SHOOTING OVER PEA'S

[DEADLY PLUMBER]

Hi All   ( It's been a while )

I have a new permission that has just come my way in the last week.

However it has a field of pea's on it. With birds showing on it.

The Pea's are about 18" to 24" high at the moment.

Although having shot pigeons for many many years I have never shot over pea's.

 

Any do's and dont's or tips that may help me please.  

Also when are pea's usually harvested.  

how tall do pea's get.  

Any useful tackticks that work well on Pea's.  

 

Regards    DP

 

 

 

[Jacko3275]

I only know that is there a flight line Into them and are the feeding on them 

[DEADLY PLUMBER]

Hi Jacko

thanks for you reply.

Yes I've got the flight lines today on a recce.

and yes they are feeding on the pea's very well.

[Catamong]

Hi DP,

Peas are a good draw for Pigeons, but in our area, (St Albans), the birds have just started to move off the peas and onto the Winter Barley, which is starting to ripen fast.

They will come back onto the peas after the Barley is cut, normally late July / early August time.

The peas have now reached their maximum growth height, and they will be cut around mid to late August time.

Pea stubbles can be very attractive to the birds, so keep a good look out, as a lot seem to get spilled during the combining.

Good luck, and keep some space reserved in your freezer.!

Cat.😎

[DEADLY PLUMBER]

Hi Cat

Thanks for your reply.

i assume standard tactics are fine.  ???

no interest yet on the barley on my permissions.

its not quite ripe enough just yet.

but with this weeks sun & heat that may change very soon.

But I have seen bird numbers building on barley all over Herts, Essex, Cambs.

Also i have seen some birds dropping in on Wheat in some areas. Not as many as barley though.

anyway. Keep filling your boots.

regards. DP

[lakeside1000]

Our farm manager stops all shooting over the peas as soon as the first pods are on, he told me if the processors find any pellets on the crop they will reject the whole trailer load, so too risky, but we get back on them as soon as the viners have finished, they are an OK crop for pigeons but I find them a little inconsistent, we have them showing now on the winter barley like Catamong, once they are on the seeds, Rape, barley and wheat the results always pick up, 

I have found with the peas here that the birds don't trust any movement among the decoys and will flare away if unsure, so I stick out as many dead birds as I can up on long sticks so they show above the crop but no bouncers flappers or magnets, seems to work ok especially as these birds are shot at several times a week while the crop is growing, and due to the limited area of crop its hard to find an area that has not been disturbed, but its a very short season on peas anyway as they grow so fast, 

Anyway best of luck, 👍

•  

[marsh man]

22 hours ago, Catamong said:

 

 

 

They will come back onto the peas after the Barley is cut, normally late July / early August time.

The peas have now reached their maximum growth height, and they will be cut around mid to late August time.

 

Cat.😎

This might well be the case in your area Cat, but our Pea campaign will start within days and maybe up North  Norfolk / Lincolnshire it might have already started , I looked at our Peas today and some of the pods have Peas in them that are just about edible , I recon they will now be cut around the first week of July , you will then get two weeks at the most on the stubble before the cereal harvest start around here in the third week of July.

Once the harvest start it is then more or less it on the Pea stubble as the grain stubble is better for the pigeons than the decaying Pea stubble , having said that , you can get extra shooting over Peas if they are left to go for seed and this can be a magnet for pigeons as a lot of the dry Peas will fall out of the pods before the combine do it's job .

Best thing is to try and follow the pigeons when they leave the wood to where they are heading for as some stubble fields will hold several pigeons and other fields with the same crop in will hold .nothing 

[motty]

21 hours ago, marsh man said:

This might well be the case in your area Cat, but our Pea campaign will start within days and maybe up North  Norfolk / Lincolnshire it might have already started , I looked at our Peas today and some of the pods have Peas in them that are just about edible , I recon they will now be cut around the first week of July , you will then get two weeks at the most on the stubble before the cereal harvest start around here in the third week of July.

Once the harvest start it is then more or less it on the Pea stubble as the grain stubble is better for the pigeons than the decaying Pea stubble , having said that , you can get extra shooting over Peas if they are left to go for seed and this can be a magnet for pigeons as a lot of the dry Peas will fall out of the pods before the combine do it's job .

Best thing is to try and follow the pigeons when they leave the wood to where they are heading for as some stubble fields will hold several pigeons and other fields with the same crop in will hold .nothing 

I have already seen a fair few pea stubbles. They can and will feed on them when there are grain fields in close proximity, but they are likely to feed on both. 

As you know vining peas are a different prospect from harvest peas. 

[marsh man]

1 hour ago, motty said:

I have already seen a fair few pea stubbles. They can and will feed on them when there are grain fields in close proximity, but they are likely to feed on both. 

As you know vining peas are a different prospect from harvest peas. 

When we had Birds Eye in the town our Peas were normally drilled during March and the vining machines would be on the fields around the last week in June , I always had a weeks holiday that week and I would be shooting on Peas either ready to be cut and by the end of the week it would be on fresh stubble , we called these  the 13 week Peas as it would be around 13 weeks from drilled to vined . this would give us two to three weeks shooting before the first fields of Winter Barley is cut and then it was it on Pea stubble as our harvest ran through till the end of August , this year the harvest could be early but for the last few years it had started around the second / third week in July and depending on the weather we look at the August bank holiday as the finishing date . 

[Catamong]

Yes, as Motty says, these are not Vining Peas, but Marrowfat Peas which are grown specifically for canning, (so I believe?), there are no Vining Peas grown in our area.

They are harvested in Mid August, and are bone dry by that time, (I think they are sprayed with a dessicant, as they do with the Rape?).

Back in the 70's and 80's the birds would be on the peas from the day they were drilled until the stubble was ploughed back in, but nowadays, their feeding habits have changed over time, and they will move off them for a few weeks as soon as the Winter Barley starts to ripen, as is happening now.

I checked a large Pea field last Saturday, and there wasn't a bird on it, so I concluded that they'd moved onto some nearby Barley, which turned out to be correct, so I set up there for a few hours on Sunday and picked up 38.

The birds were pitching into an area of laid crop, which was right next to a main road and therefore not safe to shoot, so I had to draw the birds upwind across the field using a rotary and flapper which worked well, also was very pleased to see that the Farmer had planted some very short, strong stemmed Barley, and I managed to pick up every bird that went down into the crop, real result.!

Cat.😎

 

 

[mossy835]

i had one farmer that grew peas hundreds of acres. and i had a lot of pigeons off them.

[lakeside1000]

Just been told my last three fields of peas are being left to go to seed, when this happened last year I had some amazing days on both the standing crop and after harvest, probably end of August so it clashes with rape and wheat but well worth the wait.