon with the 410! I also managed to drop a lovely corvid with the 410 so we had a good bit of fun with that. 

Overall I think it was the best day I’ve ever had in the hide, we ended up with 58 corvids and 30 pigeons. We thought we were going to run out of cartridges but ended up with only 5 left ?. Thanks shootingegg, great day was had, although my shoulder is a bit sore today after shooting that SxS ?

 

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35 minutes ago, motty said:

Sounds like a cracking day. I also enjoy mixing a day up with different guns from time to time.

Thanks mate, was handy because I had open chokes in the O/U and nice tight ones in the SxS. 

Got a few pigeons breasts in the freezer now, going to make a pigeon pie :) 

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Sounds like a great day. Good on you for giving the SxS a go, nice sentiment. I've got an old semi auto (1965 model) that was my late uncles, not had chance yet this year, but hoping to get the opportunity when ploughing and seeding starts, or when the maze is cut and the corvids are around. It's fixed full choke, so tight on the pattern. Again, well done guys.

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What a day, lots of shooting, i did run out out 20guage roubds, but had some cracking shooting, hits i thought od miss and misses I just stood there and said I tickled that.. Became known as  the tickler.... Some pigeons deployed flares as we both stood in disbelief as they carried on as if nothing had happened. 

 

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50 minutes ago, ShootingEgg said:

What a day, lots of shooting, i did run out out 20guage roubds, but had some cracking shooting, hits i thought od miss and misses I just stood there and said I tickled that.. Became known as  the tickler.... Some pigeons deployed flares as we both stood in disbelief as they carried on as if nothing had happened. 

 

Now known as the pigeon tickler after being sure of hitting every bird you shot at ?

We both had pigeons we hit that came absolutely crashing down, and looked stone dead. Then after a good minute or two they just got up and flew away! Don't know what that was about. 

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5 hours ago, getthegat said:

I had the same thing happen a couple weeks back, I was also using #8 shot, though didn't realize they were in with my mixed bag.

I couldn’t miss with them mate, fantastic cartridges. Didn’t get a chance to use them on pigeons which is a shame as they were very effective on jack daws. 

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